Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Tolumben wreck dive

Today we went to the other side of the island to dive at a shipwreck. The guus we booked with said it was 1.5 hours....no way....it took 3, which was actually a nice opportunity to see the other side of the island and see some unusual cargo on scooters.....we also say a guy with 3 huge crates of eggs on the back of his scooter and one on his lap. There was also a truck we passed with about 40 (literally) elementary school kids piled in it. You must learn to hang on for your life at a young age here. Anyway, we finally made it and there are all these ladies there that carry your gear down to the beach....on their heads! We saw some ladies with two full oxygen tanks and scuba gear on their heads....incredibly strong necks. So we got decked out in our gear and walked down to the beach. The wreck was a US cargo ship on its way to the Philippines that was bombed by the Japanese. It has since been completely reclaimed by the sea and covered in an incredible reef. We saw some incredible wildlife down there. Lots of big bright fish, a small yellow eel, lots of bright sea fans and little tiny "trees". On the first dive we just dove around the outside and on the second we went inside and the exposed beams of the ship. I am still so amazed that there are so many life forms that I have never seen before and here particularly I saw that fluorescents are underwater earth tones. Everything was so vibrantly colored. Such an incredible dive!

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