I was sitting at dinner last night and everything started to sway - I'd only had one bottle of beer - and I realised that my inner ears were still on the boat! It's really quite freaky to realise that you've turned into a salty old sea dog after a just short week on the / under the water.
Today I saw a stingray up real close, about a couple of metres and coming directly at me. Such a graceful thing. I also saw a trigger fish which has teeth that can bite right through coral. Again, just a few feet away. I undertook a wreck dive at 100ft in the morning, which was just awesome. I also had my first experience of running out of air and had to run off an auxiliary tank for a bit. It all sounds rather dramatic but standard procedure for greedy air hoggers like me. I haven't experienced narcosis yet but am looking forward to my first time with that enormously.
I also realised today that George Lucas must be a diver. Most things underwater look like they've come from the Mos Eisley Cantina on Tatooine. The fish varieties with eyes on stalks are a particular favourite of mine. The whole thing has made me smile - and nearly drown myself - on several occasions.
Travellers tip: don't try and survive on shaving oil when on the road, I have for the past fortnight and the fact is, it stinks and doesn't work very well. You need to shave if you're diving to make sure the seal between mask and face works properly. Shaving oil is compact but it gums up your razor, blunting everything and because it doesn't really work, you end up cutting yourself repeatedly every morning. I currently look like I've had a pane of glass shatter in my face at a distance of three inches and it bloody hurts to boot. I took the step of buying a can of foam today and am looking forward to lathering up properly in the morning.
I'll make this the last fishy post for a while. It's getting a bit samey which is something I wanted to avoid. And if I've started to talk about shaving then I'm obviously running out of things to say. My time in Utila is coming to an end soon so I'll take a... shall we say couple of days break? And I'll be back with something different and interesting to share then.
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