Nudi Gal: Mahna Mahna

I am watching a beautiful sunrise overlooking the infinity pool and palm trees. The wind is a little strong this morning and makes shore diving a little difficult but I’m looking forward to getting in the water.

I definitely got my appetite back. This morning I woke up so hungry and ready to go!

I changed the setting on my camera’s LCD to “Live View Boost” and now it is much easier to find/see my subjects.

Getting ready for dives here is different. First of all, you sign up for which dives you want to do. There are usually two morning dives, one afternoon dive and a night dive.

We get all ready and then we have to get to the boat. The boat is only about 50 feet out, but there is no pier or dock. We have to walk on the beach (not fine downy sand, but big black rocks and pebbles) through crashing waves to the ladder to climb up to the boat. And those rocks hurt your feet.

I wear full foot fins which means I don’t wear booties. So walking on this beach barefoot is extremely painful. So what I’ve been doing is wearing my Tevas to walk on the pebbles and then climb into the boat. It actually works pretty well.

Then we motor a few minutes to a dive site and roll in… the crew hands us our underwater cameras. Then we descend to a black sandy bottom of muck. To the naked eye it looks disgusting and you wonder why anyone would ever want to spend time here.

And then the dive guides start finding things. Nudis in particular. A few nudis are big and colorful… and even us normal divers could find them. But most of the nudi are so friggin’ small… smaller than the tip of your fingernail.

And the guides find more of this itty bitty nudis than you can shake a stick at.

Literally. You need much more than just one stick.

They take down dozens of sticks. These wooden meat skewers for satay. And they put one by each nudi we might find interesting. And then we divers line up. And we just go down the line, one after the other after the other. We are so excited to come upon one of these skewers and then it’s like a puzzle. Where is the nudibranch? It is small? (sometimes I’ll be looking for a tiny thing but it’s a big one right in front of my face) Is it rare? Will it be so tiny I can’t even find it? Has it crawled away? Or is it see through? Yes, many of them are transparent!

But eventually we usually find it and shoot shoot shoot! On a good dive, we don’t have time to thing or even look for anything ourselves because the guides have found so much and lined them up.

I was so happy during the dives. Dharma is the best guide ever. He finds so many small things and just lines them up. One after the next.

We found so many Siphopterons that I started swimming like one underwater and singing “Walk Like and Egyptian” but changing it to “Swim like a Siphopteron” through my regulator. They do this wiggle instead of gliding. It’s like they are riding a rocking horse trying to move it forward a little bit at a time.

I’m so happy here, I keep singing Mahna Mahna. Bum ba da da dah. Dah da da da do da da. Think the Muppet Show.

So Bernard left his speedo on the Cheng Ho.

Yup. Deal with it. All the men (even the old ones and the beer belly ones) wear a speedo. European or not.

And Bernard only brought one speedo.

So now, he’s diving in his “Y fronts”. I’d call them tightie whities but they are gray.

And since Bernard is the scientist on staff, he doesn’t have a luxury room like the rest of us. He’s staying in Pedro’s (Christianne’s business partner and groundskeeper) guestroom.

So, after every dive, he’s been “streaking” across the property. In his underwear at least… but it does remind me of the scene from Old School when Will Ferrell yells “We’regoing streaking!!!” to all his buddies but once he is naked running down the street he realizes he’s all alone.

Hilarious.

Also, because we have a scientist on the trip, he has collected a little bit. At some point, we are going to have “Nudi Chop Shop” where we take one of the nudis, slice it very thin and look at the radula (mouth parts) under a microscope. I can’t wait!!!

This setting is so much more relaxing and social. Instead of being on top of one another on the boat, here at the resort we have space to get away. In between the first two dives, I laid out on a padded lawn chair and read. But one by one, several people came to my chair to chat about so many topics. It is really nice.

209 - Cratena sp. 2