On Friday we went back to Watamu to get our first scuba dive in on a weekday without the weekend crowds. We left at 6:30 in the morning and we took a short cut on the dirt road through a village to the Malindi road. We swerved to avoid the “Dog that lives in the road,” a village mutt that is the same color as the reddish-tan sandy road and blends in nearly perfectly. He is very difficult to spot and he lies in the middle of the road, but doesn’t even blink when you swerve around him. This particular day, he didn’t even look up from licking his butt when we rolled past, fairly narrowly missing him. Everyone was going about their normal weekday business.
There were throngs of kids walking to school along the road, matatus zooming by us, guys brushing their teeth with twigs while they waited for the next matatu and little girls rolling big water jugs along the ground – step, step, kick…..rollllll…….step, step, kick… The older ones carry them on their heads. We passed a guy shimmying up a palm tree over thirty feet in the air with little steps cut into the side of the tree. We passed a big long-haul truck (not really a tractor trailer, but more like a lorry) with one half of the windshield smashed and dangling from the frame, the spider web of tiny fragments still held together by the laminate backing. It makes for great scenery, but only for the passenger.We arrived in time for the 8am dive with Aqua Ventures and geared up with about six other people - two Frenchmen and a Brit, a Polish couple and a rasta-looking dude. The polish couple was also on their first dive. During the briefing, Jez gave us a rundown of the dive, reassuring us that we wouldn’t likely see sharks. The only thing that might attack us was a titan triggerfish, which apparently had a nasty bite. We could identify one because it is about 18 inches (no, 30 inches, according to the other instructor) and is greenish (no, no, orange! Someone from the back piped in). We were thoroughly confused about whether we should be avoiding an 18 or 30 inch orange or green fish! Jez abruptly changed the subject saying, OK, never mind, you don’t need to worry about that because they aren’t nesting right now anyway and rarely attack…great. We took a quick 15 minute boat ride out to the reef, did our first ever back-roll entry (OK, everyone gear up, Arnold’s going to demonstrate the back roll entry, oops - Arnold is in and I missed it, now your turn, hold your mask, GO!). Kerplunk. I bobbed back up to the surface, grabbed the rope and started to descend slowly, hand over hand, with Patrick and Jez.
Underwater it was very quiet and even though we jumped in with 10 other people, we only crossed paths with others once or twice. We stayed at a depth of 10-12 meters on top of a long plateau in the middle of the reef. Our dive had a destination and a trajectory (we swam from one anchor buoy to another about 100m away and back again), but we lost all sense of direction and felt as if we were just floating and puttering about directionless. We worked to adjust our buoyancy until we felt like we were floating weightlessly, hovering inches above the coral plateau. Although we were taught that colors dull at depth, the fish lost nothing of their brilliance and color at 12 meters! Visibility was 10m, about half of the typical conditions for that reef – imagine seeing 30 feet of coral reef and fish in any direction! We floated along behind Jez and struggled to get each other’s attention when we saw something amazing. Large (~14+ inches long), striped lionfish with their fringe trailing behind passed underneath us, looking very regal. Jez pointed to an octopus, about 2-3 feet long that was swimming towards its nook. It was dark black but changed color to match the coral around it as soon as it flowed into its den. We watched its tentacles probing around the tiny opening where he disappeared, looking for loose rocks to cover the entrance. A second octopus was nearby, perhaps heading for the same hole but a bit too slow. We saw moray eels lurking under outcroppings of coral, their mouths open slightly waiting for a meal. Jez pointed out the well-camouflaged scorpionfish who looked just like a lump of coral with little bits of ocean plants growing on him until he moved and revealed bright red fins that propelled him like little Japanese fans undulating on either side. My favorite spotting was the 2’ long sea turtle that passed about 10 feet from us. It looked so serene, yet serious, and very unconcerned about all the gawking and pointing. We saw anthias, little golden orange fish that swim in huge schools. Swimming through a cloud of tiny orange fish is like being in the middle of a firework exploding. Every color you can imagine was around us in the most unexpected combinations and patterns, shapes and sizes. We saw big, blobby sea cucumbers and very, very long thin silver fish that looked as if you just needed to wrap them around a pencil to make them a big seahorse.
Towards the end of the dive, we swam into a thermocline – an underwater temperature gradient. The difference was only 2 degrees Celsius by Jez’s watch, but it felt like the difference between a warm bath and the Atlantic in January. After that, we were really cold and ready to get out. Just as we were preparing to ascend along the same line that we came down, Jez pointed to a large fish lurking in the distance and made a trigger gesture with his index finger—the feared titan triggerfish! He looked green to me, but bigger than 18 inches…
On the way home, Patrick expertly navigated a particularly bad section of potholes, deftly swerving and weaving. Just as we were coming through it, we looked up and a bicyclist coming the other way who gave Patrick a big thumbs up. He was very impressed with the mzungu’s driving. I think it was one of Patrick’s prouder moments.
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