Last Dives - Last Day

Yesterday was our last day of diving.  Luckily there were some "newby" divers on the boat and because one of the dive-masters had hurt his foot and couldn't put on a fin, they slowed down the swimming bit and we just hung around some bits of rocks and had a nice time photographing different things and enjoying the dive.  Hate having to do a lot of swimming because I am not a strong swimmer.  I'm not even a good swimmer.

Our second dive, they told us there were plenty of lion fish on this site.  Sure enough, as we are descending the anchor line, there are about 7 or 8 lion fish all gathered at the edge of the rock and just lazing around.  There were 3 below me that were swimming towards the rock.  It's actually not that common to see them swimming.  Usually we find them just sitting on rocks and coral or under ledges.  I let go of the anchor line and was slowly drifting down to get into position to take photos of the lion fish - remember thought that my light had crapped out yesterday so Thursday I was using just a torch which wasn't giving me a wide enough range of light.  So trying to set my camera on flash, trying to get into position to take a photo of about 10 lion fish when I noticed one lion fish had detached itself from the group and was swimming towards me!  AH OH.  rather freaky.  I've never had one chase me.  I swam away from it and angled back around in a different direction to come in again and get photos.  Then I noticed one of the "newby" divers descending and he's waving wildly at me and pointing down.  I looked and there is that pesky lion fish right at my feet!  He's probably only a foot away from my fin.  Blast but this is an aggressive son of a gun!  So I move away again.  He kept coming.  So I decided I didn't need photos of this particular group of lion fish and just moved away.  Retreat is better than getting a foot full of venom.  After the dive, my husband told me he had even had to kick it away from me a couple of times.  geez.  when did they start getting aggressive towards divers?!?*!   Guess he did not like paparazzi.

There were a number of lion fish through that dive but I kind of stayed away from most of them just in case their whole colony was anti-photos.   We finally did manage to find a leaf fish though which is exactly like it sounds.  If you didn't know it was a fish and look carefully to see its eyes, it would look like a leaf moving back and forth in the surge.   There were also some enormous scorpion fish but without my good dive light, I wasn't able to get a good photo of them at all.  poo.  Love taking photos underwater and is really disappointing when I can't.

So we are finally back at the dive shop and cleaning our gear and paying up our bill and then packing up our gear and getting a final ride back to our apartment.  heavy sigh!   In August we go to Grand Turk to dive.  We love it there.  But that's a long way away still.


Today, we went to Port Louis, the capital.  Two reasons, one to see my friend that I met on my Central Asia trip last Sept/Oct and also, just to look around the capital.  My friend is Mauritian-Australian.  She has moved to Australia and become Australian but was raised in Mauritius and lucky for me, just happened to be here to coincide for one day with our trip.  We had a lovely time visiting and catching up a bit and having lunch.  She took us around some of the more famous markets and Central Market in Port Louis.  Many of the old colonial buildings in the downtown area have sadly been neglected and are rather shabby now.  You can tell that at one time these were beautiful and stately homes.   Did have some fun going through the Central Market and finding different items to buy with the Dodo on it.  That's their official national emblem.  And the last living Dodo died on Mauritius back in the 1900's sometime, I believe.   Such a shame.  And how cute and funny that it is their national emblem.


Finally, she needs to get back to her family so we split ways and then my hubby and I stopped in the little natural history museum which wasn't too much or too good.  A good many of the fish they had on display looked like they had been smoked for preservation rather than taxidermied.  Thus their colors were very much the same no matter what kind of fish it was.  Rather a shame because we've just come from the ocean yesterday and  knew that this fish is bright yellow or that fish is red and white.  But at the museum, they were all scabby and brown.  So we didn't stay very long.  Stopped in the Caudan Waterfront shopping center for a much needed frozen yogurt and to watch the waterfront then back to our apartment to finish packing up.


Our flight leaves this evening at 11:30 p.m. so we'll set off in another couple of hours to head for the airport and home.  seems like the week went by way too fast.  could have used some more time diving and some more time sight seeing but we never have the 3 or 4 weeks needed to really "see" everything in the country.  Next time!

Today's Race - We Lost

There has been current every day we have dived.  Usually it has been a surface current.  The biggest problem has been getting from the back-roll over the side of the boat to the bow anchor line to haul ourselves down the anchor line.  Usually a current will lesson as you go deeper.  So most days there has been a small current on the bottom where we are diving but as you go around a rock formation, it will disappear or you will be in a protected area for a bit.  Sometimes I have had to grab a hold of a piece of rock to stay in position to take a photo but it hasn't been bad at all.


But today was destined to be not so great in some ways and awesome in others.  First thing, my dive light crapped out on me.  Better than the camera going wonky but makes it for seeing things in colors a lot harder and sometimes it's a bit too murky as well to get a good photo.  But second thing, as we are heading back into shore after our first dive, there is a total ring, a rainbow, around the sun.  that was MOST AWESOME.!  I don't think I've ever seen that.

But third thing, on our second dive, there was a current underwater at the bottom where we were diving.  The dive masters all wear these monstrous fins.  They are shoe type fins which means you just slip your foot into it rather than wear booties and strap it on.  That aside and not really being critical to the story at all, these fins are probably a good meter long - NOT including the shoe part of the fin.  I have never seen fins this large before other than free divers who must stroke hard and fast to get deep enough on their one breath of air.   What it means to me is the dive-master can do a lazy-like stroke with his fins and get propelled through the water while I'm kicking about 15 kicks to keep up with him.  Hasn't been a problem but today we had to go against the current at different stages during our dive.


I'm trying still to take photos, my hubby - who is my buddy - is watching me and also watching the dive-master who is slowly disappearing into the distance as he lazily swims along.  I finish my photo and swim like I've been shot out of a cannon to try and catch up to him.  He looks behind to see if we're all ok and we all are but I'm exhausted from trying to keep up.  Unfortunately for me,  he looked to check on us, I was there.  So I guess I was doing OK in keeping up but several times I had to pull myself along a rock and give myself a hard push off the rock to get that little bit of umph to swim into the current and keep the dive-master in sight.  WHEW.  It was an exhausting dive and I didn't get a lot of good photos because my dive light was blooey.


I did see some good stuff:  a small moray, a lionfish hanging out with two Sarlacc clams (one of the other divers came over to take photos and he almost ran into the lionfish who immediately extended all his venomous fins - almost like they were on a spring.  As if to say - ha ha, dare you to touch me), some anemones with lots of little 3 spot fish around it, a school of something smaller hanging out, and some anemone fish.  So, all in all it was a good dive but I was so glad when we were getting down on air and about to surface.  Not at all sure I could have kept racing against the current.  Definitely felt like we lost this race.

Nodding off, Reading, Off to Sleep again.

As we have gotten older, we find it is harder to spend the energy to dive and have any energy left to do anything else that day.  So a lot of our holiday is spent by getting up early in the morning to dive, doing two dives, then taking naps and eating dinner and then going to bed, just to repeat the cycle the next day.  Well, after all, we did come to this country to do the diving, not to do the other stuff.  And we have had one day when we did sightseeing already.   Plus, our last day is always a day out of the water to decompress fully and to be able to fly so we will do sightseeing that day as well.  Sometimes it leaves us without being able to see a lot of a country, other than the underwater bits, but that's our love right now and we're happy with it.


Yesterday was one of those days when we were too tired to go anywhere or do anything else.  Plus we had a late second dive because we were waiting for someone to show up to dive and they never did.  We were back at our apartment around 2 p.m. for lunch and clean  up, napping, dinner, napping, and then bed.  Also, the fact that there are no English language TV stations except BBC News also lends to falling asleep easily as we sit and read our kindles and then nod off.


Yesterday's dives were quite good though and we got some really nice photos so I will let the photos do the explanation of the dives.