Curacao, Days 2-10
End of day 1: We did some basic scuba stuff in the classroom and did two confined dives, I think. After that, we went down to the party beach and had a great time dancing and drinking and making fools of ourselves.
They had imported two Dutch singers to perform. They were really horrible. However, funny.
Day 2: We started scuba stuff later today, for obvious reasons. Did our first open water dive out by the reef, down to around 35 feet, if I remember correctly.
Days 3-5: Honestly, a blur. Before we left to go camping on Kline Curacao, I really don't remember all that much.
Day 6: We left for Kline in the afternoon, on one of the Sea Aquarium's boats. We got there, set up hammocks, and did a dive so that we could put the empty tanks back on the Coral Treasure to be refilled for tomorrow. We stayed in a little covered patio sort of place, that the Mermaid, a tour boat that brings people to the island for a day, built. Chops, an islander that works on the Mermaid, stayed there most of the time we were, either working on the house-thing or cooking (cooking fantastically, actually), and we even got him in on some Mafia and Big Booty action (drunk islanders playing racous games with drunk Americans is way fun).
Day 7: Continued diving. I think this was our night dive day, in which case the first dive of the day was pretty average, and the second (around 8pm or so) was amazingly cool. There are two great things about night dives; phosphorescent algae (which flares when you move quickly past it, so it looks like glittery fire is streaming around your hands and fins) and eels. There were so many eels out at night..I remember counting four Chain Eels, two Sharptail, about half the group that stayed with Shelby saw two Green Morays, I saw a single Viper Eel (which is scary-looking as hell), and I think two or three Spotted Eels. It was really sweet.
Day 8: Guess (diving). We did some drift dives, where the boat drops you off at speed and then travels down-current from you, and you do your dive and end up right by it. We went from our usual 30-60 feet down to 80 for about ten minutes, and then went straight down to this really sweet cave. When I get pictures up, you'll see. It was about 110 feet down. Because you breathe more condensed air at lower altitudes, you burn up your o2 supply really quickly, so we could only stay down there for about 5 minutes (to put it into perspective, at about 30 feet you're breathing air that is twice as dense as you would at sea-level). I think I skipped the first dive of the day to get some rest and to enjoy the island, which I did, seeing as I had a hammock, beer, and Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt along with me (speaking of which, everyone should read Angela's Ashes and Teacher Man, in that order. They are fantastic.
Day 9: First dive of the day was pretty uneventful, but still beautiful. The second, with Helene (instead of Steve) leading was amazing. We did another drift dive, but on the east side of the island, so the current was really strong, but we saw the best stuff ever. About halfway through we saw a small-ish Loggerhead turtle, and when we were all pre-occupied with touching it and having it tug us along or nip at our fins, Helene started freaking out. We wandered over to this double outcrop of coral she was at, with a deep rift down to the sea floor (about 5-6 feet). The whole thing was covered with fire coral, so we couldn't get too close, but on the seabed, under one of the coral overhangs there was a huge (relative to regular size) Nurse Shark; about 9 feet long, just resting and chillin'. Normally sharks can't do that, as they have to keep swimming to keep oxygenated water flowing through their gills, but nurse sharks have really powerful throat muscles for sucking in food (and underdeveloped lower jaws) that they can just lie motionless and breath like we do in air.
So, after we took some pictures of the nurse shark, we wandered off, saw another turtle who was less agressive than the other one (this one just swam away just fast enough to avoid us), when Helene and I started seeing these big poofs of sandy junk in the fan coral covering the shelf. There'd be one, we'd swim to it, then there'd be another one 20 meters away, we'd swim to it, etc. We couldn't see what was doing it, but all of a sudden this absolutely immense Parrotfish lifted out of the coral and swam down towards the drop-off. I tried to take a photo, but it was far away enough that I doubt it's going to turn out. I swam over, and checked out this fan coral it had brushed against on its way...it was HUGE. The fish, relative to the coral, was about equal size, and the fan coral was maybe 5 feet tall, 6 across. Normal Rainbow Parrotfish are about 6-9 inches long...this was about 4 feet, minimum. I remember seeing it turn, and it curved its body into a u-shape, and it was fat as hell, maybe a 18, 20 inches by its pectoral fins. That dive was awesome.
Day 9: Last day on Klein. We spent a bunch of time packing and loading the Mermaid, which was going to take us back, and then just lazed around for a while getting sunburnt. Trip back was fun, with horrible pop and 80's songs. All the Dutch and German tourists looked at us funny when we got in a circle and sang along to Queen. Wierdos.
Day 10: Last day, we did our last planned dive (which technically wasn't really a dive) with some Sea Lions, as well as had a sea lion "encounter" which basically means a trainer had us meet a lion and learn about it. It also did tricks, and kissed me, but it smelled fishy.
We did a dolphin encounter with the head dolphin trainer, but the dolphins wouldn't come over to say hi, as it was later in the day than they're used to dealing with humans. SO, instead of just leaving it at that, the head trainer was like "wanna do a dolphin dive?" we were like, "ok", and he said, "no, don't go get your scuba stuff, just come back really early in the morning and we'll snorkel in their tank".
Day 11: After going out clubbing (poor idea) and packing late into the night (necessary, but overall poor) and getting woken up early in the morning by huge dogs licking my face (poor) we trekked over to the dolphin tank to do the snorkeling. It was damn cool. The tanks in this u-shape, and we started at one end and worked our way around. If you went under the surface and did a spinney thing, the dolphins would mimic you, and towards the end when they were used to us they can up right in front of us and just chilled there, letting us scratch underneath their jaws or stroke their sides. I shook "hands" with one of them, even. Some of them started nipping at our hands, looking all aggressive, but it didn't hurt, and the trainer said that they do that to the trainers in the morning, trying to get them to react and play with them.
After that, we went straight to the airport, said goodbye to Steve and Tommie, and took off. Other than really long flights and getting really sick from (I think) a Chili's in Miami International, it was a great trip back. We got home really late, my parents picked me up, and that was that.
Sorry it took me so long to get the second half up: I've been awfully busy with school and such...20 credits of political science is not conducive to thinking about, well, anything but school.
If anyone in Morris would like to join us, the Pine Boys have joined me for swimming every day. We're working on form for a while, but once they figure it out we'll be doing some pretty decent workouts, probably like 2500 yards a day, or so.
I hope everything's going well for everyone that deserves it. So, not you Osama Bin Laden or Mr. Bush. I hope things are going crappily for you two.
Speaking of, did anyone else watch the State of the Union? Not as bad as usual, but still pretty damn bad. Dude's a moron.
