Day 28 - A WOW dive

When I woke up today the waves were almost splashing over my balcony (and I'm on the second floor), so my immediate reaction was to cancel the dive. But at the same time it was amazingly sunny, for the very fist time in the whole past month. So I thought, let me finally dive in the sun, if worse comes to worse I can always leave after the first dive. An additional bonus to the sunny day was the fact that we are going out of yet another new port - Puerto Abrigo - located very close to the Villa where I stay. I'm always delighted to see new marinas, and this one was really beautiful and did not have the smell of a gas station like Caleta. Puerto Abrigo is for the bigger boats (over 40 feet), and the sea was closed to the small speed boats today due to the rough weather conditions.

Every time we dive from the big boat (el barco) I get to the very top to sit with the captain and enjoy the endless view of the sea. The boat is pretty high, so the waves never reach the top like it usually happens with the smaller boats. Well, not today. We were barely dodging the waves and getting massive showers of water every time the boat was not able to go with the wave (which was often). It was quite a workout to stand there on the top of the boat, hanging for your dear life onto the rails with both hands. My thighs actually hurt a bit after that, I felt like a surfer or something. And I have to admit, a little bit of adrenalin works very well for me. IT WAS FUN!

We were the only boat on the island going out to dive in such rough conditions, and, boy, was it worth it! There were ten divers on the boat, with two dive masters. Two of them bailed out of doing even the first dive because the waves were too high and they were afraid of getting in and out of the water. And rightfully so, I have to say, the waters were pretty scary. The ladders were going up in the air sometimes, and it was really pretty scary. We couldn't get anywhere near our regular dive sites in the South of the island, so we did Villa Blanca, which is almost in town, normally a 5-minute ride from the pier, but it took us good half an hour today. Underwater everything was calm and beautiful, as if there was no storm out there. But if you looked up, you could see the raging waters and the contrast between the depth and the surface was pretty amazing. It was a challenge to get back onto the boat of course, as the ladders were flopping angrily up and down, but we made it. Although we lost another diver - not literally, thank god, lost her only to the second dive. And so we were seven.

The second dive was in the Eagle Ray City - we NEVER go there. I don't know why actually. Maybe because they don't want to frighten the eagle rays away from this place, or maybe there are other reasons, who knows. The bottom line is it was my very first dive in this location and it was beyond spectacular. We saw 9 (!!!) eagle rays flying together - I have never seen so many at the same time. It is the most magestic view you can ever fathom. Click here to see a video of an eagle ray, and then imagine 9 of those in a group. I can never get enough of them. How effortlessly and graciously they move against the current, how powerful their "wings" are, how serene their "faces"! To me, they are the most amazing creatures of the sea, and they always make me insanely happy for no reason at all. Just looking at this pre-historic beauty awakens something strong in me and makes me feel very connected to nature (which happens very rarely in my case).

Another "excitement" was a terrible pressure headache I developed during the second dive. But I was so exhilarated with the eagle rays that I didn't even care about the excruciating pain that threatened to burst my skull open. I don't know what exactly it was, but on the boat I violently threw up (for about 5 minutes non-stop), and the headache immediately subsided. Even that unfortunate incident didn't spoil my WOW diving day.

The feeling of pure happiness was mixed with a strange emotion of almost some kind of fear that I could have cancelled something that turned out to be one of the best diving experiences!