Now we've never been on a cruise before in the middle of the ocean. Nor have we ever dove beyond 107 feet. Not until The Spirit of Freedom Liveaboard...
We hopped on a shuttle and arrived at the harbor where our luggage was carried aboard for us (such service!). We got a little paranoid when only one of each of our two bags were put into our room. That was when we found out that they thought our huge-angus bags were on the deck because they thought it was dive gear... Hahaha! The employees were mostly our age, although technically everyone was older than Risa, and we already spotted the hotties. (You just can't help it when you're surrounded by them.) That's when we noticed, we were the youngest on the passenger list. There was a dive club aboard, who in the end, WE even started calling them "The Americans." A little foreboding, hey? Just wait...
After introductions and a briefing, (basically telling us that the whole time the schedule would be as follows" Wake up. Eat. Dive. Eat. Dive. Eat. Dive.. You get the idea...) we found our rooms and met our roommates. Risa and I rented a Quad room, since they are the cheapest, and we put up with a man from Switzerland named Norbett and a dude from the UK named James.
We all got ready to dive. Amazing. You board a boat and dive straight away! It was a dream come true. Our first and second dives were at a site called "Turtle Bommie." Risa and I, being the confused ones of course, had to inquire what a 'bommie' was. After all, it was gibberish to us. Apparently it is a pinnacle. (So there's your first Aussie word!) Because Risa and I had never been on this part of the world, we requested a guide and was matched with the Ninja Diver himself, Akira-san. This dive was fantastic, for it was the first time we had ever seen a Hawksbill Turtle outside of work. She was beautiful just sitting there eating. Apparently, Hawksbills really like to eat. Not only at our work (which is obvious with our Hawksbill named Bill, suggested by his crazy fat rolls), but in the wild as well. She wouldn't stop munching on the coral even though we were all surrounding her snapping photos.
(Female Hawksbill Turtle)
(Risa's obsession: Nemos.)
The second dive was guided by Matt, a dude from New Zealand who we immediately bantered with. This dive was awesome as we saw a White Tip Reefie, our first Blue Spotted Stingray, and a Green Sea Turtle. The Stingray was a favorite since we had never seen one before. Just gorgeous! Matt showed us a great time. And then everyone on the boat, guests and crew alike, discovered how amazing Risa and I are on our air. We were basically told that we don't breathe underwater. Our first dive, we lasted 57 minutes and the second 39 minutes. This is only because we were with a couple other divers that are what we like to call "Air Pigs." Still, it was an amazing day.
(Blue Spotted Stingray)
(White Tip Reef Shark)
The food on the boat was prepped by a dude named Andrew from Texas. He did an amazing job! Everything we ate that week was sooooo delicious! We even ate the vegetables! Aren't you all so proud of us? After all, these are the girls that eat junk all day long, including a coke for breakfast. Not on this trip my friend! We ate so well and so much, we almost popped. Now we can say we are going to be amazing at doing the Stingray Ballets after lunch since we basically ate right before diving the whole time.
At night, we both busted out our Macbooks and got teased as we sat in the Lounge on the couch right next to each other to upload our pictures for the day. This is when the bantering with Matty (the dude from New Zealand), Chantelle (aka Chantes who became one of our best buds) and Andy (the Trip Director who we felt so bad for due to the "Bloody Americans" -- again, more on that later). They poked fun at us saying we were probably just talking to each other even though were were sitting right next to each other...
Aw, the good times we had! To be continued...
0 comments:
Post a Comment