Getting There - Aneel's Travelogue

More good diving. In the morning, we did a boat dive to Valley of the Kings. The dive does a descent through a fairly narrow passage with spectacular coral on both sides, so you get the feeling of being surrounded by them. It then opens out into a wider valley with more amazing corals. I think my favorite are the tubes that appear to glow with an eerie blue light.

The drop-off dive on the return was on Newman's wall. As I was swimming along the wall, I saw a few blue fish swim past me. A few more soon joined them, and I looked back to find that I was among a school of at least fifty of them. They preceded us to the sunken ship and were swimming around and through the ship. I stayed there and watched them for a while before heading in.

There are a bunch of little puffer fish at the ship. They let you get to within a foot of them before they dart away. They watch you with these cute little green eyes.

Our second dive was to a different sunken ship, the Mr. Bud. This one was a 30' fishing boat that was caught drug smuggling, seized, sold at auction to the owner of the resort, and sunken as a bit of artificial reef. We actually swam into the ship, which was a neat experience. There was a large green moray eel nearby in a little cave, who had a fish visitor. Maybe a grouper?

For the last few dives, Jenny loaned me her camera in its underwater housing. I had been feeling in fairly good control and had cut down on my air over-usage enough that I felt ready to deal with the distraction of a camera. It turned out that it was more distraction than I was anticipating. In addition to being another object on a cord, bumping around and getting tangled, it was tricky to operate. Framing pictures was a challenge. Often, I'd have to back up to get everything I wanted in the frame. In the meantime, the fish would have moved. And while I was concentrating on the photography, I was oblivious to the other things going on around me. I generally use air about 20% faster than Jenny does, but on the Mr. Bud dive, I used it about 50% faster.

I used the camera again for the drop-off dive. It was the Coco View wall, which I've dived twice before, so I felt fairly comfortable with it. I took a bunch of pictures of various corals and a few fish, including a young drumfish with long trailing fins.

Dinner was a BBQ followed by a demonstration of Honduran folk dancing by local school children. There were some intricate steps and complicated patterns, and a lot of air kisses and hats blown off by the wind. There was also a surprising amount of chanting. Particularly "Viva! Honduras!" and "H-O-N-D-U-R-A-S Honduras!"