Vacation in Jamaica — Day 6
The highlight of this day was definitely in the water. For me at least. This story actually started on day 5, but I forgot to write about it…
Louise had been having trouble clearing her ears over the previous few dives and even had to abort the first dive on Day 4. Although that was sad, she was lucky enough to see a small pod of dolphins while on the boat (2 adults and a baby). She almost had to abort again on Day 4, but after a couple of attempts (and some good advice from one of the divemasters) she finally made it down! We had been trailing the rest of the group for quite awhile from a much higher level and we were quickly able to join them at the bottom.
Everyone was mulling around in one spot (several of them kicking up dirt and bashing the reef) and we weren’t sure what was going on. One of the divemasters pointed me at a grotto under the reef and I realized that something was under there. Something big! It turned out to be a very large nurse shark sleeping the day away. As is typical in shark tales everyone had a different estimate for how big it was… All I know is that I swam through the channel beside it and stretched out my arms as long as I could and it was still longer than I could stretch, so it was a minimum of 9 feet long, but more likely in the 10-12 foot range!
You know you’ve seen something interesting and exciting when the divemasters hang out there for a long time and even go back in multiple times for a closer look. One of the most experienced divemasters went back 3 times! I took a very good look the first time, but then had to go back to get a better look at its eyes! It was very cool!!
Now back to day 6. Louise once again had ear troubles and aborted the morning dive. It was a nice reef, but nothing spectacular. Because of her ongoing troubles with her ears, she decided not even to go out on the boat for the second dive. Of course this was the dive that dolphins came to check us out while we were in the water! We were still on the surface in fact, so even if she had attempted the dive, she would have had a good look some very beautiful creatures!
I was still on the surface when they approached (we could see the dorsal fins knifing through the water) and I quickly submerged to get a better look. There were three dolphins (2 adults and a baby) and I assume that this was the same pod Louise had seen earlier in the week. The biggest adult (I assume the male) made several long swooping passes in and amongst the group of divers and came right up to my face before swimming off. He joined the other two and they disappeared into the void!
They were only with us for a couple of minutes, but it was very exciting anyway!
The rest of the day was a fairly typical day in paradise, including several nocturnal beach walks while I tried to get Andrew to go to sleep. On the first walk of the night I decided to take my camera along in hopes of finding the Yellow-Crowned Night Heron that I had seen a couple times previously. Luckily enough I found it and managed to get several good photos. It was so dark that my camera would neither auto-focus nor auto-expose the bird, so I had to do both manually! The pictures are really good considering…
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Posted by Sean on March 28th, 2008
Categories: Photography
Tags: Andrew, Bird, Family, Interesting, Jamaica, Louise, Picture, Scuba, Swimming, Travel, Vacation
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