Day 190! The countdown to day 200 starts now!! Today marked the first day of Kit and I hitting a morning dive, just us! It was a really cool morning with a lot of fun pictures taken too. I can’t wait to dive more with Kit, it’s going to be a fun adventure.

We’re back on the morning boat grind! At 6am I woke up to my first alarm and then silenced it till around 6:20am when I finally got up. Even with going to bed at 9pm the night before I was still pretty tired.

I wasn’t feeling 100% as well. but I was definitely still feeling up to dive. I kind of felt like I was coming down with another cold… but it probably is a combination of exhaustion and lots of time in, out, and around the water.

I got ready for my day and headed to Taco Shack to meet up with the rest of the divers. We then made our way to the pier for another morning of diving!

Today’s dives marks the first day of Kit and I going out into the deep blue, just the two of us (🎶 we can make it if we try).

But, there was a fun diver that was doing a wreck penetration on the second dive of the day. So for their first dive, Chelsea (one of the instructors), suggested that the fun diver and herself join us. So Kit led the first dive as the four of us made our way through Southwest Pinnacle.

Chelsea also had her professional camera, so we couldn’t say no to some more pictures… which I’m still waiting on some more from her already (I can’t wait to see how they turned out)!

The dive was really nice, we made our way through the dive site, twisting and turning through corals, pinnacles, and lots of pretty sea anemones! I’m such a fan of the clownfish bobbing in and out of the anemones, it’s super cute!

There actually was a little bit of current too, but not enough to be anything crazy. But I do know how to deal with it now and I’ve started to learn how to enjoy current. So I found myself seamlessly drifting around the rocks without much effort at points. Diving is truly one of the “laziest” sports.

We spotted a couple blue spotted rays on the dive, but the massive school of fusiliers appeared to have disbanded… which made the dive site have a lot less wildlife action this time around.

We spent just under 40 minutes cruising around the dive site. We surfaced a boat away from our boat, so I’d say it was a great success on Kit’s navigation!

Being in the water almost always wakes me up. So I was ready for dive two!

Our second dive was to HTMS Sattakut (same as yesterday). This time I was leading, but it was only Kit and I this time.

We descended right on top of the shipwreck and had a fun time exploring around the wreck. But before we got all the way down, I was having some troubles equalizing my left ear. It eventually did equalize but it was a little “explosive” of an equalization, so it wasn’t the most pleasant. But after that I was totally fine for the rest of the dive!

Every time we do the wreck, we always just swim through the captains cabin. But this time we found ourselves exploring other swim through that led in and out of doorways. We can’t go into the wreck unfortunately, we’d need our advanced wreck penetration certification.

But we still enjoyed exploring the new parts. We went to the base of the boat to see if we could find anything large living underneath. But some students were kicking up a lot of sand so we just decided to move on to the rest of the dive.

I then led Kit and I to the dive site nearby called Hin Pee Wee. It’s a fairly easy route if you know where to go from, but we made our way over and saw some very fast mating longface fish. We also saw some aggressive ones that attacked a blue spotted stingray… no clue why, it was pretty crazy.

We then came up towards the middle of the pinnacle and I turned my head just as a fairly large longface fish was coming right at me. It didn’t do anything, but it did give me a jump scare! It was pretty funny that it made me fully flinch so I laughed it off and kept going.

We then did our safety stop, which is staying around 5m for 3 minutes to help expel nitrogen from the body. During our stop, we were met with a lot of small fish fluttering about, it was very pretty! While we did this I attempted to lead us to our boat… and I was successful!

I had a vague idea of where it was, but I got pretty lucky that we were the only boat moored up. Satisfied and happy with my accomplishment, we ended the second dive after 41 minutes.

I then ate two chicken tacos at Taco Shack before heading to my room for a solid nap… I was exhausted.

After I woke up, I played guitar for a while as I waited for some friends to be ready to hang out. Once they were, Kit, Pauline, and Pauline’s friend Gracie all went across the island to hang out at a bar/pool called Koppee.

We sat for a couple hours chatting and having a couple drinks. A couple of Pauline’s friends were there too and we got to chat with them as well. It was a nice way to spend the afternoon, but then a huge storm started rolling in so we quickly packed up and went back home.

The storm never ended up hitting, but the wind really picked up on the ride home.

For dinner, the Taco Team was meeting up at a restaurant called Lung Pae, which was in a weird spot on the island that I had never been to.

It was a bit fancier than any restaurant I’d go to myself but I treated myself to a nice version of fried chicken and rice (one of the cheaper things on the menu). It was a nice time chatting and hanging out with the team outside of “work.”

Was the food worth the price… no, but did I have a good time, yes!

Once dinner was over I went home, showered, and immediately got into bed. Tomorrow I’ll be diving in the morning and night. I was told I’ll be leading an open water group through at least one (if not both) of the dives. So hopefully I’m feeling better, my ears are all good, and it’s good conditions out in the water!

– Elie