Day 20 - Dive Ahoy!

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Up early to say goodbye to Kasper and get ready for my 3 dives. The first was my Deep Dive and we went down to 30m! The water was still 28 degrees, just like at the surface, and the light here travels that far so you can still see perfectly!! We saw turtles - they are everywhere and so many beautiful fish and corals. The deeper you go, the more at risk you are of Nitrogen Narcosis - you have too much nitrogen in your body - where start to feel like you are drunk and happy or get paranoid. People have been known to wave at turtles and just generally get silly! I became so aware of everything at about 28m, double checking my gagues and generally being a bit wide eyed. Great!! It's funny! When you come up a bit your head straightens out. Genius!

The second dive was to the Bounty wreck - an old pontoon that sunk off one of the other islands. The locals on the mainland used to sell you a ticket to Gili Trawangen (the main island) but take you to one of the smaller ones and demand extra money to take you across the 1km channel. Sounds familiar! Anyway, the pontoon was where these boats used to offload unwitting tourists and it sank 8 years ago. Sounds like Karma to me!! The life now on there is beautiful and as we went out mid morning, Kate and I had it to ourselves. Perfect.

The last dive of the day was Underwater Navigation. You go down to the seabed and swim a perfect square using a compass. It's harder than it sounds!! A 5 minute skill and the rest of the dive was pure pleasure though. Can't be bad! I use my air really slowly underwater so Kate waited to see how long we could stay for. On the previous dives, someone has run low on air between 40 and 50 minutes under and we have had to surface. After 70 minutes, we were getting cold and bored so came up!! I have some long dives ahead!!

Today I have seen loads of turtles, an octopus, a small ray and 12 massive bumphead parrot fish (google image them - they're funny!), so called because they bump the coral with their huge foreheads and then eat it and so many other amazing things!

I have moved into the Blue Marlin Bungalows for my last 2 nights. The power kept going off in our last place and for 3 nights out of 5 we had no aircon, no fan, no TV and not even any lights!! Eventually we managed to get the room for half price for those nights and moved out this morning.

The businesses here have an agreement that they don't compete on price for dive courses and similar accommodation. They also have parties on different nights of the week so everyone has a fair shot at getting business. It's a really good idea. There is no bartering and arguing over prices you get elsewhere. I like it, however it might have been the wrong night to move to Blue Marlin as tonight is their party night! Unfortunately I was useless after my dives. We had dinner down the road and got back about 22.30 to find the place empty. It doesn't pick up till midnight! By 23.00 I was fast asleep! I woke up at about 03.30 to hear the party going strong and went straight back to sleep. This diving malarkey really takes it out of you!!

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