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!
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