Well, we're now fully qualified scuba divers and what a way and place to accomplish this. We finished the last two of our open water dives on Saturday and were lucky enough to have a pod of dolphins swimming by the first of the dive sights. So with this we slipped in to the water with our masks and fins on and held onto one side of the small inflatable dive boat whilst Annie (our dive instructor) cruised the boat along at a slowish and steady pace. Superb - with this technique you get to follow the dolphins around with them swimming almost right next to you at times seeing them gather speed to jump out of the water and then re-enter incredibly gracefully, a truely valid use of the word 'awesome'!
We then went down for the first of our dives and successfully completed our skill tests whilst enjoying some very pretty coral and array of various fish. We were lucky to have a beautiful sunny day above the surface so the sun shining through added a quite special touch to the colours and fish.
This particular dive sights buoy is anchored relatively near to where the waves break against the coral reef so when we stopped for our 5 metrre safety stop we could see the white water from the crashing waves but couldn't hear the crashing or feel the force and power that you can from the surface, but we could feel the motion of the waves, which made you feel as if you were in a kind of state of blissful suspension, it was a feeling that was incredibly relaxing yet kind of exhilarating at the same time.
Back to the surface and back to the dolphins. This time we just slipped in and snorkelled over to where they were and proceeded to follow them around for 5 minutes or so before they left again. I guess because we didn't cause so much disturbance and excitement for them with the boat we got to see them in a much more sedate swim which was just as majestic. Paul rightly described it as swimming with a wall of dolphins in front of you...we stopped counting at 30 and think it's reasonable to say the pod was about 40 in size, with a few babies in tow. To see animals of this size in quantities like this moving so gracefully through the water was a really special moment, and one that I look forward to enjoying as much as possible!
As we moved off to the next dive site we had a more than suitable farwell as the dolphins came back for one last play in front of the boat as we glided along, they seemed to be having a ball so it felt like we moved on with smiles for everyone!
No comments:
Post a Comment