Day 2 in Vieques: What? More diving!

Date: 02.03.2014

Another early morning. I was dreaming about grilled chicken, because our nights haven't really been good. It's because of all the roosters outside, lucky for us - one of them is straight outside of my window making his awful noise from 3 to 5 (am), because apparently our apartment is right in top of his territory. I've spent a lot of time in our family's farm as a kid, but I never got annoyed with the roosters. There were two of those in separate places, but they settled for 1-2  yells per day. These roosters will make noises as a loop - when one starts, others will follow, and then it loops back to where it started, just to start again. Making a blowtorch and some grilled roosters is sounding pretty great about now - and I'm usually not really into the thought of mass murdering animals... 

So, if you ever get here, BRING EARPLUGS, some Peltors would be better. My earplugs are designed for sleeping, and they're designed to let high pitched noises to come through (fire alarms etc), so they aren't really working with those fuckers. That's why I've made my head as a sandwich here, putting one pillow on top and one under my head. Yay for sandwiches.

Today we changed the diving site, and the guys went for a boat dive, so I was completely alone. After another bad night of sleep and only half a cup of coffee I was afraid I would fuck everything up today. We met up with an older couple who were doing their refreshing dives; they had been diving over 10 years. After some talk I found out that the woman, Lisa, and I were almost neighbours - she was living in Sweden until she was 5, and both of her parents were Swedes.

On the first dive I had to take the stupid mask off again, which is something that most of the people hate and fear. Lucky for me, my eyes seem to be gotten used to the water, so I could open my eyes and see underwater, so I threw Carlito my mask - and  he almost stole it. I would have had to kill him, if he'd done that for real :D

We navigated to a underwater stone and then followed a wall which was full of life and because of the location we felt some of the force of the waves. It didn't took me long to get the hang of it how you should move there with the current.

Brandon and Carlito

Carlito looking stuff and keeping an eye on me

On our second dive, we joined Brandon and the couple, and I finally got to see an eagle ray, which the guys seem to love a lot, and yes, they are beautiful. Unfortunately it was so far away so I couldn't take a picture of him. We also encountered a resting shark, which almost hit Carlito on his head with the tail, when it had enough from us.

This time we weren't down so deep as yesterday, and I had 1000psi and 1200psi left after our dives, which were 54 and 73 minutes long. I really hope I'll get better managing my air in the future, but it's a good start. Lisa had 1500psi left on our second dive and we were all certain that she had her own first rule of diving: never breathe. But she was significally more smaller than I am, much shorter and 1/3 as wide as I.

Carlito noticed I was giving him the bunny ears :D

Now I finally had all the stuff done for my OWD, and now I can continue diving in Finland and do it in Iceland, if I have the money (and company) to go there during the summer :).

After the dive it took some effort to get us together with my hairy big friends, I talked Brandon and Carlito into leaving me by myself to wait for the guys at the post office, because I didn't want to waste their day on something that trivial as standing idle with me. I think they had something better to do than babysit me. Fortunately I didn't have to wait long before the guys arrived.

Of course, when we were walking back to the apartment, I found one place where there was some water and didin't watch my step - I fell down and hurt my knee. And scratched both of my ankles.

Later that day the guys were kind enough to drive the short (2km) distance to the town centre by taxi, because they understood that the swelling knee wasn't really a pleasure to walk around with. Once again we found our way to the pizza place and near to their internet. After that it was once again trip back to the apartment with our neighbour the taxi driver, and we were all sleeping like babies until the roosters started to make noises again.