Diving in Sydney

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We never ever made it to the Great Barrier Reef, which depending on who you to talk to, is either really really great, or getting less great through overexposure as the years go by. Forgoing the premier diving area in Australia, we still got our dive fix in by doing some shore dives with Sydney's Abyss Dive School. This was not the best diving we had on our trip, and it was easily the most expensive. But we had one really unique thing going for us on this dive - a dive camera. This is the one blog where we can take you underwater with us.

We met up with the friendly staff at the Abyss Diving School on the morning of Sunday, April 11th, picked up our scuba equipment, and drove with them over to the Oak Park beach-side park. This dive featured a few new challenges for Eva. First, the water here was colder then the water in Utila, so we had to wear thicker wetsuits. Second, we were doing a shore dive, which involved a lot of walking and swimming through rough water to get to the dive site. In truth, it took her a bit of time to get ready and get out to the dive site, and she didn't feel too comfortable in her suit.

We were assigned a friendly divemaster from England, but gosh, I forget his name. He graciously took a picture of us shortly after we descended, then led us around. Eva had the camera on that dive. The visibility and fishes were ok, although I didn't recall anything too spectacular. As the dive went on, my fingers started getting cold.

Eva was unhappy when she surfaced as her suit really didn't fit her - it was too tight and she had a hard time moving around. We borrowed a larger and better-fitting suit for her for the next dive, and I took the camera. Not a heavy snapper above ground, I was really excited about taking pics underwater. By far the coolest thing we saw was a cuttlefish. Eva and I both love these beautiful, delicate, color changing, sort-of-intelligent molluscs. Odd thing was that we also enjoy eating them. What could that mean? We both enjoyed the second dive a bit more than the first, and came home with a small handful of photos, which I leave you now to enjoy (the not-so-blurry color-adjusted ones, that is).

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