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We woke up to a great breakfast and a dive site called "Mary's Place". We swam through a deep channel in the reef, about eight feet wide and extending from the top of the reef at 30 feet down to 90 feet. We swam through at about 60 feet, the rounded a corner to where the divemaster showed us two different sea horses. They are really cool looking, and very rare. The reef was full of interesting stuff. At one point Rick was taking a picture and a Seargent Major (it's about a 4" fish) swam right out and nipped his camera, as if to say "hey, keep away from here!". This of course made Rick hang around and take pictures of him. We did a second dive on this site which was also fun, though the visibility seemed to have decreased from the first dive.
After lunch we moved to Charleigh's choice which was a site with a steep wall just below a field of coral. We jumped in for our first dive and made our way to the edge of the wall, then went down. We immediately felt the temperature change by several degrees. We swam along the wall and then up over it and back towards the boat.
When we got back on the boat a couple of people had tried out the "scooters" that the boat had for rent. They are battery powered propulsion devices that you hold onto and they pull you through the water. It sounded like fun so we signed up to try them on the next dive. Once we got in the water, they handed them down to us and we descended and started trying them They pulled pretty hard, but you didn't go too fast. It was fun, but Rick's battery started to run down almost immediately, so we went back to the boat and dropped them off, then we swam around near the boat for a while before getting out.
Tonight we were doing a "dusk" dive before dinner, so we got ready again and went in the water. It was more like a night dive, since the sun was very low. We saw an octopus near the mooring line (so did a bunch of other divers, I think we were annoying the octopus, who just wanted to find some food). When we headed back to the boat we surfaced about ten yards from it and swam along the surface. Unfortunately, Randy felt a sharp burning across his upper lip and knew he had been stung by a jelly fish! He got out of the water and some of the other passengers got him a paper towel soaked in vinegar, which helped reduce the sting. We had brought some "Land's End Oil" with us on the recommendation of Karin from our last boat trip, and it turned out to work wonders reducing the pain. Coupled with a nice stiff drink, Randy was feeling almost back to normal within about an hour. Our first encounter with a jellyfish, I hope we don't have too many more of those!
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