Bohol Diving!

Cute clownfish in an ane-me-ne-me-ne!

Fan

Damselfish 

Wednesday we went diving! I woke up with a stomachache—not a good thing on a dive day. I finally took some Imodium in the hopes that it would help with the cramping. Fortunately it worked! We were picked up at our hotel at 8:30 and taken to Sunrise beach to meet our boat since the tide was so low. However, the boat went to pick us up at OUR beach…so it took awhile for everything to get straightened out! Then we went across to Balicasag Island, about 45 minutes. Then we had to pick up some gear and more tanks…I wasn’t real impressed with our dive group’s organization.

On the boat

the boys...

Suiting up!

Tracy's ready!

The first dive my ears wouldn’t pressurize, so I swam above everyone for at least half the dive—basically until they started to go shallower. Sometimes I find it soooo frustrating when my body doesn’t cooperate with what my mind wants to do! However, a friendly sea turtle kept me company for a bit, so I wasn’t too lonely.

Ken and fishies. 

Josh in the open blue.

My flying turtle buddy.

Josh

Josh, me and Ken

Tracy and Shaun

Me with my cool pink fins. (At least you can always tell who I am!)

We had to go in to the island to get more full tanks between dives—once again, I wasn’t super impressed with the organization of this dive shop! 

Interim dive entertainment.

Kenny

Josh

Dive boat prow

At Balicasag Island for lunch!

We had to go in to the island again to get more full tanks between dives—once again, I wasn’t super impressed with the organization of this dive shop! 

The second dive we saw more fierce clownfish (I had many attack my camera, and one bite my finger), an elusive stonefish, an eel and some kind of small colorful shrimpy thing.

Aggressive Nemos!

Mr. Eel

Find the stonefish.

More Nemos.

A blue sea star and a granulated sea star. 

I looked it up--it's a mantis shrimp!

 After our second dive, we swam into the island for lunch, where Josh and I tried pancit, a local noodle dish and we all had our requisite mango juices. Then we swam back to the boat (we had to swim because the tide was out) and went for our third dive, in the marine sanctuary, another wall dive. We saw some trumpetfish, a blue spotted ray, and a lionfish!

Reef schools

Colorful corals and algae

Trumpetfish

Blue spotted ray

More clowns and color!

Lionfish

 Because of all the delays in getting started on this trip, we were in the water later than planned. Storm clouds started to roll in, and the water started to get dark at the end of our dive. The trip back to Panglao we were trying to outrun the storm…we had a bit of rain and wind at the beginning, but left it behind in Balicasag. We came home to a dip in the pool and a lovely warm shower. Have you ever noticed how good a warm shower feels after a day of diving? 

ps: All these pictures were taken with my new Canon Powershot DC10. AWESOME CAMERA!