Nudi Gal: We're gonna need a vacation from this vacation!

We got picked up in the morning around 8am. It was so great to see Pirjo and Francis again. The van ride was much longer than I remember but it was fun to take in the sights of the street life in the Philippines as we drove by.

Mike, Gladys, Dave and Jim greeted us at the reception desk.

Jim’s wife Leslie stopped diving, so she didn’t make the trip. Pirjo and I are going to miss her! She is fun to have around.

I got assigned my own room. It is really very nice with a cool view.

We got all of our gear set up and everything of mine seems to be in working order. Hooray!

We had a welcome presentation and I got to wear my nudi sarong and give the extra one I bought to Pirjot. She loved it and immediately wore it as a scarf. The French!

Dave loved the gavel and said that he needed a picture to put on Facebook!

I got put on a boat with just Francis and Pirjot with Glenn as our guide. How awesome is that?

We have to turn in our list of nudis found each day by 2pm. I put Pirjo in charge of the list because I get too busy with my log, pictures and IDs. She really just focuses on IDs while she’s on her trip. Then when she gets back she takes her time going through the pictures and photo editing. I try to keep up on the trip or I feel like they will never get done.

One of the guests never got picked up at the airport. Doh! He was a last minute add and Mike totally forgot to tell the van drivers to go get him.

This one guy loved the sarongs so much he wanted to get one for his wife. So I turned him on to Red Bubble to get one of his own. Then I wore a nudi dress to dinner and he wanted to know if he could buy one of those too. I had to educate him on what A-line dresses were. J

Maybe I need to ask Red Bubble for a royalty with all these people I refer to them!

The dives were very good, but I just felt off. On my first dive, my mask was fogging up so bad – even AFTER I did the toothpaste trick and using the miracle of shark spit. I seem to have gotten it figured out for the second dive though. Also, as usual my wetsuit felt off. I think I need to do the whole plastic bag over the foot thing. But the nice thing is that here we only put our wetsuits on twice a day. We stay in them for two dives.

I feel like I can’t “see” what I’m doing underwater anymore. I’m not sure what it is. Maybe my lack of patience or my eyesight? I realize that was only dive two but I need to slow it down and really work on getting the shot.

The water is very warm. It seems much warmer than last year but that’s probably because we are here almost two months later.

We stayed up late after dinner and worked on our photos. It is so fun looking at my photos afterward and discovering even more! This is my happy place among these happy people. I slept pretty well….

Here is the list of Day 1 Nudibranchs (from two afternoon dives):

1 - Doriprismatica atromarginata