stubsadventures

What a day. Without knowing it when we woke up this morning, Spocker and I would be diving where few other people have ever dove. The site was only discovered three years ago, only one company dives there and they only go twice a month. The volcanic lake was inside the crater of a volcano and the sections of it we dove were alive with volcanic activity. The area was lit up with bubbles shooting from the lake floor, sulphur and ash spots and dead fish because of the sulphur content, not to mention, craters from other volcanos. The lake felt tropical in temperature compared to yesterday and the first dive was incredibly comfortable. My gear felt good, the pictures were turning out awesome, the air felt like it lasted forever. Not only is it awesome to have a perfect dive like that but to find out after it was over what a rare opportunity we had fallen into. It is so seldom that you ever dive somewhere where there isn’t at least a few divers splashing on the same day. For example, yesterday, we probably within a three-hour period saw as many as 50 other divers. Not only where we the only divers, the only other humans we saw were two buses that were passing through to get to the other side of the mountains. AND, our guide told us that they are likely going to close the site to divers soon because the area is becoming too active.  What a dream come true, I’m not sure how I ever got this lucky. Also, we actually saw a fish alive in the area where there were many dead ones and the dive master said that was also pretty rare as they don’t last long in that kind of water.

After that, we headed to the coast for our first ocean dive. The location where we went in was also pretty stunning. Abandoned buildings galore, and a rock structure that was at least a couple of hundred years old. We in Canada have no concept of the age of this country compared to ours. Sometimes you’ll be looking at a rock wall that is 1500 years old and was once the wall of someone’s house. It’s hard to grasp.

The dive was not as comfortable as the first that day. Pretty early on, I realized that I had broken the seal of my camera with sand from the location before and I had flooded my camera with water. Although this does suck, and will cost a bit of money to replace, it’s generally not the end of the world as long as the memory card survives because at the end of the day, your case is still fine. Either way, something like that plays with a person’s mind in those situation and generally distractions are not welcome as a diver. The first bit of the dive, sometimes visibility wouldn’t be more than five feet and you had to be very careful with orientation. What also didn’t help the situation was the fact that our only warning before this also somewhat cold dive was to be weary of baby seals. At this dive site, last season, a diver was attached by a mother seal, whose curious baby had swam over to the diver to play. This is something that stays with you when you can barely see passed the length of your arm. Finally though, in the deeper water, it got much better and unveiled a kelp bed that was filled with star fish, hermit crab, small fish and lots of sea plants. Three quarters of the day through the dive, I got an air bubble in the foot of my suit that I could not get rid of. It sucks when something like that happens because it’s a small enough problem but it messes with your buoyancy, which can be distracting and tiring. Eventually, my feet got under me and it shot me to the surface. Normally, this can be pretty dangerous but because I wasn’t too deep, I was safe.

We got back to the hotel feeling on top of the world, so we decided to rent some scooters and take a ride around town. We drove for about 20km and saw a beautiful section of the coast, golf courses, towns, a famous Icelandic horse farm and even kind of went off roading at one point. I was smiling from ear to ear, I have never done anything like this before and had the time of my life. I want one.

Tomorrow, we go north. Very north.

Stubs.