thevalkyry
Queen of the Turtles
Today I headed with my cousin, Mariana and her fiancee for a day of diving & snorkeling at the Ilha do Arvoredo.
Ilha do Arvoredo is a tiny, tree covered hill of rocks 40 minutes by boat north of Floripa island. It is the prime scuba locale for miles around. There is a another city, Bombinhas, that is considered the scuba center of southern Brasil, but since all of their boats go to Arvoredo too I didnt see much point in driving an hour just to take a boat to the same place. Neither my cousin or her fiancee had ever been there despite it being so close so they were eager for the trip. Or were... poor Mariana is subject to sea sickness and spent most of the time staring intently at the horizon trying to keep a lid on her nausea. It was quite choppy, more than usual, according to the captain. But I love the ´dancing of the boat´as they say here so I was just fine. On the way over the Captain told me that the Ilha is the confluence of a cold water current and a warm water current. And so, it is one of the few places that you can see an angel fish and a penguin in the same view. Penguins??? The captain calls them ´lost penguins´. But as they tend to lose their way in summer rather than winter I cant claim to have seen one.
The boat we used is operated by Sea Divers (MERGULHO EM FLORIANOPOLIS BRASIL ? DIVE CENTER PADI 5 STAR ? SEADIVERS). Fellow divers considering a jaunt to Brasil would do well to consider this operator. Capt Julio (say the ´J´- this is Portuguese, not Spanish
, so Zhulio, like Dr. Zhivago) is really cool and as he spends winters running an operation in Ft Lauderdale he speaks English. So does his staff. I can converse in Portuguese, but dont know a lot of the specific technical words for things scuba in Portuguese, not to mention the metric/english issues, so we were speaking a mix. But I think that you would be OK even if you didnt know the language. Also, they are very organized and safe. They had a group of people loaded on the boat and off on time, provided 90% of the equipment used, and had a thorough name-call check in before and after every dive. Also, I saw him jump in and drag a diver back in who got caught in the current a bit and panicked. So I felt I was in good hands.
Capt Julio assigns the buddies on the dives if you show up on your own. I was teamed up with a local boy named Rogers from the other side of the island. At first he told me that he had little experience, and would just follow me !!?? But he had done all of his open water classes and subsequent diving in this place so I ended up being the follower as he knew the terrain much better than I. I was actually pretty lucky as he had a very good eye and pointed out several criters that I would have missed except for his pointing a waving.
The entry was a bit of a killer. Giant stride into moderate chop. I had no idea how used to calm surface lakes I had gotten until I was spluttering salt water. Luckily, the current was much less 25 feet down. FISH, FISH, FISH!!! There isnt much in the way of coral, but the rocks host busy colonies of all kinds of critters. I was kind of blissing on 30 ft of viz and the lucious way that the sun was lighting everything up so I am glad I had an alert buddy who was doing the underwater equivalent of snapping his fingers in my face. We saw some really cool big fish, awesome anemones, and sea urchins - I even found a really colourful sea cucumber. So cool. The rocks make for very interesting terrain (and profiles), but it was good. And a big plus was that the water was in the mid-70´s instead of the predicted 72.
Dive 2 was in a much calmer location. Capt Julio told us to look on the rocks for ´tartaruga em descansando´- turtles resting on the rocks. Woo-hoo!!! He was so not kidding. SEVEN!!!! turtles!!! Big ones!! So cool!!! They just kept popping up. There was a snorkeler when we jumped in who was like,´turtle below!´ right at the start of the dive, and it just kept coming. We found a couple that were just resting on the bottom - would have loved to have a camera - it was like they were posing!! And so big!! And they just look at you calmly as if to ask why you need so much bulky equipment to enjoy a dive. They are different from Coz turtles though because they swim differently. But I loved every moment. We also encountered an open water class and I did have a moment of jealousness about how cool it would have been to do my open water kneeling on sand in the ocean rather than an algae covered grate in a lake... and then I remembered that I would have had to take off my mask and decided fresh water was not so bad afterall.
The second dive was way awesome - just tons of turtles and gentle current and after flailing a bit on the first dive I finally settled into neutral buoyancy. Fantastic! Otimo! as they say here
More tomorrow!!!
Ilha do Arvoredo is a tiny, tree covered hill of rocks 40 minutes by boat north of Floripa island. It is the prime scuba locale for miles around. There is a another city, Bombinhas, that is considered the scuba center of southern Brasil, but since all of their boats go to Arvoredo too I didnt see much point in driving an hour just to take a boat to the same place. Neither my cousin or her fiancee had ever been there despite it being so close so they were eager for the trip. Or were... poor Mariana is subject to sea sickness and spent most of the time staring intently at the horizon trying to keep a lid on her nausea. It was quite choppy, more than usual, according to the captain. But I love the ´dancing of the boat´as they say here so I was just fine. On the way over the Captain told me that the Ilha is the confluence of a cold water current and a warm water current. And so, it is one of the few places that you can see an angel fish and a penguin in the same view. Penguins??? The captain calls them ´lost penguins´. But as they tend to lose their way in summer rather than winter I cant claim to have seen one.
The boat we used is operated by Sea Divers (MERGULHO EM FLORIANOPOLIS BRASIL ? DIVE CENTER PADI 5 STAR ? SEADIVERS). Fellow divers considering a jaunt to Brasil would do well to consider this operator. Capt Julio (say the ´J´- this is Portuguese, not Spanish
, so Zhulio, like Dr. Zhivago) is really cool and as he spends winters running an operation in Ft Lauderdale he speaks English. So does his staff. I can converse in Portuguese, but dont know a lot of the specific technical words for things scuba in Portuguese, not to mention the metric/english issues, so we were speaking a mix. But I think that you would be OK even if you didnt know the language. Also, they are very organized and safe. They had a group of people loaded on the boat and off on time, provided 90% of the equipment used, and had a thorough name-call check in before and after every dive. Also, I saw him jump in and drag a diver back in who got caught in the current a bit and panicked. So I felt I was in good hands. Capt Julio assigns the buddies on the dives if you show up on your own. I was teamed up with a local boy named Rogers from the other side of the island. At first he told me that he had little experience, and would just follow me !!?? But he had done all of his open water classes and subsequent diving in this place so I ended up being the follower as he knew the terrain much better than I. I was actually pretty lucky as he had a very good eye and pointed out several criters that I would have missed except for his pointing a waving.
The entry was a bit of a killer. Giant stride into moderate chop. I had no idea how used to calm surface lakes I had gotten until I was spluttering salt water. Luckily, the current was much less 25 feet down. FISH, FISH, FISH!!! There isnt much in the way of coral, but the rocks host busy colonies of all kinds of critters. I was kind of blissing on 30 ft of viz and the lucious way that the sun was lighting everything up so I am glad I had an alert buddy who was doing the underwater equivalent of snapping his fingers in my face. We saw some really cool big fish, awesome anemones, and sea urchins - I even found a really colourful sea cucumber. So cool. The rocks make for very interesting terrain (and profiles), but it was good. And a big plus was that the water was in the mid-70´s instead of the predicted 72.
Dive 2 was in a much calmer location. Capt Julio told us to look on the rocks for ´tartaruga em descansando´- turtles resting on the rocks. Woo-hoo!!! He was so not kidding. SEVEN!!!! turtles!!! Big ones!! So cool!!! They just kept popping up. There was a snorkeler when we jumped in who was like,´turtle below!´ right at the start of the dive, and it just kept coming. We found a couple that were just resting on the bottom - would have loved to have a camera - it was like they were posing!! And so big!! And they just look at you calmly as if to ask why you need so much bulky equipment to enjoy a dive
. They are different from Coz turtles though because they swim differently. But I loved every moment. We also encountered an open water class and I did have a moment of jealousness about how cool it would have been to do my open water kneeling on sand in the ocean rather than an algae covered grate in a lake... and then I remembered that I would have had to take off my mask and decided fresh water was not so bad afterall. The second dive was way awesome - just tons of turtles and gentle current and after flailing a bit on the first dive I finally settled into neutral buoyancy. Fantastic! Otimo! as they say here
More tomorrow!!!
