The Rock Islands of Palau!

Today is my first day diving in Palau and I am so excited! I had to get to the dive shop fairly early so I could get all my gear together and learn where everything is.  On my boat I immediately noticed a woman with massive boobs… I couldn’t stop staring at them, her name is Carly.  There was also this very enthusiastic woman who was always smiling and her name is Christi, her eyes are electric blue.  

Only some of the boats.

It wasn’t long before I was on the boat called Silky and headed off to a dive site called Ullong Sandy Bar.  Getting the gear together was easy but we had to drop into the water off the back of the boat, I knew how to do this… I just learned it in Cairns.  I sat on the edge of the boat and back flopped into the crystal blue water.  Bubbles surrounded me and as they cleared I saw the ocean floor covered in corals and abundant with fish life.  I sank to the bottom and hovered above the corals using my breath to control my buoyancy, I stared at everything I could find.  At 85 feet our instructor took his fins off and started running across the sand and standing on his head, at this point I though everyone had gone into nitrogen narcosis.  Christi burst through a school of fish and they parted very casually making room for her.  The rest of the dive was pretty fun and I got to see my first leaf fish, they were yellow and looked like they had pieces of lichen on them.  The rest of the dive was just a swim after that, floating above coral and looking at everything.

I got back to the boat and listened to everyone talk about the dive and how cool it was but I didn’t have anyone to talk to so I remained quite.  We sped off to a beach to enjoy our lunch that came in a round container wrapped in cute cloth.  The sand was perfect and so was the water, I made friends with a brother and sister originally from Canada and ate lunch with them.  After lunch I had a good wander down one end of the beach and collected as many pooka shells as I could find.  I got to a rock wall and was hoping to find a sea snake sleeping in a hole but with no luck.  I feel like I got back to the boat just in time cause it was un-anchored and everyone was on it.

Off we go!

Look at that amazing water!!

The rainforest.

There should be snakes here!

 The new dive site is called Siase Corner (Size Corner), which is pretty much a giant drop-off with nothing but blue below.  You swim along a gorgeous wall of coral and see what you can spot; I just enjoyed swimming in the ocean and not so much about what I could see.  We got to use reef hooks on this dive; you hook into dead coral, inflate your BCD and then just float like a kite above everything.  I saw so many sharks this way!  When I wasn’t swimming over reef it was kind of scary… almost like Jaws would come out of the dark blue and get me.  I kept hearing this beeping underwater and wasn’t sure what exactly it was but when we got to 15 ft for our safety stop I found out Christi and Carly had gone past their decompression limit.  Instead of doing a 5 min stop they had to do a 15-minute stop and it didn’t even seem like they cared.  They got a slap on the wrist when they finally got back on the boat but no one was too upset at them.

Off again.

I had one more dive of the day but we had to go back to port to drop off the people that weren’t going with us.  When everyone got off the boat we headed to Chandelier Cave!  This dive we weren’t going past 20 ft so I felt safe enough bringing my camera down with me.  We jumped in and swam to the mouth of the cave and then slowly we entered… first cave dive just so you know.  If you looked up and flashed your light to the roof you could see the surface between water and air and the roof of the cave.  There are four air pockets along the cave ceiling and each one is awesome!  In the first air pocket you understand why it’s called chandelier cave because there is a gorgeous limestone formation on the roof that sparkles and looks like a chandelier.  I made so many excited noises as we proceeded through the cave and Matsu our instructor took us too a secret chamber that no one else knows about, we called it the chamber of secrets.  My light died multiple times during this dive so I gave up completely on using a flashlight and just used other people’s light to see.  This was such a fantastic dive to end my first day with, I can’t wait for tomorrow’s dives!!

First time diving with the camera.

Swimming away from the light.

Goodbye cruel world

Can you see the layer?

This is the Chandelier 

How cool is the limestone?!

Giant caverns!

Is that blood on the wall?  Oh ya I forgot there was a graveyards above us and thats all the dead body juices... just kidding it's just minerals.

Back to the light...

I ate dinner at the dive shop and when I got home I was so tired I almost went to bed at 7… I forced myself to stay awake till 8:30 and then I was out like a light.