Getting There - Aneel's Travelogue

We started out today with a relaxed shore dive. Gina was going to take some pictures off of the "front yard" of the resort, so Jenny and I tagged along. It was a nice pace. No feeling of needing to keep up with a group.

There was a sting ray sitting in the sand near the descent buoy. It stayed there while Gina took some pictures of it, then flew away.

We went back to the sunken ship and then went a little further on to the sunken airplane and spent some time there. The water was murkier than yesterday, so we didn't have quite as much visibility, but we did get to see quite a few big fish. Jenny spotted one hiding under the wing of the airplane and there was a large colorful one floating near the top of the ship's wheelhouse. I need to get better at fish identification, so I can say more than "a pretty one".

After lunch, we went out on a couple more boat dives. The first one was at Gold Chain Reef. The dive started near a tall vertical wall, where we saw a lot of spectacular weird corals and a couple scorpionfish. We then crested the edge of the wall and swam over a shallow region of golden coral with lots of brightly-colored fish, including more stoplight parrotfish and some wrasses.

I think this was the first dive where I really felt at ease. We were moving fairly slowly along the wall and I was able to control my motion much more easily than I had been in the past. A few kicks were enough to get me moving and I used my hands a lot less. In the shallow area there was a bit of a surge from the waves, and it was fun to let it carry me forward and then kick a little to stay stationary on the ebb.

The shallow region was apparently badly damaged by Hurricane Mitch, but is now recovering. We saw a bunch of coral types that we haven't seen much of, including some hard corals like elkhorn.

On our way back in, the boat dropped us off at Coco View Wall again. We had a nice trip back, and got to see a little octopus in the sandy area near the front yard at the very end.