20 Feb 2025
Getting to the site is a longish drive, maybe 40 minutes confounded by heavy traffic around the port. But once we got clear of traffic it was a pleasant drive through some wonderful rainforest. The shop is across the street from the ocean. They do two dives a day but the first dive is at 830, about the same time we could leave the ship. As a result our dive was the second dive for many divers, above 60 ft.
We dropped into a sandy bottom and once everybody was sorted we moved towards a series of coral “canyons”. Just before we left the sea grass we found an (conger, maybe?) snaking along the bottom. At the base of the coral we saw quite a few smaller reef fish, includeing an uninflated porcupine blowfish. As we moved into the reef we saw a juvenal ray swimming paralell to us.
I admit, it was so long since was in the water that I spent some my time just finning along breathing compressed air. Towards the end Billy stumbled across a sleeping Hawks bill tortull, maybe 2 1// ft in diameter. Just before we called it a large potted eagal ray came by, with very long tall, maybe 4 or 5 feet long.
After being helped out of the water we returned to the anchorage at the beach and walked back across the street to the shop where washed our gear and packed up. The return trip took about 20 min and had much less walking involved.
10/10 all around. The length of the trip out couldn’t be helped but if we were in a hotel we would have done both but ship’s arrival stopped that process. Ephraim, Billy and the crew were all great.