Day 3 in St. Croix: Flying with DA20

Date: 10.03.2014

It's been a long time since I updated this blog and how our last days of the holiday went, but I have a pretty good reason for it added to the bad internet connections during our trip. Still I'm sorry it's been taking too long, but better late than never, eh?

Me yesterday after the dives and our cute and beautiful apartment, no I wasn't tired at all or feeling sick.. Timo is bringing my camera bag out of the car because I wanted to spot a humming bird next to our apartment but it didn't come back before I headed to bed...

Today I was still feeling a little ill and hurting all over, but I promised to accompany stnz on his first solo flight at the Caribbean. Yesterday he flew the same plane with a local instructor and got the "all clear" to use his new FAA-license and fly alone. Help.

Fluffy seats waiting for us

Gauges and hairy legs (not mine!)

One of the US Air force-fatties

Stnz did not reserve the plane yesterday because "there's no reservations, it will be free when you come here" -excuse, which I've been hearing a lot and which has been backfiring oh so many times.. :D Of course the plane was taken and the reception didn't understand stnz that he wanted to use the plane, so we sat there over an hour waiting for the thing. I was a little too tired and ill so waiting the extra time without food and drink was pretty annoying.

Finally the girls who were flying the DA20 came down from the sky and we got our plane. Stnz was a bit nervous doing his pre-check, but I assured myself that this trip was fun enough so dying now in a plane accident wouldn't matter so much :D.

Point Udall (Easternmost point) was behind that last mountain

Can you drop me off there, I would want to go a little deeper now?

After takeoff I noticed that the radio traffic was very quiet compared to Finland or Iceland where I've flown earlier with stnz, of course San Juan was ~busyish but there are 2 airports and much bigger planes taking off.

First we flew straight to a rain cloud and stnz decided to circle the island counter clockwise, which made my photographing almost impossible. On few places he did make some circles around, but mostly so that his side was down.

Raining, yet again

Point Udall, somewhere there were my sunglasses. I don't have a Nikon so more ZOOM didn't help finding them.

The easternmost place of the US, where we hiked on the 1st day

DA20 felt pretty OK plane to me, little prone to turbulence, but because of it's size and build that is kinda no-brainer. For photography purposes the flare was way too apparent, and only decent way to take images on that plane is to put your camera's lens outside of the dome's hatch. Something I won't be doing anytime soon with my luck. DA40 seemed to generate less flare, but Cessna is still better (for photography). Unless it's a plane with a door for suici.... parachutist, when you can open the whole side and take pictures that way (and I realllly want to do that someday!).

The dish is directed straight to the mountains, weird. On the right of it was the beach where we snorkeled

There's The Wall

Buck Island, reef national monument, which I was told to be the best place to dive in St. Croix

Place to add to my TODO-list next time

Some cheap beach houses

Our landing was interesting - there was some heavy rain just in front of the runway and we had to circle around it. There was a point when the visibility through the dome was almost nonexistent. But fortunately it cleared up in time before we landed. The tower's warning "the runway is wet" did create slight amusement in the cockpit while looking at the rain front "No shit Sherlock" :D

The Carambola bay & resort where we dived yesterday (Sweet bottom), and yes, those are stnz hairy legs.

Fredriksted's pier and NOAA-ship, our dive site tonight

Yeses, we can see the rain near the runway/airport.

It's raining again (and yet again, not men)

Landing

Safely returned.

After this, it was time to go back to our apartment, move our stuff to a hotel for one night and go diving.

Video of the flight, the gopro was situated like this because sntz was more interested of getting his aviation club some kind of feel of the plane which they're considering buying:

Day 2 in St.Croix: Diving at Sweet Bottom, and moar Christiansted

Date: 09.03.2014

Today was something I was waiting for some days - I had the chance to go diving again! I have to admit, I'm addicted and little bit annoyed I didn't find this hobby when I was younger and did a lot of free diving. Well, now it's time to take back all those lost hours under water :).

Great star coral

Timo didn't feel well, so I booked two shore dives for me and stnz from Sweet bottom Diving, which was located in a expensive looking resort. For me it seemed that most of the tourists were located in these resorts, where they had everything they needed and because of that, they didn't have any reason to go outside and see the towns or interact with the locals. Or bring their money to local businesses - which is really sad.

I got reaaally close to this guy and had my time to take pictures of it because I was first to notice him

My peacock flounder on the move

The diving company had some really sweet place in the resort, good places to storage their equipment, good washing places and also places for dry their and other people's stuff. And of course they were located just next to the wall, so there was lots and lots of beautiful diving places for many days..

Flamingo tongue

Ocean Surgeonfish and French Grunt

We did 2 shore dives with one other guy who worked with the military. I was sooo envious when he told us that he dived at the Bikini Atoll inside of a sunken aircraft carrier some years back.

There was lots of more different species of fishes than  I saw in Vieques, but in Vieques the fishes were much bigger. I would've loved to dive here couple more dives without 'supervision', so I would've had all the time I wanted to explore very nook and cranny.

Sand diver not giving a single F... about me hovering around him

Mmmm... brainns... coral.

Ocean Surgeonfishes

On our second dive we saw a small shark far away, or I should say deeper. Because of that, I couldn't go there to see the guy. I really need some training with nitrox before I get back to St. Croix, so I could see more of The Wall. And I also need a bigger camera - or just the red filter / good light for my current one. I'm still pretty pleased what my 300EUR little camera can do without extra lightning nor filters :).

stnz diving above me

Small shark and me

The image I got of the shark, probably a small Caribbean reef shark

On our last dive we heard that it started to rain on top, so we dived a lot longer along the shore in 1,8-1,5m depth. When we got on top, it flooded. It was pretty funny that you felt more wet above the water than when you were diving. Putting on your dry clothes wasn't really a good idea because there was more water coming down in bigger pressure than any of the showers we used during our trip..

Banded butterflyfish

These guys weren't scared at all, they just hanged around and didn't seem to mind at all.  White spotted filefishes.

It's raining (and yet again, not men)

Ewww it's wet up here, I want to go back down where it's nice and warm...

After the dives stnz was supposed to go and fly with Diamond DA20, but because Joe Biden was just leaving the island (evidently he had a cabin there) he couldn't go yet. We went back to our apartment and I did fell a sleep pretty quickly on my bed.

When I woke up, stnz was gone (called to do the familiarization flight after Biden and his entourage was gone) and halen was watching Netflix in the living room. I asked if he wanted to go outside and photograph some stuff, and in 10 minutes we were out.

There was a little carnival next to our apartment where the kids were playing in a bouncy castle and music was playing. We took some photographs of the nearby ruins, and went to see the same place where we were at a bar yesterday and noticed some really cool liana around the buildings.

The sunset was pretty cool, and the town was somewhat quiet. We were hungry and stnz was still nowhere to be found, so we decided to head back to Angry Nate's and eat some food. When we got our food - stnz decided to show up and ate his dinner with us.

After that we left to drive around the countryside, and of course I didn't have my 15mm with me - so the good weather for taking night pictures was lost yet again :).

Lianas wrapping around few buildings