Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Today


We were lucky enough to go diving in Palau. For those of you who don't know, Palau is considered to be basically the best place to go diving in the world. That is why we were lucky. We went on 3, 50 minutes dives. The first one was a huge reef wall called Blue Corner. The wall went so far down into the blue, we couldn't see where it ended. That was a little disconcerting. We also saw so many sharks, we lost count! It actually isn't that scary to see them. They were all pretty little. At least littler than I (larissa) imagined them to be. It seemed like if they did bite you, they couldn't fit their teeth around more than my foot. At the top of the wall there was an incredibly strong current. So since we wanted to watch the sharks and other big schools of fish without holding onto coral the whole time, we used current hooks. These little devices were invented here on Palau probably because three major ocean currents converge onto Palau. Anyway, the hook is basically a hook (imagine that) that is attached by a couple feet of cord to your vest. You then take the hook and anchor it to some dead coral. Then you just sit back and watch all the action without worrying about wether or not you are gong to be swept away. While we were hooked down, we saw about 7 sharks, a school of jack, a turtle, and countless other fish. We even saw some clown fish hanging out with their anenome.

The second dive, we went into a hole. It is called the Virgin Blue Hole. It goes straight down so if you look up, you can see the divers above you sillohetted against the backdrop of the sun shining through the water. At first it felt like you were descending into a big black hole. We found that if you just stared at the wall as you were going down it wasn't so bad. At the bottom of the hole, we were about 106 feet under the surface. When we came out of the hole, there was about 4 sharks just sitting there in the sand. We watched them for awhile until they got spooked and went away. Then we followed the reef until we ran out of air.

The third dive was called the german channel. There we got to see a Manta Ray! It was big and beautiful and it flew over us so gracefully! We also saw a lot of clown fish and they were so cool! They are Jason's favorite fish now. They really like to rub the sides of their bodies on their anenomes. :] Here we saw a lot of sea cucumbers. They were HUGE! One we saw looked like an underwater catepillar. It was kind of lumbering along in the same manner. We also saw some Lion fish. You know the ones that have all those big beautiful spines everywhere?

Pictures are up and working now so be sure to go back and check old posts to see the pics.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lucky me! Because the wind is blowing so hard here that I'm afraid it will blow the house down I couldn't sleep. SO I got up and wrote a letter and then decided to check my email and HERE YOU ARE! Awesome blogspot and you are both such great writers - so THANKS A MILLION for taking us with you in this way! It is really fun to share your experiences even though vicariously! Actually, for me it's the very best way to travel...

Anonymous said...

soooo jealous. i thought i was cool going to a neat aquarium in TN this weekend. sounds amazing though. a MANTA RAY! wow.

Anonymous said...

Wow! This blog is great! I want you to know that I will be living vicariously through your stories and adventures while I spend the next four months writing papers, taking tests, and doing projects! You guys are gonna have the time of your life! Don't forget to just stop in the moment and soak everything in! Texas is 80 degrees...so I'm liking winter here! Miss you already!

Anonymous said...

I hate you both...

Except for the descent into the hole. You can have that all to yourselves.