I love Okinawa’s waters!
Apologies for the lack of updates recently. I ahve been really busy catching up with everyone and getting back into the swing of life here in Oki that I’ve not had chance to sit down and write an entry. But I’m here now and will try to update you on what I’ve been up to.
I’ll start by going straight into the diving. Last weekend was a diving fest, with 5 dives in total. Saturday morning was spent at Maeda, where I did 3 dives with Brian & Crystal. The skies were relatively clear but with a few dark clouds looming on the horizon. We were considering somewhere like Toilet Bowl to dive, but with clouds like that the conditions could change at the drop of a hat. So Maeda it was. We were in the water by 8am and on our first dive we headed left along the wall. Went down to about 33m and cruised along. After a while we started to go up and we hit a current going against us. We were able to make ground but we still had to kick a bit. Crystal was very impressive though; she was kicking but easily keeping up with me and Brian. Along the wall we also saw a baby eel sticking its head out qhich was quite cool.
We headed right for the 2nd and third dives of the day, and were swimming under vast amounts of Japanese snorkellers. There was a bit of surge getting into the water, but nothing too challenging. The highlight of these 2 dives was seeing a couple of cuttlefish, one of them changing colour as we watched it. Apart from that there were a lot of pretty fish around but nothing that really stuck in our minds. I have to say that the viz was, as always, very good. 15-20m at least I would say.
So that was Saturday wrapped up. On Sunday I elected to go to Horseshoe & Toilet Bowl with Brian. We got there early on (around 7:30), although surprisingly there was already one Japanese dive group in there. Kitted up and headed into Horseshoe first off. Man there was a pretty stiff current out there! I was getting back into the swing of using my wing after 6 weeks away and couldn’t get all the air out of it initially. Tried to to a head-first dive and I could just see the coral sweeping away from me. It kind of looked like one of those fly-bys of the Grand Canyon or similar, where you see the land sweeping away from you. I eventually managed to get down and crawled my way along the bottom. We headed pretty deep again and found a small area which had very little current, but other than that we were having to go hand-over-hand to make any headway. This was a dive which was on the borderline between being challenging yet enjoyable, and just being a tough dive. For me it was verging on the latter.
The second dive was a complete opposite of this though. We walked a little along the coastline to Toilet Bowl. Although the tide was really high (the highest I’d seen it), the current was virtually non-existent. The dive was beautiful, with great viz, some big fish and a couple of special moments. We saw 2 turtles, one older (close to 1m long) and one a little younger, and a big eel. It’s head was almost as big as mine. When I was trying to get a good view of it, I brushed my forearm against some marine plant on the bottom which has left a small mark and some tenderness. If it’s still there tonight then I’ll take a piccie and post it on here!
So all in all it was a great weekend of diving. My first dives back in Okinawa and it is great to be back here. I’ve got to head off now but will post another update very soon, telling you about other aspects of my life. Take care and dive safely out there.
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Love the underwater pic hon.