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Published: July 10th 2006
July 5, 2006
6:30 am wake up call. WHAT!?!?! Oh wait, lemme back up.
3am informal wake up call. The boat was cruising to the first location, about 10 miles off of lizard island, which is about 100 miles from the nearest thing I could name. The form of the informal wake up was actually my luggage case falling from the cabinet, because the waves had forced most of the room upside down. I covered my head, thinking maybe something might fall on top of me. But nothing did. The boat rocked very hard. I went from weightless to flopping onto my bed, back to weightless again, in the same general rhythm one might expect from a snoring symphony. But this was a little different. Eventually, I got to sleep- and although to this point at 9:11pm, have not dealt with any type of sea sickness.
Okay, 6:30. A petit breakfast and we dived into the water. Actually, considering this was what we came here to do, I was pretty okay with the situation. The sun was coming up, there were some beautiful islands in the distance, and we were sitting on top of Pixie Reef. It was a nice first dive. I can’t say it was INCREDIBLE, but that’s because my expectations were a little bit beyond a first dive of the day. Still, I saw a school of double headed parrotfish, that numbers close to 100! That’s something very rare, and I’d never even seen a single double headed parrot fish so I was feeling lucky. Let the outerspace walk begin!
Next dive was Pixie Pinnacle. It was basically a coral horn that shot from 80 feet all the way to 3 feet below the surface. We began the dive at the bottom and spiraled our way up to the top. Lots of cool little things on the dive, including a fire coral that actually looked like a lightning storm. The stems of the coral displayed electricity that shot like lightning down to its tips. Though I have been waiting to see the big stuff, this was a dive meant for little things and I certainly got a taste of the little things that the great reef has to offer.
By now, I was getting pretty tired, and it was only 9:30am!!! I took a bit of a midday break and layed around watching a movie and sleeping on the couch. Truly, a rough life.
The weather here is nice, considering the time of year. But really, it is not warm and the idea of sunbathing is out- more because of the high winds and chop than the heat, but still, a cool wind can do wonders to the unprepared- like almost lift my laptop off into the sea!
Got back in the water for a sunset dive at Challenger. Got my first look of the trip at a white-tipped reef shark that was snoozing at the bottom of the reef. Also, I think I’m starting to get used to my camera. Good thing because it seems that tomorrow’s dives are the ones that will not be to miss!
From the Nimrod.
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BobbyFree
Bobby Free
I got sea sick just reading this. Glad you had fun.