Times of Diving

So I really can't believe that I am on my fourth week of being in Vanuatu. That is so crazy to me. I am still getting used to things here, especially since it is so much more laid back than Croatia. Not laid back in a bad way where the diving is unsafe. It is just a much warmer, fun environment. I feel guilty if I ever say that this is my work. So there are three instructors working here, including me, then we have the two bosses, Leanne works with the scuba stuff and Pete runs the fishing charters. Then we have several different Ni-Vanuatu staff that do an amazing job at making things so much easier for us. There is George who often skippers the boat, Jim who skippers and also works as a DM, then we have Wendy who cleans up after us (she does our laundry!) and makes amazing cakes, there are several others too that fill tanks, do maintenance around here, and run the fishing boats. It really is a great group of people around here. It took a while to get used to their sense of humor (if you can call it that) and also all the dynamic personalities. The first week I just sat around trying to take it all in, not take offense to anything, and try to blend in. It was pretty obvious though, that I was the newbie from America that really wasn't used to the Aussie and Kiwi ways.
So most every day we are diving, in the morning we have two dives and in the afternoon we have one. We finish up most of the time around 5 or so and then have the rest of the day to ourselves. We trade of days cooking for the group so sometimes we have to get right onto making dinner. After dinner we might go to the movies at the outdoor cafe, or we might just play a mean game of cards. There are slight variations of how the days go, it all depends on if you have students, intro students, or just certified divers. We get a good mix of everything so you never get bored. Also Wednesdays are when the cruise ship comes in, and we only cater to the cruise ship on that day. We get to sleep in on these days, and we only do one dive in the morning and one in the afternoon.
The diving here is amazing. You have such a great variety of dive sites. We have wrecks with good visibility, wrecks with wreck quality vis., plane wrecks, reefs, bommies, a cavern, and just about everything else. The sea life here is astounding too. Coming from the barren Adriatic sea, this is like the Sea of Eden. Life is everywhere it seems, and I have such a hard time focusing on one thing. I swear that my head is constantly swiveling everywhere trying to take in everything. I think I am just starting to get used to it, but hopefully this is not a sign that I am getting bored of it. That would be terrible. Most of the life here is small, the biggest things I have seen here are turtles, a ray from far away, and cuttlefish that might be as long as my forearm. I have to say that the cuttlefish are my favorite animals. They are amazing and really fearless. Plus if you get real close you can see their skin constantly changing color. It is really spectacular. I love the look of new divers faces when you show them a cuttlefish. It is as if they have found an alien, and I must say that that is a good description of a cuttlefish.....very alienlike. Had you asked me what my favorite animal would be a week ago I might have said the "friendly" clownfish, but one dive quickly changed that. So of course groups of clownfish live in anemones, and they are very protective of their babies. These babies are tiny and to really see them you have to get close to the anemone. Often times when you get to close the adults come out and swim in front of your face and chase your hand. It seems all harmless and fun, but really they are trying to chase you off. Most divers just think they are curious. Anyway, on this one dive I had one intro student and I was showing her the clownfish and there little babies. There was one adult that did not like me and kept biting my regulator. Just as I was turning away to leave I felt something slam against my forehead and rip out a chunk of hair. I of course screamed into my regulator and looked to see this clownfish retreat back to his anemone with a lock of hair in it's mouth. I looked at my intro student so see if she had see this and she was laughing her head off. I have to admit it was quite funny.
So really that has been my only run in with the sea life. I have seen some amazing things, and I even got to swim with dugongs. Those things are amazing. Also just the other day I ran into a sea snake and actually petted it. It didn't seem to mind and now I can saw I played with one of the most poisonous snakes in the world.
So also with the diving, I am still learning the different dive sites and how to navigate around them. I am fine with just about all of them except for this one area with three of our sites. The place is called Konanda, and it consists of a wreck, reef and wall. It should be easy, and I can do the wreck just fine. However, going from the wreck to reef, staying of the reef, and finding the boat is not very easy for me. I always get turned around, and I think I have only been able to find the boat 2 or 3 times out of the 6 or 7 times I have been on it. Not good, and much to my embarrassment. I think it is just that the reef looks much the same and also I just found out that the wall doesn't run parallel to the main island. So hopefully, I will be able to get around it next time. I also finally got to do the dive on Star of Russia which is a old clipper ship that was made by the same company that made the Titanic. It is a gorgeous wooden ship that is the picturesque wreck dive. It lies in about 36 metres of water and so the bottom time is quite short. One of the best parts is "falling" to the bottom and flying through the schools of batfish that swirl around the mooring line. There is nothing like it. Another wreck I got to do that was neat was the airplane wreck of the Tasmine. It lies at about 40 metres and is covered in silt. It is a little eerie to dive to that depth and have this plane loom out of the gloom. To make it spookier, there are hardly any signs of life on it. Maybe a few fish that lurk in the shadows. Also since I have been here I have only done 2 night dives. The first one I was just tagging along and the second one I was actually leading. The night dives are fun cause you do see lots of different things, but I just think it is not worth the stress and everything else. When I was leading I did start freaking out because I had no idea where I was and my compass was just spinning aimlessly around. Luckily, I realized (thank the Lord) that I was going in the opposite direction that I should be and after backtracking I found myself directly under the boat. I had never been so relieved. That dive though we saw 4 turtles (amazing) and also some crazy looking slipper lobsters.
Back on land though, we do get some time off so I have been able to explore. My first day off I went to a small island called Hideaway Island. It is home to the only underwater working post office, and if I was fun I would have sent postcards from it. However, I did not feel like snorkeling out there and was lazy and just laid on the beach. I paid for my laziness by getting burned badly. Luckily it turned brown over the next two days but then my skin started peeling. Not pretty.......but I guess it could have been worse. On my next day off I went to a different island resort called Erakor. That island is gorgeous with some amazing beaches. I marched to the end of the island and had a small 12 metre beach all to myself. I did not see a single person that whole day. All I did was bake in the sun and read my book. It was a perfect day. I got to go back there recently with Chelsea, and we hit up the market beforehand and packed a small picnic. That was such a good idea, and we had a really nice afternoon relaxing on the beach. It is times like this that I have to remind myself that I am not on vacation and that I am actually working in such a amazing place.
So I have lots more to talk about but I will save it for later and hopefully I will not wait so long to blog again. Will is going to be leaving us in another week and a half and we will be getting two new instructors that Chelsea and I will have to train. Should be fun and I am sure I will have some stories to tell.

Getting to Vanuatu

So I believe I left off in Paris, and not being able to catch my right flight. I spent the rest of the weekend just eating pastries and reading in the park. Finally it was Tuesday and I hightailed it to the airport. I got to the front desk and was praying that there would be no problems. Of course that was not possible and they told me they did not have me as a ticketed passenger on the plane. I had to go through the whole story and luckily they believed me and just put me on the plane. The trip to Shanghai was uneventful, and once I landed I had to go through customs. No one spoke English it seemed and I had no idea what was going on. They kept asking for my boarding pass for Sydney and I tried to tell them that I was not issued one because there was such a long delay and the people in Paris were not able to check me in on the flight to Sydney. They did not understand and everytime I opened my mouth it seemed to make them longer. This one really rude Chinese guy spent forever on the phone, and every ten seconds look at me hold up his finger and make sure that I saw him roll his eyes. It made me so mad. I wanted to jump the counter and choke him. I think he just got fed up with me and ended up stamping my passport without really knowing if I was going to be leaving his country. Trust me buddy, I did not want to stay in your country if they all acted like you. Anyway, I stood around looking for my bags to put in the transfer area. However, when I collected them and took them to the transfer area, I was once again told I was not ticketed for the flight to Sydney. I would then have to go to the main airport and check in with the airline and explain everything to them. I was not having a good flight experience. I went to the airline counter and explained everything and they just handed me a ticket without any questions. I finally got to the boarding area and realized that I had a 12 hour layover. That was fine though, I just slept, watched movies and read. The flight to Sydney was fine, but when we landed we were an hour behind schedule, and unfortunately that only left me with 40 minutes to catch my plane to Vanuatu. Yeah right! As luck would have it, my plane pulled up to the gate right next to my plane flying to Vanuatu and I got to watch it pull away. Such fun, because I knew that was the last and only flight flying to Vanuatu that day. I went through customs with no problems and then went to talk to the Air Vanuatu people. They were very nice and everything, but they informed me that Travelocity had booked my flight but not charged it so I didn't have a ticket. That meant that they could do nothing for me because technically I had not paid for a ticket. I needed to talk to Travelocity and get them to buy me a ticket for the next day. They also told me to talk to the airline company that I came in on because they should take care of any expenses I had that night because it was late. I went to talk to them first and I was told there that they were not responsible because my connection was less than 2 hours. Of course! I then went to call Travelocity and I thought about getting some Australian dollars to make the call, but then I thought that it would be to expensive since I would have to exchange all my money in Vanuatu. I ended up using my debit card, which turned out to be stupid. The call to Travelocity did nothing, and just made me more frustrated. I ended up talking to some Indian guy that could not speak above a whisper. I ended up shouting for him to speak louder for two minutes until I realized that he was telling me that my card was not charged so it would be best for me to buy a whole new ticket. I hung up mad, and went back to the Air Vanuatu people telling them to point me in the direction of their ticketing office. Luckily the next day ticket was only $40 dollars more than my original ticket. I finally had it figured out, but now I had 24 hours to kill in the airport because unfortunately I no extra money to spend the night in the city. I found a comfortable place, and went to sleep. Around 11pm I was told that the airport was closing for 5 hours and that I would have to relocate to the overnight holding area. I got there and of course they had the most uncomfortable chairs. They then pulled down these bars and literally locked us in this holding area. Just a little creepy. To make matters worse, the entire 5 hours the floor waxer and buffer decided to drive up and down the hall outside so it was impossible to sleep. Quite miserable.
The next day, I got to my plane and had no problems flying to Vanuatu. I was a little nervous though, because I was a day late and I was not able to get hold of the dive shop and let them know. Once at the airport I found the transfer place I was supposed to take the day before and explained everything. They knew who I was and told me to go hop in the van and they would take me. I made it to the dive shop finally, and was greeted by everyone. There were the owners, Leanne and Pete, and then the two other instructors Will and Chelsea. They were super nice and had no problems that I was late. I could tell I as going to like it here. I settled into my own room. Yes! I actually had my own room. Then I just looked around. The dive shop is just off the main road of Port Vila and then the living area for staff and the owners is between that and the boats. We were right on the water, with a gorgeous view of the bay with the extinct volcano top supporting the island resort across the water.
The next day I actually got to go diving. We did three dives that day, and the water was amazing. The reefs were healthy and so full of life. On the first day I saw sea snakes, pipefish, cuttlefish, and all sorts of other reef fish. I was going to have no problem getting used to this. Over the week I got used to the way things were run and everything was so much more laid back than the place in Croatia. I had a student on my third day, and that was fine. I was making three dives a day, so each night I went to bed early and was so tired. We started work at 7, left the dock by 8 15, did two dives, got back around 11 30, had a break till 1 30 and then we usually go out for one more dive. We usually are done for the day by 5 30 or earlier. It is really great.
So after about 5 days they started letting me lead small groups around and I was having no trouble finding my way around. Then once I had 4 guys and I could tell this one guy was going to give me trouble. We were about 26 minutes into the dive and everything was going well. I had just checked on everyone and they were all happy and following me. Then after about a minute of swimming I looked behind me and started counting. For some reason, I only had 3 people following me. I looked all around in the crystal clear water and of course could not find the 4th. No one knew where he was so we looked around for one minute and then ascended, just like we are supposed to. However after 2 minutes on the surface there was no sign of him. I was freaking out just a little at this point. We were at the boat and I had gotten everyone else out and the second group had just surfaced. Luckily they had picked him up somewhere. After we got out I asked what happened and he apologized saying that he dives better alone because he chases after fish. Aaahhh! I wanted to scream at him that there are fish everywhere and why would he chase fish.....they just swim away faster. Oh well, it all worked out.
There haven't been any other real disasters, except maybe for a natural disaster. Of course the island is part of the Ring of Fire and I learned first hand what this means. We were diving and just coming up to the boat, when there was this super loud sound. It sounded like a jet was taking off underwater. Everyone grabbed on to each other and plugged their ears. It hurt your head it was so loud. It was over in 10 seconds, but everyone was looking around for the power boat that supposedly took off overhead. There was one lady in the group that looked so scared. I thought for she she would bolt to the surface. Once we were out of the water I asked the captain if there were any boats around. He laughed and said that it was probably an earthquake. Supposedly we have them quite often and there have already been two since I have been here. I was asking Chelsea about them and she said that often you can see the shockwaves travel through the water. Crazy! Not much else though to report. It is awesome diving here and I already love it here. I promise to update more whenever something interesting happens, and I will also try getting photos out.