Getting There - Aneel's Travelogue

We did two dives this morning. As usual, the first dive back was awkward. Lots of getting used to new equipment. I've entered a new phase of scuba diving: the gear I bring with me on a trip no longer fits easily into a carry-on. Adrienne and I each have a new BC, so we brought a giant suitcase with those and my fins. I thought I'd checked my dive computer before the trip, but it's now showing a low battery warning and refuses to stay in Dive mode. So I'm diving on a rental. Frustrating. We did still see some neat stuff on the first dive, including a large (4ft across) southern sting ray, which swam within a couple yards of us.

The second dive went much more smoothly. I re-placed my tank, which had been riding uncomfortably high and felt much more at ease in the water. There were some nice swim-throughs, and we saw a couple cases of things inside barrel sponges. I've always wondered why more things don't use them for shelter. Here we saw a crab in one and a bearded fire worm in another.

After the diving, we went out on a whale watching boat trip. It was spectacular. We had pretty close encounters with four sperm whales, three adult females and a calf. One of them swam right under the boat several times, and we got to see all of them dive.