Early morning pick up again.  Why do I have to get up early more often on vacation than when working?  The people on the shuttle van were so excited to meet me and wanted to know where I was from and how long I had been diving.  They were from Singapore.  What a wonderful way to start my day with smiling people that were so excited to go diving!  They did the same with everyone we picked up and by the time we got to the boat, it was a van full of very excited happy people.  It seems like everyone on the boat are new divers.  The boat has 40+ people. I wonder how this will ever go smoothly.  It’s a bit chaotic.  The last few times I’ve been diving, they divided the divers up by skill level, but this was more a free-for all.  They obviously took the students in a different group and those that were brand new divers or hadn’t been in a long time in another group, but the rest was left to divide out own selves up.  I managed to find two dive buddies that were a pretty good match for me though.  We dove from that boat twice and then those of staying on the live aboard boat switched boats and did all the boat briefing.  One more dive in the afternoon.  I was going to do a night dive, but I had equipment issues and was having trouble catching my breath.  I decided that pushing through was a bad idea.  That’s when bad things happen so I got back on the boat.  I was very disappointed.  There’s a new trend in night diving.  A lot of corals and fish are fluorescent.  They give off florescent light that can only be seen if you use a blue torch.  I really wanted to try this.  I have one more night on the boat so I can still do it.  I had heard that much of the Great Barrier Reef is damaged, bleached or dying.  It’s not as bad as I had feared, but it’s definitely no longer the best diving in the world.

They make rum and coke in a can.  What?

Second day of diving – dive – eat – dive – eat – dive – eat.   You can do 5 dives a day.  I skipped the 3^rd dive because I want to make sure I’m not too tired to do the night dive.  I did the Fluoro Diving.  It would have been wonderful except we had to go with a guide and the group was too big and not very good divers.  They kicked up a lot of sand, making it difficult to see.  You had to be really close to the corals and fish to see them fluoresce.  The spot the guide picked to dive is known for its lion fish.  There were so many lion fish and they are highly poisonous.  So, it was difficult to get close to the corals because I couldn’t see if there were lion fish because everyone was kicking up so much sand.  What I did see was wonderful and I’d love to do it again with a small, more experienced group sometime.  I left some of Scott’s ashes with the lion fish and florescent corals.

Today, I woke up with a sore throat.  I could have done 3 dives, but I only did one.  I felt taking it easy so my body could use energy to get healthy was more important than diving.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore