Toques and Tan Lines: Water World

Well I have just about come full circle with my time here in Bocas del Toro. I say this because last week was the first week where the activity board at school did not have an event I hadn't done already. Which meant I went and visited my favourite places!

Way back on June 1st, I went Catamaran sailing with almost all my classmates. We stopped at Dolphin Bay again and stopped at a couple awesome snorkeling spots. It was such a nice change of pace from the everyday go, go, go of Bocas. Most of us were able to take naps out on the front, it was so relaxing to hear the water trickle by the boat. The snorkeling itself was pretty cool as well as I had never snorkeled along a mangrove island before. It was so neat to be able to look in through all the roots and see tons of baby fish hiding out in there. I saw my first baracuda while underwater here as well. Although it wasn't that big, it was still one of the scariest looking creatures I've seen underwater. I'm not sure what I'm going to do that first time I see a shark!

June 3rd was my convocation day back home in Saskatoon and I celebrated in style! Steve and I went out to visit Emma at the Blue Coconut (are you noticing a pattern yet?) and had a fantastic afternoon. Steve and I took a couple paddleboard out expecting to just go around a couple of the mangroves. What we found was so much better! Thinking there might be a path to the other side of the island, we cut through an opening in the trees and ended up finding a cove full of hundreds of jellyfish! Not a place you would want to fall off the board but it was so calm and quiet, there was no fear of that. And that wasn't the only cool part of our afternoon! Once we got back to the restaurant we went snorkeling through what had to be thousands of sardines! Never in my life have I seen that many fish in one spot together. Watching them move as one while swimming through them was so facsinating at one point I forgot where I was and accidently rammed my head into a paddleboard floating by the dock! Again the hospitality was second to none and I'm not sure if was that or the smack to the head that caused my head to ache in class the next day...

I did my first night dive during this week too! It was one of the craziest and coolest experiences I've ever had. We weren't in the complete dark, we all had flashlights, but you could see nothing beyond the circle of light. We dove a spot called 'The Wall', aptly named as it is a wall of rock and coral, so there was nothing below us or to our backs. It was so freaky to look away from the light and see complete blackness, knowing that there could be something out there looking at you but you can't see it. As always we saw some pretty neat marine life: octopus, toadfish, a giant grouper, a piece of coral that was absolutely covered in arrow crabs, and lobster. At night, the marine life is way more active so most of these animals were out in the open, at one point I came across a crab that opened up a shell fish and ate the insides as I was sitting there watching it. On this dive I learned that the lionfish in the area are pests and doing a ton of damage to the coral in the area. As we had 2 dive masters with us (Tony and Leandro from La Buga), a spear was brought along just in case we found one (I thought it was for protection, go figure). Tony found one and pointed it out, all of us diving for fun were watching it when, suddenly, Leandro comes from the back and spears it! Appartently, they make a good ceviche. For the last part of the dive we stopped on the bottom, covered the lights, and stirred up the water to see the bioluminescence. For my first time night diving it was pretty exciting!

Bit late on my weekly post, but I'm working on Bocas time, so really, I'm right on time! :P