Day 4: Our 4th Wedding Anniversary!

Enjoying our anniversary from the top deck of the Mnuw in Yap Harbor


Watching the pod of dolphins play



A beautiful variety of healthy coral


Schools of Jack, Barracuda, and something else

24 June 2010

After our dives yesterday we relaxed in our hotel for a bit and then went exploring at the shopping center and indigenous art shop. Then we enjoyed happy hour at the Manta Ray Bay hotel – the restaurant and bar are a beautiful old-fashioned wooden ship that’s permanently docked in the bay. We ran into the British family we have gone diving with earlier that day and spent a few hours chatting with them. We enjoyed a nice dinner and crashed very early – we were in bed at 7:30, but we slept through the night! We were up at six, but I would say jet-lag acclimation is now about 90%! Success!

We started our anniversary sitting out on the balcony as the sun rose – I was reading more Korea books and Daniel was playing his DS (some things never change). : ) At 7:45 the front desk called and told us our breakfast was ready and Daniel came back with a beautiful tray of delicious food and fresh flowers. We ate breakfast on the balcony overlooking the harbor. Simply beautiful!

And then we were off to dive again! Today was excellent diving. Infinitely better than yesterday (the big storm that happened the night we flew in really did mess yesterday up). Today we went down to the Southern tip of the island and dove Yap Caverns – it was awesome! We swam between all these nooks and crannies while the rocks jutted up for meters and meters all around us. It was a tight fit, so it was a little challenging, but it was a lot of fun trying to maneuver single file through the caverns. When we reached a small swim-through cave we found a six foot nurse shark taking a nap in the corner! After swimming through the cavern we spent the rest of the dive swimming along a wall. I spotted an octopus!!! When it saw me it shrank back into its little cubby hole in a rock and was blinking his eyes as if winking at me and saying “you can’t see me anymore, right?” We spotted another octopus only a few minutes later and then saw several intricate leaf fish. It was a great dive – lots of interesting finds. I was so excited about what we had seen I sucked through my air about five minutes sooner than Daniel, and while I was on the line doing my safety stop, Daniel saw a very pretty black lionfish. We went down as far as 90 feet and had excellent visibility too.

After our dive we sat around chatting, enjoying the sweet bread, and hearing stories about the family of orcas that had frequented the island waters for two weeks just a few months ago. And then we geared up again and headed down to visit the “Magic Kingdom.” The variety of coral on this dive was amazing – so many different kinds – it was like gigantic flower patch with different formations jutting up like spires on a castle. We again had some great spotting including a large octopus that made a dive for his ledge (Daniel saw him swimming, but I only saw him under the ledge – which I had to view by turning upside down and then dropping down low enough to spy on him – he was huge!), we saw more clown fish, schools of fish including schools of barracuda and jacks, and a Napoleon wrasse.

And! On the drive back to shore, we were greeted by a very friendly pod of dolphin who were speed racing at the bow. It was really fun to watch them zoom around each other as they hopped the waves. Very cool.

So today was fantastic diving – it was comparable to the top dives we had in Australia. We are going to head over to the beautiful wooden ship soon for a late lunch and happy hour and then we are going to a dinner at the restaurant owned by our hotel. Valerie, one of our dive masters says they have the best cook on the island, so we’re going to check it out! And, since tomorrow is our last day of diving, we’ve arranged a full day so we can look for mantas in the morning, enjoy lunch on the boat, and then head to Vertigo – which is supposed to be one of the most amazing dive sites and one where you can see lots of sharks. Very excited!

Cheers!
Beth and Daniel