sdwho
Contributor
Returned yesterday from what has become an annual event: a week in August at Cobalt Coast, diving with Dive Tech. It was, as always, pure heaven.
Travel: We left before the London arrests and returned after. When news of the arrests first filtered to us (I don't turn on the TV anymore when I'm on vacation!), the rumors were running rampant. My favorite: that all of the airports in the world were shut down and would stay that way until 31 missing terrorists were arrested. In reality, the flight home was pretty uneventful. We were limited to one carry on from GC to Atlanta and all carry ons were hand checked at the GC airport. But they had enough "checkers" to make the process move pretty quickly. I even was able to buy rum at the duty free -- they brought it to the plane and then I just had to pack in my checked bag when I re-checked it after clearing customs in Atlanta.
Dining/Lodging: Cobalt Coast feels like a second home to us. We had our favorite room: second floor, corner, nearest the dive shop. Usually, we eat dinner out about half the time, with a traditional "nice night out" at Papagallo and a couple of nights of "pub" food along Seven Mile Beach. But this year we never went out once. The menu at CC has expanded and the food is great. Often we would get a single appetizer, a single entree and two desserts -- that was plenty!! We live in the water at CC. When we're not diving, we hang in the pool. Its like being in our own backyard (except of course we don't have a pool or the Caribbean in our back yard!). Floating in that pool at 11:00pm after a late night dive, staring up at the stars is simply glorious.Arie and Dora are the greatest hosts in the world and the staff (particularly Claudette, Raju and James)are just terrific. They make us feel like we're part of the "family".
Diving: We love Divetech. We've been diving with them for five years now and we've never had a bad experience. This trip all of our boat dives went north, which is what we love. Nancy and Jay run a great operation and the dive masters they have there are great. It was wonderful to see old friends like Seb and Susan and Eric, Gary, Greg and Steve (and Nat, although he was on vacation until our last day). The new folks, particularly Eleanor, Javan, and Leigh also were fantastic to dive with. On our boat dives we had a number of great turtle encounters (including a hilarious one involving a green turtle and a lonely remora), also a couple of eagle ray encounters (at Eagle Ray Pass at around 60 feet each time). Lots of midnight parrots, groupers, lobsters, several sting rays. In the afternoon/evenings we did shore dives from Turtle Reef. We did one dive from Cobalt Coast and it was fabulous but we get spoiled by the fact that unlike the CC dive, Turtle Reef doesn't require much of a swim to get to the reef. But even in the CC shallows we saw schooling durgeon and grunts, a huge sting ray (three feet from the ladder!), squid and one of the smallest turtles i've ever seen while diving.
Turtle Reef was the star of this trip. We dove it at varying times: 3:00, 6:30; 8:30, 9:30. It was a different dive each time. Some of the highlights: juvie yellowtail damsel (the little blue neon spotted guys you couldn't photograph if your life depended on it), juvie french and gray angels, juvie puffer(!), a couple of juvie (well, maybe intermediate) queen trigger, squid, sting ray, a juvie tiger grouper (cool!), and a viper eel(coolest!). There was a good size school of silversides at TR early in the week, but the tarpon and grouper had just about finished them off by mid week. But on our last night dive we saw some more. We saw so much more: spotted drum (intermediate and adult), golden coney, slipper, spotted, and caribbean lobster, clinging channel crab, barracuda (a huge one at turtle reef), beautiful scrawled filefish, a hilarious soapfish that rolled over in the sand like it was a dog. Maybe I should just print the index of my Reef Fish and Reef Creature books!!
The highlight of the trip was, undoubtedly, the octpopus -- or should I say octopi. On our two "late night" dives we saw 6 one night and 9 the other night. We found them all over the place. We even found a little baby octopus that was no more than 2-3 inches long -- and I managed to get a picture of it to my amazement. Even on our dusk dive we saw a couple of octopus, including one that sadly was so freaked out when we approached it that it inked (I felt bad but I can't figure out why it was so spooked since the closest we got to it was at least 5-6 feet away).
Anyway, you get the idea. It was a great trip and I'm missing it already!!
sdwho
Travel: We left before the London arrests and returned after. When news of the arrests first filtered to us (I don't turn on the TV anymore when I'm on vacation!), the rumors were running rampant. My favorite: that all of the airports in the world were shut down and would stay that way until 31 missing terrorists were arrested. In reality, the flight home was pretty uneventful. We were limited to one carry on from GC to Atlanta and all carry ons were hand checked at the GC airport. But they had enough "checkers" to make the process move pretty quickly. I even was able to buy rum at the duty free -- they brought it to the plane and then I just had to pack in my checked bag when I re-checked it after clearing customs in Atlanta.
Dining/Lodging: Cobalt Coast feels like a second home to us. We had our favorite room: second floor, corner, nearest the dive shop. Usually, we eat dinner out about half the time, with a traditional "nice night out" at Papagallo and a couple of nights of "pub" food along Seven Mile Beach. But this year we never went out once. The menu at CC has expanded and the food is great. Often we would get a single appetizer, a single entree and two desserts -- that was plenty!! We live in the water at CC. When we're not diving, we hang in the pool. Its like being in our own backyard (except of course we don't have a pool or the Caribbean in our back yard!). Floating in that pool at 11:00pm after a late night dive, staring up at the stars is simply glorious.Arie and Dora are the greatest hosts in the world and the staff (particularly Claudette, Raju and James)are just terrific. They make us feel like we're part of the "family".
Diving: We love Divetech. We've been diving with them for five years now and we've never had a bad experience. This trip all of our boat dives went north, which is what we love. Nancy and Jay run a great operation and the dive masters they have there are great. It was wonderful to see old friends like Seb and Susan and Eric, Gary, Greg and Steve (and Nat, although he was on vacation until our last day). The new folks, particularly Eleanor, Javan, and Leigh also were fantastic to dive with. On our boat dives we had a number of great turtle encounters (including a hilarious one involving a green turtle and a lonely remora), also a couple of eagle ray encounters (at Eagle Ray Pass at around 60 feet each time). Lots of midnight parrots, groupers, lobsters, several sting rays. In the afternoon/evenings we did shore dives from Turtle Reef. We did one dive from Cobalt Coast and it was fabulous but we get spoiled by the fact that unlike the CC dive, Turtle Reef doesn't require much of a swim to get to the reef. But even in the CC shallows we saw schooling durgeon and grunts, a huge sting ray (three feet from the ladder!), squid and one of the smallest turtles i've ever seen while diving.
Turtle Reef was the star of this trip. We dove it at varying times: 3:00, 6:30; 8:30, 9:30. It was a different dive each time. Some of the highlights: juvie yellowtail damsel (the little blue neon spotted guys you couldn't photograph if your life depended on it), juvie french and gray angels, juvie puffer(!), a couple of juvie (well, maybe intermediate) queen trigger, squid, sting ray, a juvie tiger grouper (cool!), and a viper eel(coolest!). There was a good size school of silversides at TR early in the week, but the tarpon and grouper had just about finished them off by mid week. But on our last night dive we saw some more. We saw so much more: spotted drum (intermediate and adult), golden coney, slipper, spotted, and caribbean lobster, clinging channel crab, barracuda (a huge one at turtle reef), beautiful scrawled filefish, a hilarious soapfish that rolled over in the sand like it was a dog. Maybe I should just print the index of my Reef Fish and Reef Creature books!!
The highlight of the trip was, undoubtedly, the octpopus -- or should I say octopi. On our two "late night" dives we saw 6 one night and 9 the other night. We found them all over the place. We even found a little baby octopus that was no more than 2-3 inches long -- and I managed to get a picture of it to my amazement. Even on our dusk dive we saw a couple of octopus, including one that sadly was so freaked out when we approached it that it inked (I felt bad but I can't figure out why it was so spooked since the closest we got to it was at least 5-6 feet away).
Anyway, you get the idea. It was a great trip and I'm missing it already!!
sdwho
