Day 51 - Diving a dream

El Norte started yesterday, so today I decided to try and brave the East side of the island once again. And THANK GOD I did! I don't know what is happening to me lately, but for the past several days every dive seems to be a spiritual, out-of-body experience.

Diving the East side is very different. The formation is shallow and consists of soft coral - gorgonians, or sea fans. Even the sand pattern is different here. The first part is known as Elkhorns for the obvious reasons, as seen from the pictures. And the second dive - which I made this time (hurray!!!) - is only at 10-20 feet and features canons and canon balls from a sunken Spanish galeon. At some point on the second dive I felt my fins touching the surface - we were only in 6 feet of water!

What BEAUTY! Unfortunately, I don't have the words to describe it. Fortunately, Sallye was taking her awesome pictures, so I have images that are definitely worth a 1,000 words each. The only thing I can add to the pictures is that these two dives were absolutely dreamy. The dream-like sensation was enhanced by the constant lullaby rocking of the surge. Very-very slowly, just like in a beautiful dream, you are taken by the water back and forth, back and forth. You look around and all you see is the same rythmic movement everywhere: sea fans - back and forth, schools of fish - back and forth, turtles - back and forth. I would not be surprised to learn that it was actually an REM sleep - there was definitely no dominating brain waves in my head during these two dives.

On our way back to the shore, we rescued a fishermen's boat. The boat broke when the dive-hunters were underwater, so the boat couldn't follow their bubbles. It had happened three hours prior to our arrival to the spot, and nobody had any idea where the divers were. Our boat was very small, so it took about an hour and a half to tow them. Thankfully, the divers were OK - after realizing that the boat is nowhere in sight after surfacing, they just swam to the shore.

I was so relaxed during the both dives, that I actually slept all the way through the surface interval after the first dive (when others walked around the beach in search of various useful beach garbage - they found a cool heart for my collection:)), and then after the second dive, Aristeo arranged several bags in the boat's front for my comfort, and I napped again for an hour and a half. It was so cosy. What a peaceful day... And thanks to Sallye, my hearts collection can finally boast an underwater one!