Thank you to Dave and Roger for encouraging Wade and I to take a certification course for open water scuba. Today was our open water dive. The 45 minute trip to and from the dive site would have been enough. The series of luxuriantly overgrown limestone karsts, islets with undercut bases giving them a mushroom appearance, combined with photoshop quality colors of the expansive green, aqua, and blue water were stunning. The dive site was a beyond that. "Blue Corner" is a spot which was voted the world's most beautiful dive site, (for what that's worth) but the fact that it was the site for our certification dive was not lost on us. A Swiss couple related by contrast, their first dive in a frigid lake with 1 meter visibility where their only sighting was a rusted bicycle. This was, and I use the term with full knowledge of the rolling eyes of my children, magical!!! From the splendid coral, to innumerable schools of fish of all types, to the abrupt drop off into blue oblivion and fascinating wall of coral changing at each depth, and yes, prowling grey reef and white tipped sharks, and a Napolean Wrasse who had obviously been fed and responded to hand in pocket moves with expectant interest, to the feeling of breathing air under 60 feet of water looking up and down at all this splendor and mastering the skills necessary to pass our certification was pretty darn good. This was capped off with a second dive after lunch at a spot named "New Dropoff", just as good, where a current swept us by the scenery as we flew effortlessly past a similar wall waving at stationary divers who had stopped tethered to the wall with "reef hooks" to study the passing fish (and us!). Wade and I smiled silently all the way home and are still smiling. No access to pics at the moment but will post some in the near future!

Provisioning tomorrow and fuel and regretful departure on Thursday, weather permitting. Great place, lovely people, and nice pace of life.