This weekend has been a relaxing one--it fit in with the past week :) Saturday I slept in and had a calm morning of reading in the hammock. All of my friends had plans to go to a lunch party so I grabbed my book and towel and headed to the beach for the afternoon. I went to the small beach at the Darwin conservatory station. When I arrived there was no one there. I snorkeled for about half an hour and then retired to my book. It was so nice, I couldn´t have asked for better weather. It wasn´t until much later that people started to show up. On the weekends, local families bring their kids in the late afternoons to play at the beach. While it was fun to see the kids play for a while, it got a little annoying trying to read with a soccer game going on all around me. ;) So, I took a walk back up town and looked for a scuuba shop. I found one that had an opening for me on Sunday and they were going to the location that I wanted. On my way home I ran into a friend and we decided to grab some fresh fruit smoothies and chat. It was such a beautiful day, I couldn´t have asked for anything beter.
On sunday morning I woke up early (before the sun even! Which is quite hard to do here!) and got ready for a day of diving! So exciting! We loaded up the gear into a taxi and took off across the island to the docks that I came in from the plane. I love that drive, it is amazing to watch the island change so much in just a half hour drive! Once on the boat, it was about a 30 minute ride out to Gordon rocks, the dive site. It is a formation of 3 rocks that form a large crater under the ocean (like everything else around here, once was volcanically active). We were hoping to see large schools of sharks and many types of fish. We started off with a refresher dive in a shallow area just opposite the rocks. As soon as we pulled up here there were seals trying to play with our boat. It felt awesome to have my dive gear on again and be back in the water. There were 6 seals trying to play with us while we were trying to concentrate on the instructor. They were getting quite frusturated and we were quite distracted! It was a site to see! Finally we were off to Gordon Rocks. All in all, the dive was a good one. I got to see many hammerhead sharks as well as some white tips. I was a little freaked out, be it was amazing to be swimming among creatures so big. As soon as a get home I will have pictures up. The site however is hard conditions. This is classified as an advanced dive and I understand why! The entire time we were fighting a huge current and it was horribly cold. I can´t remember ever being that cold in water. The water was so strong that the boats couldn´t hang around long otherwise they would be thrown into the rocks. When they came to pick us up we had to be completely unstrapped and ready to get out of the water so we could move within minutes. Quite the process! I am so glad that I got a chance to dive Gordon. It´s not one that I would do again, but it was an amazing experince and I am so glad I got to see my first sharks!
