November 3 - Bandos Island and the Boat
I manage to sleep in until around 7:30. Dad is really confused because he set his
alarm for 6 a.m. so he could catch the sunrise, but the alarm never went
off. He was also really confused because
he couldn’t find the portrait frame lens hood.
We ended up concluding that he left the hood at home and that the
daylight savings time caused his phone to revert an hour which made him miss
the sunset. He felt better, but it was a
weird set of problems for me to wake up too…
First order of business is breakfast – dinner last night
felt really good, but we were pretty hungry again. It was a buffet again and they had lots of
tasty fruits, eggs, pastries, hot food, etc.
They even had some curried dishes, which I felt was a bit much for
breakfast. After we finish, we head back
to the room. Shortly after we get to the
room, it starts to rain. Rain rain rain
– it doesn’t stop…
We are supposed to have our luggage ready to be picked up at
11:15 – it is still pouring rain. The
guy comes in a golf cart and takes our stuff, but it gets all wet. We wait until 12 – still raining. After eating a full breakfast and having
nothing to do but sit in the bed, I found it very difficult to stay awake – I
napped a bunch of times. It was nice.
At noon, we took the umbrellas in our room and walked to the
reception area. It was still raining,
but not as hard. One of the nice things
about the rain was that it was relatively cool outside, which was nice since we
had to sit in the outdoor reception area from 12 until 3. Dad was going stir crazy, but I was really
enjoying the relaxing.
At 3, the boat took a bunch of us back to the airport. We were with one other couple who was going
on the Aggressor. Some of the other
people were diving, but on a different boat.
The Aggressor couple said that they have done every single Aggressor
ship with the Maldives being the final one!
We get to the airport around 3:30 and have to wait for pick up at
4. Dad checked on his Allen wrenches,
but they weren’t even in the system.
Luckily he already asked the couple from our hotel and they had some he
can borrow.
They used the dive boat as the shuttle to take us to the
“mother ship” but it was extremely crowded with everyone’s luggage. It took a while to get it all loaded and we
almost didn’t fit. They shuttled us to
the boat, took our shoes, and let us free on the boat!
We got the standard introduction speech, got our bunk
assignments and started to unpack. Dad
and I got room #2 which was at the front of the boat. This boat is a little different than most
Aggressor boats in that there is only below-deck rooming – there are no rooms
above. The rooms are the standard boat
rooms; small and compact. After
unpacking, we head up for dinner only to discover that it isn’t served until
7:30 – it is 6:30 now. We kill some of
the time with registration and beer.
During registration, we are told that we only have Open
Water certification which means that we are limited to 60 feet. They say we can take the course for the
Advanced Open Water and it involves some training dives. Needless to say, we weren’t very happy to
hear that. So far, it hasn’t been a big
deal.
Dinner was pretty good – salad, soup, and beef nuggets and
veggies. Dinner ended around 9:30, at
which point everyone was starting to fade fast – especially the lady from
Toronto who just landed earlier today.
We don’t have any problems sleeping tonight…
November 4 - First Day of Diving
Wake up is at 5:45 a.m.
I only woke up once last night and that was because it got very
hot. Luckily there was a fan and turning
that on made a huge difference. We had a
light breakfast and then the dive briefing was at 6:15 – it was time for our
first dive!
We did two dives in the morning and they were both very
similar wall dives. Unfortunately the
visibility was very poor on both. It was
raining really hard on our way out to the first dive which made it surprisingly
cold out. The water was actually not as
warm as I thought it would be and I later found out it was only 75* - that’s
pretty cold!
Despite those setbacks, as soon as I jumped in the water, I
was reminded why I live diving and there are a couple of reasons. One is that it is so quiet – all I hear is my
breathing and occasional beeping from a dive computer. Another is that part of diving is focusing on
a lack of movement – the faster you move the faster you burn up your air. As a result, I end up slowing down my
movements. In a similar fashion, I focus
a lot of my breathing, trying to make it as slow and calm as possible. The result is a euphoric state of existence,
sort of like a medication state, where I just swim by all the life and
observe. All of that adds up to a very
relaxing experience!
Both dives had a small amount of current, so I found myself
just floating by without even kicking – I would just breathe in and out to go
up and down – sort of like a hot air balloon underwater! The second dive was a little warmer than the
first, which was nice, but because the sun is not out, it isn’t very warm. The dives themselves were just so-so; I feel
that being so close to the very busy Male area hurts the wildlife chances – I
want to move away to a more remote area!
We just had lunch and are on the move, so hopefully that is what the
plan is.
After lunch, the water was pretty choppy so I lay down on
the bed. I wasn’t tired, but I did fall
asleep again. I like naps. For this dive, we moved away from Male city –
we were far enough that we could just barely see it in the distance. I was hopeful that being this remote would
result in better diving, but the visibility was still pretty poor. This dive was a wreck dive from about 60-90
feet where we finished up on the shallow reef.
The current was strong which is partly why the visibility was bad, but
it made it tricky to find the wreck. I’m
glad we were following a dive guide because we were just descending into
nothing – I would have thought we were going the wrong direction – but all of a
sudden, I see the outline of the ship. We
stick around down there – I miss the Napoleon Wrasse that most people see. Then we head back to the reef and zig zag
around with the current. I did a poor
job cleaning my mask before hand, so it was fogging a lot – that stunk, but I
learned my lesson! The dive is finished
around 4:45 and the next briefing is at 6 – I guess that means we will get a
night dive!
Before the briefing, I noticed that there were several wifi
hotspots! I was really confused but then
noticed that we were driving around other islands with hotels – I was picking
up their Internet! Unfortunately, we
were too far away for me to make a strong connection – oh well!
The night dive briefing starts at 6 and the dive crowd is
significantly smaller than the dives earlier today…it was getting a little
chilly outside. We will be diving
another reef off of a resort island. At
6 it wasn’t fully dark out, but by the time that we arrived at the dive site,
it was completely dark. The dive itself
wasn’t terribly eventful, but doing a night dive was pretty fun. A few of the guys with big cameras look like
space ships floating around because they have multiple colored lights on at all
times. The water wasn’t too cold, but it
was pretty chilly by the time we got out – we took the boat back, ate dinner,
and then processed pictures.
As I was starting to process pictures, one of the guys on
the boat brought out his 3G to USB adapter and was broadcasting a wifi that he
let people on..so, I will get to send Beth an update! Yay technology!
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