Diving

Yes I have been working very hard, yes I have been exhausted, battered and bruised, yes I was on my feet all day for a month and yes I have had to 'serve' other people but I have also been diving and as that is my passion and far more interesting to write about I will cover that first. Great white sharks, sea lions, giant mantas, dolphin, hammerheads, silkies, white tips, silver tips, galapagos sharks, octopus, eels, tuna, kelp, nudibranchs :-) , wrecks, pinnacles, walls, an abundance of fish that unfortunetly I cannot name and diving solo, knowing that I am the only person in the ocean for miles around - all pretty amazing stuff. The great whites was not something that previously I was particularly interested in - I love to dive, not to be put in a cage. But wow! You are still in their environment and everything is still on their terms so it still feels like you are watching nature as it happens rather than nature being made to perform for human enjoyment. But what a natural performance! Such large, majestic animals that come oh so close to the cages which means oh so close to you. You can stand on the back deck of the boat and see the sharks swim by, you can sit eating your lunch and see a great white swim past the window, you get the whole Jaws fin out of the water experience and if you are very lucky you get to see a great white shark breach. Guadalupe is also an area for whale sightings and although not diving with them it is always great to see the tell tale sign of a blow of water and then the undulating body of a shark swim by and the splash of a tail as the whales continue on their way. Dolphins were seen on numerous occasions playing off the bow of the boat or out feeding around the boat and on one occasion the divers in my group got giving a personal performace of four dolphin under the water. The setting was almost like a circus ring - a circluar sandy bottom surrounded by rock and coral and the dolphon would just keep swimming into the 'ring'. There they would lie on their side or their back or their belly and just stop, ensure everyone could see what they were doing and then swim off and play with each other and then back to the ring to perform again. Ever wanted to see a school of hammerhead in the 'blue' of the ocean - no visual reference of wall or reef, just a drift in the ocean with nothing but sun beems breaking the surface and creating spectacular light shows below? No? Why ever not? It is quite an eerie feeling to just drift with the current and then all of a sudden start to see one, no two, no ten, no, how many, hammerhead sharks swim underneath you, a few rather curious, breaking rank and circling the divers and then just contining along their way. I have no idea how many hammerheads where around but the sightings went on for a very long time. And how about swimming with manta rays - manta rays that seem to crave attention and not just one manta ray but four all together and ot just on one dive but to have them waiting for you on your second your third and your fourth dive. Manta rays that approach you and that will stop above you so that they can have their tummy stroked. Oh my! How utterly spectacular. Did I have fun - you bet ya!