2. Diving with the jelly clones and snorkelers that can’t swim!

After two days of diving, I have obviously deserved a rest day so spent the morning drinking tea, reading my book and waiting out the morning rain showers we’ve had the past couple of days. I was then going to have another taxi trike adventure to visit a local beach but I think that’s better left for a brighter day so I walked all of 50m down the road to try another of the beach side cafes and had a mango smoothie then tired from all the walking, collapsed on the beach with my book and a spot of excellent people watching!

Before that though, my previous two days have been spent diving. We do a combination of boat and shore dives here. This means when we boat dive, we walk out into the shallows to clamber onto the boat, where the guides have taken all our gear so we just carry our own fins and I have my camera. The walk to the boat ladder is up to a depth of around 4.5 - 5 feet; OK if you’re a 6 foot plus tall person. I sort of swim myself out on my tip toes for the last bit while someone hangs off the edge of the boat to relive me of my fins and camera so I can sim to the ladder! Then we set sail to various spots around the coast to plop into the water (technically called a giant stride - where you put all your gear on, mask on and regulated (air hose) into your mouth then step off the boat) and descend to explore the various depths. Most of the coastal diving here is wall diving. This  is where the shallow reef or stones and corals which begin at the shore, extends out to sea then drops off sharply - that’s where we go, to the drop off, descend there then dive along the side of the wall of the reef; reef on one side, ‘the blue’ (the open sea) on the other and mostly blue and sometimes some shelves of more reef and sand below us! Mostly here we’re looking for ‘small stuff’ - little critters, pretty fish & nudibranchs and things living on and around the reef. I rarely spot any of it my self - although I do try - so I float along enjoying the general view of the reef and follow the guide who finds all the stuff to show us, clangs his noise maker for attention and we swim, one at a time to have a look at the little shrimp, frog fish, treasure he’s found. Then we swim on. I also just enjoy the pretty fish and corals, the ever joyous occasion of spotting a puffer fish and generally living in their world for a bit.

The shore dives involve putting on all your gear (carrying your fins!) and walking it directly out of the dive shop and into the sea opposite, across the sand & stones to the edge of the reef (where you float and pull your fins on) then descending over the wall of the dive site they call ‘the house reef’. It’s here that we float along and see the sardines. They have become a major tourist attraction and so the government have protected them from being fished. They claim there are over a million of the sardines living, dancing and swirling around - I have no idea who it was that counted them but it must have been quite the task. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect but they were cool - I thought perhaps they’d be bigger (more the size of the ones where you get one or two BBQ’ed for dinner abroad) but they are in fact the little ones (like you get multiple of in the tins!). Very pretty through and amusing to watch from in amongst them and under them - along with the legs of all the MANY snorkellers watching from above, with different levels of swimming (in)ability!

One dive we did yesterday was to a little island just off the coast, called Pescador Island. Because it’s a bit further out to sea and surrounded by deeper waters, we saw some different stuff and some things which I thought were utterly, super cool! As we descended and the guide was messing about getting a torch ready, I was floating waiting and watched what looked like a 5m length of mega thick rope float up from the depths and then go by. As it got closer, I realised it was definitely not rope but animal of some sort. I’ve since researched and found out it was a type of plankton called ‘salps’. Each slap is a gelatinous plankton which is complete with its own mouth, brain, eye, heart and digestive system. They ‘give birth’ to clones which form a chain of clones - called a salp chain (original). Bits of the chains then break apart and more slap clones are born and new chains are made. Once they sink to the ocean floor, that’s time up. They are a favourite snack of many species of fish and turtles! Although they look similar, they are not related to jellyfish; in fact they are more closely related generically to humans than they are to jellies! Far less excitingly but perhaps equally cool, I also saw the most vividly pink bubble anemone that I have ever seen and some excellent frog fish walking about on their foot-fins!

I’ve met some nice people - many terribly youthful ‘twenties’ on their backpacking adventures but also some people more like me who are travelling around work commitments. We tend to have breaks and sometimes meals together where we all just talk about the diving we’ve done, where we’ve been and occasionally what our home countries are like - Britain invariably comes out quite poorly and is mostly embarrassing, helped immensely by the evening drunks who stagger about shouting ridiculous things in very British accents! However, while waiting for one of my dive buddies for dinner, I did find a man lying across the floor of the dive centre patio. He rolled over and said hello. I asked if he was ok and he told me he was ‘very f**king drunk’. It was only 8.30pm so quite an achievement. He then said it was ok because he works here. At that point, someone came and helped him up - with some effort and the help of two security guards - and sat him on the sofa, where he promptly fell asleep. His name was Lars and he is from Sweden, which is a nice change to being from the UK and behaving like that. I think if I get him as my dive guide tomorrow, I might request a different person - I’d be very surprised if he’s ever truly sober!

For my rest today, I did a bit of beach combing (beginning to get a nice haul of little shells - I’ve washed them and lined them all up in a nice line, where I shall leave them for a day of two. Any who walk or slither themselves out of line, I take as a sign of still being host to their hermit crab and return to the beach!). I’m also slightly more careful about collecting shells that may have their slug creatures inside having learnt how extremely poisoning and fatally venomous the sting of some can be. Who knew shell collecting was such an extreme support!). I also indulged in some excellent people watching …. A couple who came fully kitted up and disappeared for ages to do what I assume was some form of free diving - although the man had a tank but not Any kind of inflator jacket, which puzzled me, hoards of snorkelling tourist - there is no requirement to wear a life jacket to snorkel here; it’s just that that many of them can’t swim. Almost exclusively the Asian tourists. Often, there are two of them per guide - the guide is in fins and pulling an inflatable which the two snorkels hold on to and get dragged about in the water. There were also some amateur photo shoots, various ladies selling shell bracelets and a couple who put their fins on while on the sand then walked very awkwardly over the stone and into the shallows!