An early swim for some followed by Waffles, banana pancakes, omelette and eggs on toast for breakfast we went back out on Kermit for a trip north to a site called Caasablanca.
Today the sun is shining and it’s really hot. The trip north took about an hour and we were the first team in. As we were getting ready we noticed that Pedro had not put his Micky mouse ears hood on, oh no, how would we recognize him amongst all the other divers (all four of them)? After a quick reprimand, order was restored, we were saved.
Dropped in on a bit of a bomb site, muck diving was the order of the day. Mostly shrimps and slugs. Our guide has a laser pointer that he uses under water which made some of the gobies light up in a way so bizarre that they were identified as alien fish.
Upon returning to the boat other reports of frog fish and giant nudibranchs came in so it was decided to dive the same site again. This time we saw painted frog fish and solar Nudis as well as lots of other stuff. Solar Nudis are the ones that grow their own algae on their backs to use for food when out on a long crawl.
The afternoon dive has turned into a Padre Burgous night dive so we have just taken a light lunch and are resting to build up the strength required to walk down the steps by the jetty into the deep.
The night dive adventure started with us in the back of a tiny flat back truck for the 10 minute journey to Padre Burgos pier. We arrived at the pier to find Arnold, Pedro’s nephew, waiting with our kit. Our kit was carried down some very steep steps and we followed. At this point we split into two groups. Richard, Foxy and Pedro who went diving and Jo and Jen who decided that having to wade through nappies and any amount of other rubbish wrapping around your legs was not their idea of a great night dive.
Jen and Jo spent a very lovely hour or so, with young Arnold learning Philipinno (or at least trying) listening to music from the local bar and chatting with the locals .
Of course, what with this being a diving holibog you are possibly more interested in the diving:
An onshore breeze made entry a little interesting as we had to make our way through all the weed and all the other rubbish that was being blown up against the sea wall. Once past all that we descended and were greeted by near perfect vis.
As we made our way around the legs of the jetty we were greeted by frog fish, seahorses, more frog fish and another seahorse, star gazers, banded sea snake, pipe fish, tiny squid, sea moths, octopus, an inquisitive scrawled file fish, a very large nudi and a whole bunch of other characters.
After the hour we made our way to the exit which was another set of steep steps though many hands were there to take our kit and get us back to the van.