My Person Reunion, Part II.

Now where were we?

The next morning we ventured over to Long Beach without any tickets to a boat to cross the ocean to Catalina.  It was more of a spontaneous day where we had absolutely no plans.  The only things we knew were we were going to Catalina sometime in the morning and diving the kelp forest.  That was it.  That's as far as we planned.

We got to Long Beach and just made it on the Catalina Flyer at 8:30am.  While we crossed the Pacific (about 40 minutes or so) to Catalina Island, we saw a Sea Lion just cruising around, having fun on his own.  We thought it was a pretty good omen!

When we arrived, we found the dive shop that my friend Ryan recommended, Scuba Luv.  We walked in to find a middle aged man pounding away on a tank -- fixing something on it, I suppose.  After I said good morning to him, I got the feeling we were interrupting him and he was not pleased we were inquiring about a guided dive.  He seemed a little condescending and he left a bitter taste in our mouths, so we left.

We walked to a dive place we saw on the green pier.  We were greeted by two nice men, one which seemed to be pretty attractive, and they were super nice.  We explained how we did go to Scuba Luv, but the man there was somewhat rude.  They asked us the man's name (which I forget now), and they said he must just be in a mood because he's typically nice.  Anyway, we signed up with this place and scheduled a shore dive with a guide (who happened to be the guy we thought was attractive).

We went to breakfast and walked around the island.  We met back at the dive shop where one of the workers greeted us.  He got a phone call while we were there.  Turns out, the guy from Scuba Luv was waiting for us and calling them to see if we'd showed up there.  He explained yes and hung up the phone.  We had just flaked on the mayor of Avalon.  Yup.  That's our luck.  We had offended the mayor of the island.

We then went to the trailer where they kept their gear and were handed XL 7mm wetsuits!  XL?!?  Yup.  I felt like a fatty until I put it on where it was huge in most places but did the job (for the most part).  We then met our guide who gave us the diving information.  (Turns out it was quite early and we were tired and hungry when we met him at the dive shop because he was not as good looking as we had once thought.  He was a good time though and he was way cool!)

Anyway, we helped each other with our gear and then went to the entry of the dive site.  Walking down steps in dive gear is NOT easy and I'm very happy to report that neither Marisa nor I slipped on the algae at the bottom of said steps (yay!).  Because the tide was low we had to enter the water by sitting down on the bottom step and waiting for a wave to come in to jump in.  I went first and immediately felt the chill of the water!  Soon we were all on our way.

(California's famous Garibaldi.)

(Sweet looking Sea Star)

(Arch of kelp)

It was very cool to see new creatures and be in a completely different atmosphere than the tropical places we've been to!  The Garibaldi were very populous and not frightened of us at all.  Our guide took us deeper to about 65-70 feet to where there are a couple of sunken sail boats (which Marisa missed, lol!).  I tried taking pictures but was so cold, I forgot to turn off the flash till later.  What an amazing atmosphere it was!  The kelp was so tall, it really was like swimming through a forest!

(Jacque Cousteau plaque)

(Our little stalker fish that followed us throughout the whole dive.)

After a few minutes of being down, the guide turned to me and then shrugged, with an "I don't know" expression.  I turned around to see Marisa was missing!  I had lost my buddy!  My person!  What a horrible buddy I was. :(  She finally appeared and explained to me that her foot had gotten tangled in the kelp.  And yes, I understood this with her sign language underwater.  That's what happens when you dive with your buddy all the time -- it's almost like some cool secret language that only you two understand, lol!

(So sad I was too cold to think about turning off the flash...)

(Yours truly)

As we continued, our guide (man, I wish I could recall his name) took us through more of the kelp, weaving in and out of it.  Looking up towards the surface of the water was just incredible!  The sun shone through in beams of light dancing with the kelp.  It was gorgeous!  We looked in different crannies but only saw fish -- which was ok because Marisa and I have never seen these fish diving!  We even saw a sweet looking Sea Star and spikey Sea Cucumbers.

(I love this picture for some reason)

Later in the dive, our guide pointed to someone, which we later found out was the mayor from Scuba Luv.  Ooops!  Our guide also picked up two rocks and started banging them together.  Pretty soon, we were greeted by a giant fish called a Sheepshead Fish.  He was pretty humongous, although not near as big as the Groupers in Australia.

(Our new friend, the fatty Sheepshead fish.)

We surfaced and as soon as our guide looked at me, he pointed and said, "You look cold!"  I'm sure we both had blue lips by then and we finally exited the water after much tribulation getting out during low tide.  We found out later that the temperature got down to 57 degrees!!!  As most of you know, anything below 73 and Marisa and I are freezing.  That's what happens when you're part reptilian. ;)

(Not quite sure why we stopped getting hit on at this point...)

It was an amazing dive overall and I'm so happy we were spontaneous enough to just go for it!  Even if it was only 57 degrees!  I'm proud of us for surviving that dive, even though we were only under for 38 minutes....

Totally worth it!