The words to the song sung by Dr Dolittle as he gazed in astonishment at the “PushmePullyou” two headed LLama zinged through my mind in yesterday’s dive. “I’ve never seen anything like it, never seen anything like it, never seen anything like it in the world”. After thirty years of diving all around the world i rarely have new “firsts”, many great experiences but few firsts, today was one.
Barracuda Lake is on the edge of a volcanically formed island, the rock walls descend straight into the sea. Many small islands dot the coast forming incredible inlets and anchorages. The lake is a short jaunt from the sea and you must pack your dive gear up and over a rocky ledge aided by rickety stairs. Once in place and dive gear on you descend into brackish 29C water, about the same as the surrounding sea.
The real surprise happens when you hit the 12 meter depth and you can feel the warm water embracing your skin. As you descend it gets warmer and warmer until it hits nearly 40C, real hot tub temperatures. This phenomena continues until down to nearly 30 meters and the water cools a bit.
We lavished in the warm water for most of the dive, just the feel of it was so astonishing that it begs one to stay. As we rose to the 12-14 meter line the temperature cools suddenly so your feet can be much warmer than your head. The cool more brackish water takes on a crystal like haze reducing visibility until you come up a few feet to clearer water.
we explored around the lake at the cooler more scenic levels finding a small cave that i penetrated just to see “what is what” ( a new favorite phrase for just taking a look at something unexpected–from the Big Bang Theory of course)
The rock formations made for some great photo shoots of the girls. i have found that when i am filming or taking pictures i use my air up much faster so i came up low sooner than the girls. Sam and i usually use air exactly the same but not today. She gave me the “naughty boy” look when she saw my air gauge soundly in the red. i gave the hand signal for the girls to stick together and dive in the shallows and i did my safety stop and came to the surface.
We returned to Furthur which was anchored in one of the most pristine and beautiful anchorages i have had to pleasure into which drop the Bruce. We are surrounded on three sides by stark rising volcanic rock walls dropping straight into the 90 foot bottom depth. It is simply a spectacular anchorage. The girls went exploring on the kayaks and i took the opportunity to get some Furthur in Paradise pictures.
We ended the day with a moonlit night dive on the neighboring wall. The vertical coral formations were stunning and especially when viewed from the bottom with our torches illuminating the large out-cropping of coral and sea life.
Back on the boat, under a large moon and brilliant stars we enjoyed the Latvian dinner Maddi prepared while we were night diving. Yes it was just another ho hum day in paradise for sure.
