I found nemo!

Day 29 – Saturday, February 27, 2010

Saturday started out with a nice breakfast, something I’ll have to start doing that at home. Eating regular meals is certainly a new concept for me. Our hotel is beautiful. It sits on the white sandy beach. At night little crabs scuttle over your feet. There are monkeys right outside my window. Birds are chirping everywhere. Geckos run all over the place. There’s a lovely pool with a swim up bar. There are palm trees everywhere so you can lay out and be in the shade almost everywhere. The rooms have nice comfortable pillows, big ‘princess’ beds to keep the mosquito net away from your face, a huge flat screen tv, and all three meals for a ridiculously low price. If you’re looking for a fantastic vacation, Kenya is the place, it’s just the flight that’s atrocious. Our hotel even has a dive shop! Unfortunately, I forgot my certification. Well, forgot is not the right word. I had no idea what to expect with Kenya, and my thoughts were definitely more along the lines of long drops….not the pristine getaways we stayed at on the two relaxing weekends. Anyway, through the marvel of technology and living with your sister, Lindsey found my certification and scanned it over email, I took my computer to the dive shop and I was on my way! The rest of the group headed off for a snorkel trip on the reef. I would have liked to go with them, but scuba was so much more enticing!

This was my first scuba trip without my family. A bittersweet realization as I was getting in the water with all my gear on. To enter the water here, since the current is so strong, you sit with your back to the edge, and roll in backwards, then swim to the line and hold on until everyone is then. Then to descend, you just go down the line. This is the first dive that we didn’t just submerge, we followed the line down to the reef. Once we got there holy cow! The reef was like little mermaid and finding nemo all rolled into one! There were so many fish and the colors were so vibrant! This was especially surprising because the water visibility wasn’t as clear as Cozumel or Cancun, but the colors were brighter! There were little Nemos (clown fish), bright pink ones, florescent ones, every fish from finding Nemo, including the one with the scar, eels right out of Little Mermaid, blue spotted sting rays, some crazy shaped brown fish that were very round and then they turned and it was paper thin! Also, I attributed some human emotions onto some of the fish. There were ones that I decided were stuck up because they always swam above the over fish and had a long nose. There was some fish with very big wide eyes that were scared and always hid. Schools would just swim around you like you weren’t even there – bright yellow and blue schools. I saw anenomies everywhere with baby clown fish in them. (none of them had one big fin and one small one though). The reef itself was bright and so diverse; Finding Nemo didn’t do the vibrancy justice! At one point I started singing to the fish. I think they liked it because they all turned and looked at me. The coolest part was there were only three of us on the dive: the instructor, a man, and I. The small group was so cool! We got to see so much more! When we had exhausted our tank, we put a boey up and the boat came and got us. It was fantastic! Sadly we didn’t see any sharks, but then we wouldn’t have because I didn’t see lions or cheetahs either.

The rest of the afternoon was spent lazing about and shopping. Danelle and I had a blast wandering around. She even got a cocoanut as a drink! We retired for an aperitif on the patio, and I swear a monkey walked up within a foot of me! We went back to our rooms to dress for dinner and I got to wear my black dress for the second time. It was fun the night before – Danelle and I switched clothes. She wore my black dress and I wore her skirt and shirt. Even though they were dirty, just knowing they were different was awesome! We had a nice dinner though many of us were missing as they were so sunburned! They (Greg B) were back in their rooms, lying on the bed with cold towels to cool them down. It was hilarious! We met up for our last nightcap, and retired to our rooms. It was a beautiful day, though I have to admit it is bittersweet. I miss being at home and my family, but there’s so many fantastic things to do and people here in Kenya, I could stay another month! Things I don’t miss: cell phones, a job, tv, movies, driving, so many things. I’m sure I’ll snap out of it when I get home, but this has been great!

Summary: I found nemo while scuba diving. He says hi.