End of Week

We managed to get in three great dives yesterday plus a trip around the centre of the island to Karpata and Rincon plus another two today

Yesterday started with the deepest one we shall do, down to 100 feet with our host and dive master Menno and another family from South Carolina, Jon, Vicky and their daughter Charlotte.
The dive was to the wreck of the Hilma Hooker, a large cargo ship that was supposedly intentionally sunk after being caught drug running back in the 1980s. It lies on its side between two reefs and can be dived from the shore or a boat. We dived from Menno's boat as we were going on to a second dive after. The visibility was better than the day before and the wreck was soon in sight. We all swam inside starting in a hold at the stern passing through a small opening into the holds at the bow end before emerging on the bottom. A lot of coral and fishlife are now living in and on the wreck. The dive is advanced for the normal level that Jan & I go to meaning we had to do two compulsory decopression stops when coming up, first for one minute at 30 feet then 3 minutes at 15 feet.


After a long slow boat ride along the shore we arrived at another dive location, this one called Small Wall named after, yes you guessed, a samll vertical wall of coral. This was a very different dive site, much shallower with us only going down to 60 feet. Lots of very colourful coral and teeming with fish life. We saw our first frogfish then a seahorse. As a finish to the dive we were all in the boat and a turtle pooped up beside us for air.

The last dive of the day was a new experience for Jan, late at night Menno's wife Esther took Jan, myself and Vicky on a night dive to the town pier. We started around 9.15 in the evening so it had been dark a couple of hours. The pier is a large comercial dock but no boats other than the tugs were in. Swimming out in the pitch black is an experience as we only had hand held lights. The colours of the corals at night are amazing in the torch light and once again we saw a seahorse plus numerous other creatures that only come out after dark.

Today started well when of to our first dive we spotted a pod of some 10 dolphins playing close to the shore so we stoppoed and just swam out to them. Although we were very close they just moved of so Jan and I moved on to the dive sites we had chosen.

Now just waiting for an evening on a boat watching the sun go down with rum followed by a BBQ back at Deep Blue View. What a life!!!