day 4

Morning,

As I stood on deck 11, coffee in hand, the rising sun reveled a colorful Curacao. A Dutch colony it is oil rich and seems to have a booming economy. After a bowl of grits, I was off on another dive adventure, this time we dove on Toucan reef. This reef was healthy and full of life, the coral was big and wide spread, with visabilty to about 40ft. We dove to 50 ft. and followed the reef till half our air was gone then we turned and worked our way back. This was a shore dive, and as I watched everyone gear up, the same gorby from the first dive, put all his equipment on backwards, again. The dive master had to redo his gear, then we were ready to go. The highlight for me was seeing my first sting ray, it was small compared to the manta ray, but I got some good photos of him. The second dive was a wall dive to 40 ft., in order to access this we had to swim through a break in an underwater wall, at 10ft. under the waves meant that we had to time our passage to pass through on an ebb, because when the waves pushed inward to shore, I could not kick hard enough to counter the surge. It was weird but fun, I then found my second ray, much bigger than the first. It was resting on the sea floor at 35 ft., as I hovered over it with camera flashing, and I inched closer. I then had a flash of Steve Irwin, and with a deep breath I arose above it just out of range of it's barb. The ray woke up and with a short glance at me it glided away into deeper water. Further along I spotted a big barracuda, as I moved in for the photo, it turned and came towards me, I must admit there was a moment where my heart missed a beat or two, barracuda have a very big jaw, with big teeth for it's size, but the cuda was just curious of me and veered off at the last meter. Moving back towards shore I passed through the hole in the wall by letting the surge gently push me through, now that was fun. As I got out of the water near shore I glanced over at the gorby to see him fighting with his fins, as I looked closer we all saw that he had put his fins on upside down, with the foot piece covering his instep. Even the dive master could not stifle his laugh, as we all fell backwards into the surf laughing our heads off.

Back on board I stashed my gear and headed up for lunch, I met Kathy a little later and we headed out for the local market. The large market area is divided by a river and the Dutch put in a swinging, float bridge which connects the 2 parts of their city. The bridge is about 50m long and pivots from one side, to allow ships to pass into an inner harbor. While the water temp. was 79. the air must have been 85., boy it was hot as we walked through the shops. I bought another towel, and this became a trend throughout the cruise, with towels from each port except Tortola. That night was white night in dinning hall, did I mention the great food, followed by a great show in the theater. It didn't take long to gently rock to sleep, dreaming of Mr. Ray in his garden like home........ continued, tomorrow .............