Saturday, October 30th:
Saturday morning I woke up early to go out for my first dive here. I went with Matt, Lisa, and Laura on this dive. We got on the boat and set out for the first dive site, Lottie’s Lagoon. The diving here was definitely some of the best I have seen, although I think Great Barrier Reef still has the edge. That being said, Coral Bay easily is the best snorkeling I have ever seen, but more on that in another post. All in all, it was still pretty spectacular diving. It wasn’t too long into the dive that I got a surprise visit from my friend … Desmond!!!
Wasn’t expecting to see him up here, as the book I have on Australian fish listed Valentini Puffers as living on the East Coast. Obviously they were incorrect as I spotted several little ones throughout my dives here. Some of the other highlights were blue spotted rays, catfish, a frogfish, and all sorts of other tropical fish.
After the first dive we went for a snorkel with Manta Rays! Definitely a cool experience – they are such graceful animals. Just kind of glide along in the water. I was not allowed to use flash as they have sensitive eyes so the pictures aren’t great, but just the experience itself was pretty neat.
After a buffet style lunch on the boat we hopped back in for our second dive, at a dive site called the Elbow. The highlights from this site were a cave with lionfish, this giant Honeycomb Moray Eel, and a little cave we had to swim through.
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| That hole underneath the diver is the cave I swam through! |
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| Tight squeeze! |
When I got back to the house, I met everyone at the beach for an end of the day swim. We had a Mexican themed dinner and enjoyed some burritos deliciosos before heading to the beach to see the stars again.
Managed to make a pretty epic human pyramid with the help of my tripod.
Good times all around.
