We woke up to another beautiful morning today in Virgin Gorda. There was a slight overcast and we headed down to our meeting point at 7:45. After another filling breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausage, fruit, and a muffin, Laura, my dive instructor, gave all the students a talk on fish I.D. We learned about every type of fish we could run into during our stay here in the Caribbean. When the speech was over, we headed down to the beach to put our new knowledge to work. We took a taxi to Savanna Bay and snorkeled for a solid hour. My dive buddy was Drew and we, along with Gavin, Will, Jimmy, and Jack, went out close to 150 yards. There we saw everything from small butterflyfish, to sea urchins, to larger yellow tail snappers. There was also a sighting of a stingray and a sea turtle. After a good time snorkeling, we still had a little time on our hands, so we had a mud fight with the sand from the ocean floor. 15 minutes of that wore us out and we went to shore for some sandwiches. Along with the sandwiches came Casey, Laura, and Brian. While we ate, they went out in the water for about 10 minutes and collected sea urchins, sea eggs, lettuce slugs, and a fireworm. They brought them up, and a couple guys found information in a book about them provided to us. It was a great hands on experience where we were ale to pick up the creatures and see what we had been learning in the classroom the last two days. The next event was what we were all waiting for…the dive. We took a 10 minute boat ride to “The Chimney” – Jacques Cousteau’s favorite dive site. Looking down from above, before we ascended, it looked nice and seemed much better than our dive the precious day. But when we got down there, I noticed that there was much more to it than what we saw from above. There was an abundance of all different types of coral. We saw all of the fish that we learned about in the classroom 2 hours before and we had to take the slate given to us from our dive instructor and tell her what the name of the fish we saw was. The whole time I was on a look out for something really cool, like a stingray, sea turtle, or a nurse shark, which we were told were very common there. Halfway through the dive, we reached the point where this dive site got its name. We descended slightly and looked up to see two huge walls of coral going straight to the surface right next to us. We navigated through it and Laura pointed out numerous things that I would never sea. She showed us lobsters, fire coral, shrimp, and various other small creatures. Farther into the chimney it became tighter, and our 6 foot by 6 foot pack of four guys quickly turned into a single filed line. We reached the point where we had to squeeze through the two walls only slightly larger than my shoulders. After that, the sea opened back up and you could see 80 feet in front you again. I am assuming that will be my second favorite dive this week, next to the wreck dive which we will have tomorrow, because it was an amazing experience. It’s six o’clock once again and it’s almost time to head down to Mad Dog’s for Mexican night. After that, I expect to go play some more texas hold em like last night. Except this time, maybe a little more quiet, so we don’t get shut down in the middle of the game again…which I was dominating.
