Tuesday, the 20th of April marked my last diving adventure (in Cuba : ( ). Our driver (a friend of the previous one) seemed a bit nervous, and when asked, admitted he hadn’t slept much the night before because he was preoccupied with the idea of crabs crossing the road and of flat tires. In any case, we got off to a much earlier start and arrived about two hours earlier than the previous time, taking far fewer crab lives in the process. The visitors from Presbyterian College brought me an underwater camera p’ my request and I couldn’t wait to go. The first dive, honestly, was a bit of a disaster. Everything had gone so swimmingly (sorry! Pun intended) the dive the week before that I wasn’t expecting such setbacks. First I had a hard time equalizing and had to slow my descent considerably. Then, though I didn’t realize it until I surfaced later, I got a bloody nose during the middle of the dive. My underwater camera wasn’t working for me, and I just couldn’t get into the feeling.
An hour later, after a pick me up of some wheat thins I brought from home which I shared with my diving buddies (they thought they were very strangely colored for crackers,’ but… yeah, I’ll take some more…’) I was feeling a bit more optimistic. Coco told me not to worry- we would take a slow descent and the bloody nose was nothing to be concerned about even if it came back during the second dive. At first my ear killed. I was worried I wasn’t going to be able to dive at all to be honest. But with some patience and time, we managed to go down quite a few meters and eventually made it to the terrace edge. This last dive felt really, really solid. I feel like I can control myself and navigate in and around the reef beds. When we were in a patch reef Coco directed our attention to a large barracuda not too far in the distance. We swam slowly up to it, and it watched us with a wide toothy grin. We got about two meters away and I snapped a picture. Then we decided to move on… I was feeling uneasy because I had the inkling that my bloody nose had come back and I could only imagine the starter course a whiff of that might provide this meat loving fish. After we had swum a bit we turned around to see the barracuda had followed us a short ways. The next scene was pretty hilarious. Simultaneously and as if on cue, Katie, Orlando and Coco all pointed at each other. “Take them, not me!”, they signaled to the fish. It left us alone when we couldn’t reach a sacrificial consensus.
The dives were amazing. I hope my pictures came out and I’m so grateful to have had the camera. When I was younger I would dream of having the ability to fly and to my surprise, diving has given me that sensation. I predict I will thrist for flying…or rather, diving this summer. I am going to look into doing it in Portland. We grabbed a sandwich and some ice cream for lunch on the way home and joked with each other on the ride. I am going to miss a lot of Cubans when I leave this place, but my diving team is definitely high on that list.
Showing posts with label diving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label diving. Show all posts
Monday, May 31, 2010
Monday, April 26, 2010
4.14.10
A long post about SCUBA Diving.
Yesterday was Katie and my first excursion to Playa Giron to go diving and it was INCREDIBLE. I had been impressed with the corals just on the other side of the wall surrounding Havana city, but the sceneries below the waves at Punto Perdiz and by Cuevo de Los Peces were mind-blowing.
Katie and I got up early and drove with Eduardo (our chofe) to CIM where we met our diving instructors. We packed up the van full of air and wetsuits and set off...only to get a completely flat tire thirty minutes away. After searching for a tire-fixer (a ponchero) we replaced it with a spare but returned to the city to secure another spare. Admittedly, I was impatient to be back on the road; we had been hoping to fit two dives into the day and we seemed to be wasting much of the morning. It was past nine by the time we truly left the city. But, as promised, Eduardo drove quickly and we arrived just before lunch time. When we got off the main road we began to notice more and more large crabs by the road. A kilometer later, it seemed to get pretty bad. Eduardo had to jerk the van out of the way of the crustaceans. We tried honking at them to get them out of the way, but soon determined crabs have a poor sense of hearing. There were several casualties. Katie had driven in the region the week before and told us how it had been much worse for her, she had taken many crab lives and felt very bad about it. On the bright side, we didn’t seem to make a dent in their population numbers. When we arrived at our dive site we were told to watch out for the crabs- ‘what crabs?’ I joked. They crawled around and over our stuff, waving at us in a mean warning. I could not have been more excited to leave them behind and see the creatures in the inviting blue water beyond them.
We suited up, jumped in and swam out a bit. It was difficult to wait. The patch reefs came all the way to the rocky shoreline. Close to shore we saw beautiful parrot fish males and were surrounded by sturgeon fish (I think!). Finally, we were ready to dive. I have had some problems with equalizing my ears so we agreed to take an especially slow ascent but still planned to go down about 20 meters. Down we went, I followed our instructor Coco, and Katie and Orlando weren’t far behind us. We swam through some of the mixed -reef patches towards the terrace edge. It was spectacular! Abruptly the plate seemed to drop away to deeper than I could see. Open Ocean was before us, and a colorful forest behind us. We swam along the edge. It is impossible to take it all in. it is such a strange situation. Normally I hate heights, but here, there is no falling. You float on one plane that is controllable - in a way it is like flying. But if you look up to the surface you might have the same sensation. We dove down to 22 meters and from there the surface is a far away ripple of light. It is best to look forward however (isn’t that a truism for all of life…).
Coco got my attention and pointed ahead. There was a large fish (will look up English name when there is internet). It could have been three feet long (though evidently everything looks bigger underwater). It is a species that swims into the reef to be cleaned of parasites by other fish that live there. And just as cool, beyond the fish there was a submerged ship that we swam right up to. It is hard to know if the boat was used in the Bay of Pigs invasion (because some of those boats did sink) or if was placed there as a diving attraction. It felt straight out of a movie though, and I kept one eye open for a treasure chest just in case.
We surfaced to find another flat tire (the other side of the van) so we hooked up an extra air tank and temporarily filled the flat.
In the middle of our late lunch we joked around (mostly about very serious things like nitrogen asphyxiation giving the feeling of drunkenness) and talked about the plan for the next dive. In the middle of the lunch we spotted a Tocororo! The national bird of Cuba! I saw it first and felt very proud when a passing tour guide made a grand motion of pointing it out to her tour, pretending to be the original spotter.
After lunch we went to a different diving spot. Eduardo, who dove with us the first time, left to repair the leaky tire. As unbelievable as the first dive was, the second location was arguably better. I had a moment of unease when the clouds passed overhead, creating a giant shadow and sudden darkening in the water. I thought it might be something wrong with my vision… but in a few seconds the sun reappeared and I realized it was quite a natural thing. There was a shipwreck at this site as well. We swam over and I stood on top of the side railing. I was really surprised by what I didn’t see: there weren’t many anemones, I saw NO sea stars, and very few plain colored fish. We did see a sea cucumber, but it was not like the one in the touch tank in the children’s museum at home, no, this one was roughly a foot long. It felt pretty much the same.
The one creature I don’t like sharing the water with is the jellyfish. For some reason, perhaps because I have no experience distinguishing stinging jellies with non-stinging ones, jellyfish scare me a bit. We saw a few small ones but no stinging types. When you know they can’t sting and you look at them more closely, they are almost like snowflakes in intricacy. One minute I was examining the workings of the jellyfish that floated suspended above a beautiful parrotfish that explored some colorful coral below, and the next, I heard Coco signaling for our attention. I turned to see (to my astonishment) a sea turtle swimming not far off. We swam in the same direction as the turtle for a little while until Coco signaled that we were approaching or time limit. Time to ascend. ‘I’m not sure I believe in reincarnation’, I thought, as I followed Coco up a short distance to the sky and sand and sea breeze, ‘but if it does work that way, I don’t want to be a crab, but I certainly wouldn’t mind being a fish’.
We got out and waited for Eduardo to return with the van and all of our stuff. Katie and I went to the bathroom of our luncheon spot to change. Crabs had crawled into the stall. This, my friends, is how you get crabs from public toilets. It seemed, in fact, that crabs had pretty much taken over the town.
We walked back to the van and piled in. The crab-in-the-road situation had worsened. There was no longer the possibility of swerving out of the way. We let a larger bus pass us and it whipped by, scattering crabs and splattering crabs. It was really pretty gross; Crabs are scavengers that eat dead meat. We created a mass burial and an all-you-can-eat-buffet all at once. Eduardo believed the second flat tire was from hitting the crabs so when the bus in front of us turned to drive a different direction we had to be innovative. Eduardo asked Katie to drive and he and Orlando and Coco hopped out of the car and started walking down the traffic lane, kicking, poking and scaring off the crabs. At some points it was hilarious: there was a crab smack dab in Katie’s path. It was half squished already and Coco approached it with a staff-like-stick and brought it down upon the crab. ‘poor-thing was suffering’ he said. ‘Crunch crunch’, went the van over the dead shells. Eduardo saved one crab by kicking it like a football. We made it through the worst of the crabs and hopped back into the van. Every few kilometers we would debate whether we should get out again, and also joked about how the crabs wanted revenge for their lost relations. They got it in the end. A few bouncy minutes later we were stuck with yet another flat tire. We drove to the Panchero and had the tire repaired. ‘Lots of people coming in today’ he said, ‘Lots of crabs’. Lo and behold- two crab claw fragments were retrieved from our tire. We didn’t get to the hometel until 930 or so; we hadn’t been expecting so much extra-species traffic.
Yesterday was Katie and my first excursion to Playa Giron to go diving and it was INCREDIBLE. I had been impressed with the corals just on the other side of the wall surrounding Havana city, but the sceneries below the waves at Punto Perdiz and by Cuevo de Los Peces were mind-blowing.
Katie and I got up early and drove with Eduardo (our chofe) to CIM where we met our diving instructors. We packed up the van full of air and wetsuits and set off...only to get a completely flat tire thirty minutes away. After searching for a tire-fixer (a ponchero) we replaced it with a spare but returned to the city to secure another spare. Admittedly, I was impatient to be back on the road; we had been hoping to fit two dives into the day and we seemed to be wasting much of the morning. It was past nine by the time we truly left the city. But, as promised, Eduardo drove quickly and we arrived just before lunch time. When we got off the main road we began to notice more and more large crabs by the road. A kilometer later, it seemed to get pretty bad. Eduardo had to jerk the van out of the way of the crustaceans. We tried honking at them to get them out of the way, but soon determined crabs have a poor sense of hearing. There were several casualties. Katie had driven in the region the week before and told us how it had been much worse for her, she had taken many crab lives and felt very bad about it. On the bright side, we didn’t seem to make a dent in their population numbers. When we arrived at our dive site we were told to watch out for the crabs- ‘what crabs?’ I joked. They crawled around and over our stuff, waving at us in a mean warning. I could not have been more excited to leave them behind and see the creatures in the inviting blue water beyond them.
We suited up, jumped in and swam out a bit. It was difficult to wait. The patch reefs came all the way to the rocky shoreline. Close to shore we saw beautiful parrot fish males and were surrounded by sturgeon fish (I think!). Finally, we were ready to dive. I have had some problems with equalizing my ears so we agreed to take an especially slow ascent but still planned to go down about 20 meters. Down we went, I followed our instructor Coco, and Katie and Orlando weren’t far behind us. We swam through some of the mixed -reef patches towards the terrace edge. It was spectacular! Abruptly the plate seemed to drop away to deeper than I could see. Open Ocean was before us, and a colorful forest behind us. We swam along the edge. It is impossible to take it all in. it is such a strange situation. Normally I hate heights, but here, there is no falling. You float on one plane that is controllable - in a way it is like flying. But if you look up to the surface you might have the same sensation. We dove down to 22 meters and from there the surface is a far away ripple of light. It is best to look forward however (isn’t that a truism for all of life…).
Coco got my attention and pointed ahead. There was a large fish (will look up English name when there is internet). It could have been three feet long (though evidently everything looks bigger underwater). It is a species that swims into the reef to be cleaned of parasites by other fish that live there. And just as cool, beyond the fish there was a submerged ship that we swam right up to. It is hard to know if the boat was used in the Bay of Pigs invasion (because some of those boats did sink) or if was placed there as a diving attraction. It felt straight out of a movie though, and I kept one eye open for a treasure chest just in case.
We surfaced to find another flat tire (the other side of the van) so we hooked up an extra air tank and temporarily filled the flat.
In the middle of our late lunch we joked around (mostly about very serious things like nitrogen asphyxiation giving the feeling of drunkenness) and talked about the plan for the next dive. In the middle of the lunch we spotted a Tocororo! The national bird of Cuba! I saw it first and felt very proud when a passing tour guide made a grand motion of pointing it out to her tour, pretending to be the original spotter.
After lunch we went to a different diving spot. Eduardo, who dove with us the first time, left to repair the leaky tire. As unbelievable as the first dive was, the second location was arguably better. I had a moment of unease when the clouds passed overhead, creating a giant shadow and sudden darkening in the water. I thought it might be something wrong with my vision… but in a few seconds the sun reappeared and I realized it was quite a natural thing. There was a shipwreck at this site as well. We swam over and I stood on top of the side railing. I was really surprised by what I didn’t see: there weren’t many anemones, I saw NO sea stars, and very few plain colored fish. We did see a sea cucumber, but it was not like the one in the touch tank in the children’s museum at home, no, this one was roughly a foot long. It felt pretty much the same.
The one creature I don’t like sharing the water with is the jellyfish. For some reason, perhaps because I have no experience distinguishing stinging jellies with non-stinging ones, jellyfish scare me a bit. We saw a few small ones but no stinging types. When you know they can’t sting and you look at them more closely, they are almost like snowflakes in intricacy. One minute I was examining the workings of the jellyfish that floated suspended above a beautiful parrotfish that explored some colorful coral below, and the next, I heard Coco signaling for our attention. I turned to see (to my astonishment) a sea turtle swimming not far off. We swam in the same direction as the turtle for a little while until Coco signaled that we were approaching or time limit. Time to ascend. ‘I’m not sure I believe in reincarnation’, I thought, as I followed Coco up a short distance to the sky and sand and sea breeze, ‘but if it does work that way, I don’t want to be a crab, but I certainly wouldn’t mind being a fish’.
We got out and waited for Eduardo to return with the van and all of our stuff. Katie and I went to the bathroom of our luncheon spot to change. Crabs had crawled into the stall. This, my friends, is how you get crabs from public toilets. It seemed, in fact, that crabs had pretty much taken over the town.
We walked back to the van and piled in. The crab-in-the-road situation had worsened. There was no longer the possibility of swerving out of the way. We let a larger bus pass us and it whipped by, scattering crabs and splattering crabs. It was really pretty gross; Crabs are scavengers that eat dead meat. We created a mass burial and an all-you-can-eat-buffet all at once. Eduardo believed the second flat tire was from hitting the crabs so when the bus in front of us turned to drive a different direction we had to be innovative. Eduardo asked Katie to drive and he and Orlando and Coco hopped out of the car and started walking down the traffic lane, kicking, poking and scaring off the crabs. At some points it was hilarious: there was a crab smack dab in Katie’s path. It was half squished already and Coco approached it with a staff-like-stick and brought it down upon the crab. ‘poor-thing was suffering’ he said. ‘Crunch crunch’, went the van over the dead shells. Eduardo saved one crab by kicking it like a football. We made it through the worst of the crabs and hopped back into the van. Every few kilometers we would debate whether we should get out again, and also joked about how the crabs wanted revenge for their lost relations. They got it in the end. A few bouncy minutes later we were stuck with yet another flat tire. We drove to the Panchero and had the tire repaired. ‘Lots of people coming in today’ he said, ‘Lots of crabs’. Lo and behold- two crab claw fragments were retrieved from our tire. We didn’t get to the hometel until 930 or so; we hadn’t been expecting so much extra-species traffic.
Quick Recap of 4/5-4/9
Monday was pretty standard, and Tuesday I went diving with Coco. Katie was busy so we went alone and were under for about an hour, which is pretty long. Wednesday was not spectacular. At some point in the week, Veronika and I made a list of things we want to do before we leave Cuba. Surprisingly to me, the list is not very long. If I were to spend more time here, I would want to be more integrated into real Cuban life, and I would also like to travel around the island more. Many of the things on our list are activities to do downtown, some are larger than others. On thrusday Veronika and I went downtown to explore. We waited in line at Coppelias (the ice cream place) for half and hour before we were warned that they were going to close (it was likely they would close before we even got in, the line wasn’t moving at all). Downtown was a bust. We couldn’t find anywhere to go that wasn’t swarming with tourists and expensive. We walked home realizing that when we go out exploring like that, we need a backup plan for our backup plan. On Friday we went to a meeting at the Center for Studies of the Americas to learn about the recent developments in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela. The lecturers Spanish was extremely hard to understand because no matter how slowly he spoke, each word kind of blended in with the next.
On Saturday Veronika, Austin (a guy from Alabama) and I went downtown for the concert for the country (concierto para la patria). Compared to the Calle 13 concert, there were very few people there. The music was more traditional and it was generally an older croud. It was really pleasant though, we sat on the malecon (check!- off my list) and listened as the sea breeze cooled us and splattered us with a seasoning of salt. Downtown one always sees ladies carrying cones of paper filled with peanuts. None of us were really in the mood, but to buy ‘Maní’ was on our list, so we purchased them (for five cents) and tried this Cuban classic (check).
On Saturday Veronika, Austin (a guy from Alabama) and I went downtown for the concert for the country (concierto para la patria). Compared to the Calle 13 concert, there were very few people there. The music was more traditional and it was generally an older croud. It was really pleasant though, we sat on the malecon (check!- off my list) and listened as the sea breeze cooled us and splattered us with a seasoning of salt. Downtown one always sees ladies carrying cones of paper filled with peanuts. None of us were really in the mood, but to buy ‘Maní’ was on our list, so we purchased them (for five cents) and tried this Cuban classic (check).
Saturday, April 3, 2010
16 March 2010
Diving was canceled today. There was another cold front system moving through and we’re trying to move to the actual ocean. It is very frustrating; I want to dive!!!.
In the afternoon I had a class with Prof. Julia Azanza called ‘Marine Sea Turtles’. I LOVE sea turtles. These living dinosaurs are so incredible and really so much of their lives are not yet understood. The lecture really reignited my interest to do more work with sea turtles in the future.
In the afternoon I had a class with Prof. Julia Azanza called ‘Marine Sea Turtles’. I LOVE sea turtles. These living dinosaurs are so incredible and really so much of their lives are not yet understood. The lecture really reignited my interest to do more work with sea turtles in the future.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
8 Marzo, 2010
This morning, a bit travel weary we got up early for our second diving adventure. Greater success this time. Also, it is International Women’s Day! Happy Women’s day? I like this holiday because our diving instructor, CoCo bough Katie and I chocolate bars before our dive in the pool. I can now share my extra respirator, successfully clean my mask (by removing it and reapplying it), and I feel a bit more in control. Today is also a day of groceries. Which means I must go to the bank again tomorrow. Luckily the Canadian dollar is stronger than ever (perhaps due to the Olympics) so it is a good time to do this business. This afternoon I learned about Coral Reefs and Reef Systems. As we’ve heard before, our reefs are dying and global warming has a large part to do with it. I cannot wait to see the corals here. Even the pictures alone are pretty inspiring.
Not too much cultural stuff to report today.
Not too much cultural stuff to report today.
Friday, February 19, 2010
2.10.10
Classes have most definitely begun. “Thank god” you should say, because now hopefully my posts will be significantly shorter, though unfortunately no more coherent.
Today we discussed the culture of Cuba and the Cubans perseverance during these years with the embargo. Some times have been harder than others. I should write more about the embargo later when it is not so late, and I can think more clearly. We talked about how when my professor was young, she had to bike over an hour to and from work. There are very few bicycles in Cuba these days. I think the last supply of bikes were old fashioned and poorly made ones from China. Our teacher suggested they were very bad for health and resulted in men with prostrate problems. No wonder they are no longer popular.
I got lunch for less than a dollar and then this afternoon I had my first Marine Bio introduction. We met at the center (very close to ‘home’) and discussed the logistics of diving lessons- training in the pool, then moving to the beach practically off the Malecón, then some day long excursions. I was told my classes could be as difficult as I wanted- I told them I want them difficult (so long as they are difficult in English). My syllabus indicates that I have several different professors and will learn about a variety of topics from microalgas to sea turtles, mangrove systems, to coral reefs, and conservation. I can’t wait! Katie gets to dive with me, as she will also be my transportation for our excursions. So, her job pretty much rocks in both of our minds. Katie and I got out pretty early and so we went to get some laundry supplies. In Spanish class today we were told an expression about Cuba. Translated, it means: ‘this is Cuba: don’t have any prior expectations’. That could not be more true, too late. Because we are living in a hotel, the laundry service charges are through the roof, which is several stories high. And because when we ask for a lavandería (hopefully a less sketchy one than the one found in Costa Rica) the locals just shake their heads in rejection of the proposal, we are going to do it by hand. Our finds: two large buckets, some balloon ribbon for a clothesline and bobby pins for clips. The laundry is out to dry, results due in tomorrow.
Ps a quick rant- it is so annoying to have to boil all of our water! And even more annoying is when the water that I have boiled mysteriously disappears in the night and I’m left with none in the morning when I roll out of bed. Any suggestions, Holmes?
Feelings: tired, nerdy, thirsty
Today we discussed the culture of Cuba and the Cubans perseverance during these years with the embargo. Some times have been harder than others. I should write more about the embargo later when it is not so late, and I can think more clearly. We talked about how when my professor was young, she had to bike over an hour to and from work. There are very few bicycles in Cuba these days. I think the last supply of bikes were old fashioned and poorly made ones from China. Our teacher suggested they were very bad for health and resulted in men with prostrate problems. No wonder they are no longer popular.
I got lunch for less than a dollar and then this afternoon I had my first Marine Bio introduction. We met at the center (very close to ‘home’) and discussed the logistics of diving lessons- training in the pool, then moving to the beach practically off the Malecón, then some day long excursions. I was told my classes could be as difficult as I wanted- I told them I want them difficult (so long as they are difficult in English). My syllabus indicates that I have several different professors and will learn about a variety of topics from microalgas to sea turtles, mangrove systems, to coral reefs, and conservation. I can’t wait! Katie gets to dive with me, as she will also be my transportation for our excursions. So, her job pretty much rocks in both of our minds. Katie and I got out pretty early and so we went to get some laundry supplies. In Spanish class today we were told an expression about Cuba. Translated, it means: ‘this is Cuba: don’t have any prior expectations’. That could not be more true, too late. Because we are living in a hotel, the laundry service charges are through the roof, which is several stories high. And because when we ask for a lavandería (hopefully a less sketchy one than the one found in Costa Rica) the locals just shake their heads in rejection of the proposal, we are going to do it by hand. Our finds: two large buckets, some balloon ribbon for a clothesline and bobby pins for clips. The laundry is out to dry, results due in tomorrow.
Ps a quick rant- it is so annoying to have to boil all of our water! And even more annoying is when the water that I have boiled mysteriously disappears in the night and I’m left with none in the morning when I roll out of bed. Any suggestions, Holmes?
Feelings: tired, nerdy, thirsty
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