Day 4 in Vieques: More diving!

Date: 4. 3. 2014

The turtle living under the pier was somewhat curious about me and swam close by

Yesterday I got my temporary papers from Carlito, and today I booked not one, or two, but 3 dives, and one of them was a night dive. Way to start something slowly Mia, again :D

Brandon

I woke up early, ate something quickly and waited for the cab - once again it was the lady who had been couple of minutes late everyday, which is pretty annoying as a Finn, because we like to be punctual and little bit early or on time. Now I solved the mystery why she was late, because the clock in the taxi was off like 3 minutes :D.

Scorpion fish

Of course, the taxi picked up 2 other persons on the same drive, which made us more late because the ladies weren't ready when the taxi came. I had an interesting discussion with them, both of the older ladies were from Michigan and we were talking about the "odd habits" their finnish neighbor has (making snow- and ice lanterns, and leaving her baby to sleep outside in the cold) and I confirmed to them that it was completely normal in our little country.

When I got to the pier, Brandon (Bob the diver) and Zach was already waiting for me. Zach was a tall dude (2m) living in Boston, who had dived 7 times before and was dreaming to get the chance to dive with the animals in Boston Zoo - you need 15 dives before you can apply for it.

On the two dives I got to photograph some stuff and try to stay calm and slow without Carlito. I felt that I had a little too much weight on me (which Carlito earlier said that he thinks there's too much) so I asked Brandon to remove some of the weights for the second dive. It didn't feel like it changed things though.

I started to get some grip with the buoyancy control even having too much weight on, so I had time to take and think about the pictures I took, instead of just pointing somewhere and shooting. Now I just need to think how to rig some lights on it, and get the red filter.

We had two pretty good dives, the first one was a little short because Zach was hoarding all his air - on the second dive he lasted longer, fortunately. I had a lot of air when we got to the surface, and I think I only touched once my BCD under the water, rest of it I did with my lungs, and BCD pretty much empty.

Lion fish, a long way from home, eating all the local species like the cookie monster eating cookies.
Beautiful, dangerous, and in completely wrong place.

This guy was way over 1,5m wide

On the first dive I somehow let go from my mask when I took it off from my head to adjust the bandanna, and lost it in the sea. Brandon took his fins and mask and found my transparent mask pretty quickly, my hero <3.

Brandon found a flooded maglite from ~11meters.

After the dive, the guys stopped by to snorkel, and Brandon gave me a lift to Isabel, while the guys were using the scooter. We ate (I ate my only food for the day - chicken salad bagel), and I stopped to sit in the park and drink more water because I was feeling a really woozy because I completely forgot to drink. I sat there like 40 minutes, drinking water and waiting for stnz to come and pick me up, but he never showed. So when I got enough strength and courage to get up, I walked the 1,5km or something back home. Stnz passed me by right near our apartment, he got distracted by a huge and colorful iguana this time. And got  a hit from it's tail - maybe he'll learn to stay away from those in the future, or respect their peace :D.

Finally, at the apartment, I felt really shitty and the world was spinning again - I had 3 hours before leaving for the third dive, I got some ibuprofen, magnesium and 2 liters of water and some milk in me. I can say that I felt really tired on that point, and scared if I'd make it. Otherwise I felt nice, without counting the dehydration.