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2 fun dives today - Yellowtail and White Holes. At Yellowtail, I took a few pics, then halfway through the dive I gave the camera to Meghan and we descended on a school of yellow fish. Meghan got some great shots. Then we did our second dive at a shallower site with Charnelle (the kiwi DM). As soon as we got in the water, we saw a family of stingrays flying along at about 15 ft! This particular dive is known for sharks and we saw 2 nurses, one swam right towards me but I couldn’t get the camera ready in time. I did get a few shots of it though. On our way back through the shark area, Meghan had the camera and Charnelle and I laid down right in front of the shark to look it in the face for a while. It must not have liked this because it eventually lifted its head a bit and opened its mouth in a big O then closed its teeth, almost like a big smile . I wish we had a pic of that, but no.

Then we went for “burgers” at the next door hut, but we didn’t have enough cordoba so I ran to change $20 at the dive shop but they were low on cordobas so I went one more stop down the paved sidewalk to hotel los delfines and the lady made me buy something so I could get change for my $20 in cordobas. I got a grape soda, and she took my 20 and disappeared for 5 mins, coming back with not near enough change. Meanwhile I met the islander boyfriend of Melissa who works at iguana, and he helped me translate the Patois. I took off with 250 of of the 305 owed to me, and they said I can come back later for the 55 remaining. Yeah right I thought, and took off with what would still be a reasonable exchange rate from an airport booth. We ate our afternoon meal then went on the night dive.

Night dive was amazing - I recommend it to anyone. With the big flashlights, you illuminate everything back to its real color, so even though we had seen this stuff earlier in the day at this same dive site (Yellowtail), we hadn’t seen the brilliant red color of the coral, etc. Also, at night, most of the fish go to sleep in their little cubbyholes in the reef and a bunch of other critters emerge, like lobsters, sea stars, etc. We had to do a couple of skills, including reciprocal navigation, but one ’skill’ we did was a ‘lights out’, where we got to see the bioluminescence of the plankton when they are disturbed by your hand moving through the water. You just see a few green dots that flutter by but it is cool to realize that is some little critter’s response to being scared.
After night diving, there was no dinner at Iguana tonight so we went to Delfines to eat w/ Jorge, Charnelle, Masa & Natsu (the Japanese kids), and we met Charnelle’s friend Gary (from the island) as well. I discovered that Pescado Caribeno is not very good at all, despite being repeatedly recommended by the obnoxious California pediatrician Carl. It is served with onions and cream sauce and the head and skin still on it. I learned from Jorge that his family (wife and 3 kids) live in Granada, very far away, but this was a good job (Esta el capitan de la Sirena).

Gary made plans with Meghan and Charnelle that he would make rondon (the local island stew of conch, fish, chicken, etc.) but kept changing all the plans. Meghan had lobster again, this time with garlic. We walked back to iguana with Masa and Natsu and along the way, I saw a land crab (about 10 inches wide) so Masa started calling me “naturarrist”. When we got to iguana, the motion sensor light came on and Masa and Natsu stopped dead in their tracks and exclaimed, in unison, “aohhhhhhhh, automaticuhrry!” We now quote that on a daily basis.