On this day, I went SCUBA diving, as I'm a PADI certified Advanced Open Water Diver. Rachel isn't certified, so she didn't dive. After seeing my pictures, though, she wants to become a diver...

So off we went to the little town of La Parguera. Acutally, I don't even think it's a town, I believe that's just the waterfront area. The town is called Lajas. I had arranged to dive with Paradise Scuba Center, which is located at the Hotel Casa Blanca (787-899-7611). I cannot recommend this shop highly enough. They have good equipment, nice boats, know great dive sites, and will absolutely take care of you. The manager, Luis Doitteau, took care of me after a bout of sea/sun/dehydration sickness. If you plan to dive in Puerto Rico, go talk to him.

The first dive was about a forty-five minute boat ride from the dock. I got my gear, kissed Rachel goodbye for the morning, and boarded with about ten other people, eager to see the sites in the Caribbean Sea. The boat ride out was fine, but once we dropped anchor, the boat was getting tossed every which way, and all I wanted to do was get my gear on and get in the water, afraid with every passing moment on the boat that I was going to become ill. Unfortunately, in my haste, I forgot to grab the underwater camera that I had rented, so I have no pictures from the first dive, which was on a wall. A dive wall is a coral formation that follows the contours of the bottom of the sea. In this particular place, the bottom drops sharply from about 60 feet to over 2,000 feet. We dove down to about 100 feet and stayed around there for about a half an hour. The fish and coral were incredible. And I was incredibly disappointed to have to get back on the boat.

For the second dive, we came back part of the way towards the island, and dove on an incredible coral reef at about 65 feet. I saw many different types of coral, including this stuff, appropriately called brain coral.

There were several other types of coral as well, and many incredible fish. I'll stop narrating now, because the pictures speak for themselves...

Okay, I also had to get one vanity shot in there. Though I wish the guy who took this would have noticed the camera strap...

That night, after I recovered, we took a trip out to the biolumenescent bay, one of only seven in the world. Sadly, none of pictures I took there came out. It's nearly impossible to describe what we saw, other than to say that there are these micro-organisms in the water, and when they are disturbed they light up, kind of similar in hue to fireflies, or those neon glowsticks you get on halloween. Needless to say, this experiences was cool beyond belief, but is something that really has to be experienced in person. Words cannot do it justice, and they're too dim to get a picture without having high speed film, which I didn't on this trip. Next time, I promise...

Keep on going, the rainforest is next!