Nov 19, 2011
We began our morning bright and early to drive to Toronto
where we were to spend the night before our plane trip the following morning to
Curacao. We also had plans to meet with
Jeremy there to catch up. We had not
seen Jeremy since the previous November at Scott’s wedding. He caught us up with his adventures in
Morocco and India (
http://www.jerslife.com/word/). We looked at his photos from his
recent trips and hung out in the hotel bar.
Since it was going to be an early morning so, Bob and I and Melis
decided to get some sleep before the dreaded 2AM alarm in order that we could
get to the airport by 3AM since our flight was leaving at 6. Scott was driving
Jer back to his abode. At about 2, I received a text from Melisa inquiring
about Scott’s whereabouts. A few
minutes later Scott knocked on the door.
It is amazing the number of things that can run through your mind when
worry overtakes you about your offspring.
The airline checkin and flight were uneventful. Bob and I were able to stretch out on the
flight because we had no one in the third seat in our row. Scott slept the entire time since he had
very little sleep Friday and no sleep on Saturday night.
Nov 20, 2011 Curacao
When we arrived at the Kura Hulanda Resort in the early
afternoon we still had time to acquaint ourselves with the property. Barb and Jackie Melisa and Scott were in the
two rooms below us and we had a balcony with chairs and a kitchenette up
stairs. We tried to do a dive to determine our weights and prepare ourselves
for the boat dive the following day.
Unfortunately my BC that had just been repaired prior to leaving the
states was still causing me problems and I was not able to complete a
dive. My BC was inflating non-stop
making it impossible to descend to the depths as required in scuba diving. Barb and Bob continued the dive for a few
more minutes but Barb became spooked and aborted the dive. We had a nice dinner overlooking the ocean
and watched the lights underwater while all the lucky souls where exploring the
reef at night.
Nov 21, 2011
Today I opted not to do the boat dive since my BC still had
not been repaired. I took the BC to
Brian at the dive shop and he replaced a part that Dave already replaced and
was apparently defective. Soon after
Bob came back from his boat dive, Barb, Bob and I went on a dive. Barb was a bit nervous and needed some
reassurances in order to get comfortable on the reef. I held her hand to assure her that we would be ok and we hung out
at about 30 ft of water very near the dock.
We managed to spot some very small critters on the coral and an eel and
flounder.
Scott and Melisa were doing there last certification dive
with Dave while we were doing our dive.
When they came up we made plans to go down again. This time it was just the 4 of us, Melisa,
Scott, Bob and I. I was having
difficulty equalizing and my ears were hurting. I was only able to get down to 21 ft so I decided to head back to
the dock myself and followed the cable to the dock. On the way back I found a turtle hanging out under the
cable. I was excited and hoped that
even though the others were able to explore more that they would head back to
the dock and they did. Scott “freed”
the turtle by lifting the cable. Come
to find out later he always hangs out there and was apparently not in any
danger. We also saw a school of squid
near the dock at about 10 ft of water.
The squid were in line formation swimming about. We also saw my favorite trunkfish and drum
fish. Bob was able to see his flounder
again. Of course when we get more
shallow and closer to the dock we go through what I call the nursery where
there are baby fish of all sorts and they are so cute.
Scott Melisa and I mad plans to go on a night dive
that night at about 9:40PM. What a
great dive. Our maximum depth was about
48ft, and bottom time was 36 minutes.
We saw a squid at the beginning of the dive and followed him. In the dark with flashlights focused on him
his colors seemed to change and he was a beautiful iridescent blue. His side fins fluttering as he was swimming
about. He did not seem at all afraid of
our presence and seemed to enjoy the spotlight. We also saw a golden spotted eel swimming across the sand. A banded shrimp was hanging out in the
crevices of the coral. The highlight of
our dive was the octopus we ran across
on our return to the dock. We spent a
few minutes watching him with our spotlights on him as he tried to escape our
lights. He changed color and form in order
to blend in with his surroundings. As Bob would say he galloped across the
sand. He would stretch his arms forward
and then pull himself to the next object to get away from us. His head was about the size of two fists
together (my fists) and his legs individually were about 12 inches long. His disguises were not effective but we
grew tired of harassing the poor thing and continued to the dock. Not a bad day of diving and now we have two
more divers in the family. So ended our
first day of diving off the house reef at Kura Hulanda
http://www.kurahulanda.com/en/lodge.
