Derek’s Dive Domain

Another day, another dive.  Or two.   Todays diving was at Mar Azul and El Puertito.   Hurrah, more turtles!  We started the morning at Mar Azul, dropping in at the usual entry point, and slowly winding our way down over the rocks and over the drop off down to 29 metres, looking for Rays and other stuff, found pretty much everything except rays again..  Came back up the gradual slope, and under a beautiful rock archway, before turning and heading back up for a mooch around the little cove whilst doing safety stops etc.  Another nice dive in a lovely location.  The water is so clear and blue when the weather is nice here, and today it was like that again and the viz was superb as a result, 20 metres plus I would imagine.

After lunch, we moved on to El Puertito for another dive in the bay there with the turtles.  We slowly made out way out through the surge, out to the nature area, and we were greeted by one of the turtles almost immediately.  Unlike the two previous dives though, where the turtles swim around each of us in turn and then head off, this time the turtle decided to swim around us, and then just go and sit on the bottom looking at us.  Then it went over to Helen for some attention before heading over to me and pretty much sitting on my shouler like a parrot.  So i tickled its tummy - lol.  After this the turtle spent a few minutes sat on the bottom making mental contact with Paul and Conor whom it seemed most intrigued with.  It think its all the black kit :)  The turtle hung around for well over ten minutes in this spot, with us all just hanging there watching it, before it gracefully drifted off towards the surface for air.  A truly magical ten minutes, where I really felt that somehow I had “bonded” with nature for a few moments. 
As we made our way back, we saw a couple of other groups of divers heading out.  One group was clearly a tourist group like ourselves, so I hope they had a similar experience.  The other group was a group of trainees, being guided along a line.  I remember those days well!  I wasn’t too enamoured by the large leak from the instructors first stage though…

After another fantastic turtle dive it was back to the Orlando, for a drink or two, and some relaxation before heading over to the bowling alley for a few frames of bowling, and then to the Chinese all you can eat buffet for dinner.   Mmmm, I love it there!   Only one more day’s diving to detail now… I wish there were more

Dive 10 (104) - Max Depth 29.1m, dive time 54 mins

Dive 11 (105) - Max Depth 11.1m, dive time 62 mins