184 DaYs WiThOuT YoU: 116 Days

Hey there all you faithful followers. I sincerely apologize for not posting anything in the last few days due to no Internet connection from our service provider. This is the case throughout the island and I hope “Telekom” would pull up their socks soon :p I am so far behind on my posts that it would be impossible to write a post for everyday that I missed. This post will be an update of all the cool things that have been happening for the last few days… Please enjoy (o_0)

I’m going to try fill you in as best as possible from where I left off. We had a group of 21 tourists from Australia to do two and sometimes three dives a day. This meant hulling 42 tanks onto the truck every morning, driving to the yacht club, off-loading all the tanks, guests gear, putting all of it onto the boat and then waving good-bye to the guests as they head out to do some AMAZING dives (with my lip on the beach floor)! One of which is an American destroyer called the “Aaron Ward”. This is the one dive I can’t wait to do!!! Less than 500 people have ever had the chance to dive this amazing wreck with it being discovered in 1995 at a depth of 70m! In diving terms this is considered as an extremely deep dive! The vessel landed on the sea bed in an upright position, with its cannons on deck still pointing in the same direction they were last fired. I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t do this dive with the guys but you know what they say, “the best things in life are worth waiting for!”

On one of the evenings I took the boys down to Bonegi Beach for a night dive. Four of the guys were about to clock there 100^th dive and were doing something, ummm “crazy” for their century descent. One guy came prepared wearing a Borat swim suit which was (trust me) not pleasant! After rigging up my gear I entered the water with a few of the boys and three of them shortly after entering threw their shorts onto the beach! (o_0) they were going Free Willy so to say. I hoped I wouldn’t bump into any of them during the dive and (I’ll just say) I saw things that shouldn’t be mentioned *face palm* upon exiting the water one of the girls that had been waiting on the shore hid the guys shorts which was quite a good laugh for all of us. With their fins being used to cover up there bits.

After our eventful evening we made our way back to their hotel after a really long day! I was super beat! One of the guys came up to me, shook my hand and sincerely thanked me for “the best” dive he had ever done! The feeling I got was truly amazing, I’m REALLY happy that I can make such a difference to people’s lives!

On their last day diving in the Solomon Island I took them to Bonegi beach for an early morning dive and to see the sun rise with four guys that were willing to be up at 5am! This was one of my most memorable dives to date! My dive buddy and I made it to the front of the wreck at about 10m when out of the blue four figures started to become clear! They were about 2m in length, 4 Manta Rays in a row next to each other “flying” gracefully. My buddy and I just sat up in this weightless environment and watched these beautiful creatures pass us by! The moment only lasted about 45 seconds but what a memorable moment it was! <3 <3

This past Saturday I did a total of four dives in one day. I took some guests for two dives in the morning and then another two dives later that afternoon with Adam. He was busy with an Advanced diving course with Anna Lisa. She’s such a cool gal and I got to know her really well J she comes from Italy and will be leaving the island soon to go back home. Later on that evening after completing our dives we were all super hungry and made our way to a Chinese restaurant in town. We sat at a table that seated 8 people with only the 3 of us eating. Shortly after ordering, the food arrived and it honestly covered up every possible space on the table! I felt like I was eating like a king! The food was really good (I really should work on my chop sticks skills – ha ha)

After only a few hours of sleep I was up early to pack my gear and loaded the boat for our trip to Tulagi. We had about 8 crew on board all such amazing and funny people, including Erick (you can read about him in my previous blogs) which would later on be my dive buddy for the day. Upon arriving at our first destination I dove into the water for the mooring line and soon found out that we were floating above the Twin Tunnels. The water temperature was amazing as per usual at about 30 degrees. Once Neil had given us a short brief we were in the water in pairs and shortly after we started our decent to the twin holes at the top of this reef. We started our descent and I realised that everyone was sinking at a much faster rate than I was. I was quite puzzled actually. We made our way to the bottom and I realised that I had left my 3kg’s of weight on-board. I was already at a depth of 20m and it was too far to go back and I’d just have to live without it. This was such an amazing dive! I saw so many different species of fish including 6 sharks!! One of which thought I must have been a really injured fish and made his way straight towards me. Now the reason for having a dive buddy is for safety reasons and I seriously was contemplating stabbing Erick with my dive knife and swimming away REAL fast (so that the shark would get him first -lol). But instead -being the nice guy that I am- just waved my arms around frantically (hoping, not to look like a retarded seal) which to my surprise scared him off =D

Before we knew it we were back on the boat and off to our next dive site which was called Sandfly passage. This was a dive I had never done before and was eager to do. The thing that made this dive so spectacular was that you’d enter the water, make your descent and get pulled along by the current. There is minimal effort needed when diving there, you can literally cross your legs and just drift à its awesome! Erick and I eventually reached a point with 50bar left in our tanks and had been in the water for 71 minutes. We decided to make our accent. Upon surfacing we had to wait for the boat to pick us upJ We drifted at least 3km in the time we had spent underwater (o_0) later that evening Erick and I went to the Rain Tree for supper to bid him fair well. It was time to say good bye to another good friend made here in the Solomon Islands.

Sam and I had the opportunity to buy some road kill (food purchased on the side of the road) during this week which was awesome! I also met an amazing tourist named Jess and had dinner with her listening to a band that plays cover songs at the heritage park hotel. I have also been making underwater videos which I want to make into a short film when I get home, for everyone who is interested in having a glimpse of Iron Bottom Sound.