Day #4 in paradise
Today was a fantastic day! It's winter here so it was only 80 degrees and cloudy off and on. Our first dive was a bit boring from a fish perspective but exciting on others. We saw some fun clown fish but that's about it. It appears that I had a leak in my regulator and towards the end of the dive I looked at my gauge and It was nearly at zero. Ugh! I swam to Alex and grabbed his safety buddy regulator. Thank god for these. Our guide came and took my weight belt and Alex and I did our safety stop together and then headed up to the boat. Just as we reached the surface we ran out of air in his tank too! It was a close call on both accounts. I was a bit shaken but we both made it up safely so I guess "all is well". I do have to admit though, this is my second equipment malfunction while here and I will be saving to buy my own regulator and BCD before our next diving trip.
Baby Star - about 2-3 feet in diameter.
The baby star in above pictures will turn in to one of these.
Thorny Crown Anemone - these eat coral and our divemaster took it back and buried it in the sand.
Lettuce Coral
pretty
Huge clump of coral
This was the brightest green
Nudibranch!! I love these little things - they are really just slugs but they are so colorful! They are really tiny and hard to take a good picture of so I apologize for the blur.
The black in the picture is our divemaster's arm - he was "protecting" his hand from the clown fish and the anemone. Too bad they ended up biting a chunk out of his little finger.
"Leave my Anemone alone!"
Huge Lettuce Coral - see the diver in the back for perspective.
I noticed this spider in between dives... about 4 inches in size... did I mention that things were huge in Fiji?
Our second dive was amazing! We swam through all sorts of caves and the coral and the fish were fantastic. We played with numerous clown fish and anemone. The clown fish are so fun, they get so peeved when you swim near their "home" and try and attack you by swimming straight at you. I'm use to clown fish that are 1-2 inches long but they are 6 inches + here and their teeth are seriously sharp.
This Anemone fish came and kept trying to bite my camera lens, that's why he is blurry.
Anemone on the left open, and Anemone closed on the right. The outside is safe to touch when it is closed and it is so silky soft.
Nudibranch
Beautiful Coral
3 foot long sea cucumber climbing up a wall of coral - I think these things are just weird and cool.
swim through
Me.
Soft coral... looks like it has lights in it.
"Peace Dude" - Alex during 3 minutes safety stop, notice boat above his head.
After a second great dive we rested for a few hours in hammocks and then we went out in a sea kayak. Leave it to us to find a way to turn this simple activity into an adventure. The boats are suppose to be unsinkable and unflippable. Alex tried to paddle the kayak Fijian style - Standing up and fell into the ocean several times in the first 10 minutes. Then I paddled along for awhile after Alex sat down pouting, when.... our unsinkable kayak started to sink and then our unflippable boat flipped over dumping us both in the ocean directly onto the coral reef that we were floating over. We felt terrible about crashing on to the coral and breaking some so we hovered above the coral and swam pushing the sinking boat into shore. After wiping away the blood from the cuts that the coral gave us, Alex then found the hole in the boat that made us sink. We flipped the boat over to drain it and that's when the skies opened and it started down pouring. We just laughed at the situation. The fresh rain actually felt good. Fearing the boat sinking again with both of us in it Alex paddled it home while I walked on the beach collecting shells. It really was another great day!
Alex pulls our sunken kayak onto the beach to drain it.
"Really Rain, seriously?" Not like we weren't already wet...
Having a great time with the situation and getting a good laugh out of it.
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