Monkey's Head is a really picturesque volcanic rock, that when approached side on looks like a gorilla's face. It's rated as an 'easy' dive site, and it's fairly shallow with our deepest depth getting to just 15 metres. This shallow and there is plenty of life to see; pacific box fish, freckled porcupine fish, huge schools of golden jacks; moray eels and another octopus.
Currents are reasonably strong and now not expecting a dive to go without incident, I get my first jellyfish sting! Bit like brushing against nettles.
This is the first time I've ascended and descended though open water, and attempted a safety stop without any reference point or line, and I'm desperate to get it right, as my going to the more advanced site of Catalina Islands, where all the big stuff hangs out, likely depends on my performance here. My new Suunto Zoop computer makes a huge difference and I manage it fine... yeay!!
The second dive is at Virador, a low-lying volcanic island that again is home to an abundance of reef life. There's a shark cave at about 10 metres... gulp.... although our guide assures us it's only white tip reef sharks that hang out here. You have to go way out to Bats Island to run into the native bull sharks!
The first ascent was aborted as my brother's tank started free flowing at around 5 metres - who's putting the equipment together, and am I just a dive jonah? LOL - and as the currents were quite strong, we surfaced miles away from where we had descended just 3 minutes ago! The boat had to pick us up, change the tank and quickly drop us off at the entry point again to try another time.
This dive was awesome - I technically did my first drift dive I guess and averaged about 20 metres. Saw loads of stingrays gracefully flying past and 38 minutes seemed like 38 seconds.
No comments:
Post a Comment