MY MOST EXCITING DIVE TRIP:

Last September I went on the dream dive trip. I decided to leave the Caribbean, and try the South Pacific. I opted for a combined trip to Palau and Yap. These are islands in Micronesia, which is near Guam and the Phillipines. I chose to go with a liveaboard instead of being landbased. I selected the Peter Hughes boat, the Sundancer II. We got to Koror, the capital of Palau on Saturday morning. I browsed around in the town for a few hours and then boarded the boat. It is a beauty, a 138 footer, with 4 decks, 10 guest cabins, a dining room, dive deck, and sun deck. Each cabin had its own full bath and a picture window. The dive deck had hot showers, rinse tanks for gear and cameras and a special area for camera equipment with special lintfree towels. The dining deck had an outdoor bar and an indoor bar. The dining room also was the rec room and had a TV with stereo, cd, video recorder, etc. We ate gourmet food everyday. They rang a bell for either eating or diving. Eat, dive, eat, dive, eat, dive, eat, dive, eat, dive......... The islands were spectacular. They were rock formations with mangroves growing all over them and were very eerie looking. We cruised between them in channels through a lagoon. We used smaller boats to go to the dive sites, as it was not possible for the ship to get through the channels during the low tides. The dive boats held 10 divers and two instructor/guides very comfortably. They were jetpowered, not outboard, so they could get to spots where the reef was near the surface. I never touched my equipment once it was on the boat the first day. The crew changed the tanks, and all my gear was kept in a crate under my seat, which was marked as mine. All you did was suit up :-). The dives were spectacular. We did mostly drift diving with 1-2 knot currents. There were lots of wall dives. The soft corals, sponges, fans and hard corals were fantastically colored, every color of the rainbow---and large. At one dive called the Blue Corner, we hung suspended by reef hooks over the edge of the wall and looked out into the blue water. A "movie" passed before us. Huge schools of fish---butterfly, triggers, groupers, barracuda, jacks, trevally, snappers drifted by, getting their pleasure hanging in the currents. The sharks of course came to shop for their dinners. Gray reef, whitetips, blacktips, nursesharks all drifted by, some no more than 6 feet away from us. A school of about 300 barracuda(some quite large) swarmed around us, and I actually found myself in the middle of the school. It was eerie. Turtles swam by, and huge Napoleon wrasses came up close to us. I did a cave dive, which was fun. You went down into the reef to the mouth of the cave and swam in and then up to the ceiling, where there was airpockets. We were able to take our regulators out of our mouths and rest while looking up at the stalagtites and rock formations above us. Awesome!!! There were some really nice wrecks to dive, mostly Japanese ships that were sunk by the American fleet. One ship had gas masks lying on the deck. It was very macabre. I think I lost count of all the fish we saw. The list was endless. The most exciting fish to see was the mandarin fish!!! It is very rare and shy. A small fish that is colored red and green and blue!!! Amazing. There were tons of lionfish and leaffish. I had never seen them before. One day we went to Jellyfish Lake, and snorkeled with the jellyfish, which have, over thousands of years, lost their ability to sting. It was fascinating to swim among them. They appear to be dancing as they follow the sun. We were on the ship for a week and then we went on to Yap. We stayed at the Manta Ray Bay Hotel and dove with Yap Divers. Both operations are smoothly run. Accomodations are very nice and the food at the restaurant is very good. The dive shop is well run and again everything is set up for you. A nice touch is that they serve you hot tea after every dive. Yap is famous for it's sightings of manta rays. The reefs there are also beautiful and pristine. The mantas are the most glorious creatures. Graceful and large. On one dive we saw at least 13 of them coming in to the cleaning stations. We didn't know where to look first. They were all around us, gliding and flying by. Magnificent!!! One day we were traveling from one dive site to another and saw a pod of dolphins. We all grabbed our snorkels, fins and masks and dove in. The boat driver herded them back towards us and there we were----swimming with the dolphins!!!!!! How wonderful that was. They are so smart and fast. As you can see I have so many wonderful memories of this trip. It was a dream come true. If you want to see the pictures I took of the wonderful things I saw under the sea go to the Photogallery.

THE DOLPHIN SONG

I stood at the oceans edge,
and listened for the dolphin song.
Come and play, was their refrain,
I heard the music time and again.
I was so happy that hot summer,
playing with the wild dolphins.
Plunging deep within the waters,
I found mothers and their daughters.
Swimming side by side, they were
great silver flashes at the bottom.
With sidelong glances they came to me,
and offered me secrets from the sea.
I felt blessed to see them dance upon
curling waves tipped with frothy white.
Those graceful creatures of the deep,
glided by me and dove with a leap.
Down they went, with rushing speed,
then soared, once more, to the surface.
They smiled at me and joyfully played,
I watched the trailing wake they made.
If, one day my fondest wish comes true,
I will gladly rush back to the sea,
and find my dolphin friends once more,
so we may frolic forever on the ocean floor.

Elaine Wachtel
October 24, 1996