Best Dive Ever

Today was a wonderful vacation day.  I spent the morning in a lounge chair, near the water, doing my homework for my Nitrox class tomorrow.  After lunch I met up with my friends John and Dee and went for my first Caribbean shore dive ever at a dive site called Andrea I.  The entry was fairly tough because there is a very narrow channel to navigate between coral heads and underwater boulders and the surf was almost to the point of making the dive too difficult to attempt. 

Although my friends are much more experienced scuba divers, and have done a LOT of diving in surf when they lived in Hawaii, I actually had an easier entry into the water.  When I had last been to Bonaire I had snorkeled this site several times with my daughter under similar conditions.  I knew the trick to just watch for the break in the surf, get down on your belly and start snorkeling in just inches of water, and kick like hell to get out of the danger zone before the next wave came.  Today I did the same except for, instead of a snorkel, I used a scuba regulator.  It wasn't very difficult at all.  My friends tried to walk in and had a much harder time.  After the dive John commented that they should have just done what I had done.

Anyway, the dive was wonderful.  John and Dee made perfect dive buddies.  They didn't swim too slow or too fast.  They were extremely observant and had the right gear to get a buddy's attention underwater to point out interesting things.  John pointed out a crab, a tiny shrimp, a spotted drum, and a couple of other really cool fish.  Unfortunately, I was too far away to hear when he spotted the Lion fish (an invasive species from the Pacific who are extremely destructive in the Caribbean, but very pretty to look at – oh and they’re poisonous, too.)  So, instead, the only view I got of the Lion Fish was when a solo diver passed by with a long skewer type spear with approximately 8-10 Lion Fish impaled upon it.  Normally, this would make me really unhappy, but in this situation it was a very good thing.  Lion Fish are prolific breeders with no natural predators in the Caribbean and they are destroying the natural balance and killing the natural species.  Anyway, the dive was the best I've ever done in life.  It wasn’t anything spectacular, but I was extremely relaxed on the dive, the fish life was good, and I was ecstatic when I returned to shore with more air left in my tank than the two more experienced divers.  Much happiness!!!

After the dive I had a drink (or several - I can't remember now . . . go figure) with John and Dee at the pool bar.  And when I say at the pool bar, I mean we were sitting in the pool, at the bar, having a drink.  None of us had ever done this before.  John and Dee were loving it.  I, of course, was freezing - which they found extremely amusing since they are originally from Texas and I am from Boston.  They were amused yet again when it came time to leave and they swam off to get out of the pool and I, instead, pleaded with Andrew, the bar tender, to let me climb over the bar into the work area so I didn't have to get my upper body wet again.  Andrew laughed and said, "This I've got to see!"  And he did!!   (Have I ever mentioned that I have very few inhibitions? ;-)