Sue and Marie

We have just had 2 of our English friends, Dave and Claudia come and stay with us, so we just had to take them diving, even though they would moan about it being cold. Us English like to moan about the temperature, so it made them feel at home!

We had our favourite dives with them at Los Arcos. It only takes 30 minutes to get there from the marina, so they didn´t get sea sick.

Once we had all popped on our nice thick wetsuits and moaned about being too hot, we jumped into the water.

The water was green with plankton until we dropped below 30 feet, where it cleared up, giving us 30 – 40 foot of visibility.

This comes at a cost though as the water temperature dropped to 16°C, but it was worth it. The ocean bed was littered with nudibranchs (sea slugs) and shrimps for us to amuse ourselves with.

Then, we came across an aptly named orang-utan crab. Usually, these shy creatures are found hiding amongst the coral, but this one sat right on top of a rock and aped around for us.

Very cool. Taking pictures of it wasn´t easy as every time I stretched my arms out with my camera, cold water went rushing into my wetsuit. I noticed that no one else took their hands out from underneath their armpits though.

We skirted around the Devils Canyon to show our mates the view, which is an impressive one, then surfaced to warm up in the sun.

Our lovely boat captain took us over to Mismaloya to show our mates where “Night of the Iguana was filmed” and show them the mounted iguana as our mate Claudia loves them.

After an hour of sunning ourselves, we descended for our 2nd dive. As soon as we were on the bottom, we saw a mantis shrimp. They are really small in this area, unlike the ones we were used to in Borneo. Over there, we called them the finger splitters!

Honestly, if you get too close to them with a camera in your hand, they punch you, and either smash your finger to bits or your camera lens.

Either way it hurts. Pound for pound they have the hardest punch in the world and have the same effect as being hit by a .22 caliber bullet.

The one´s over here aren´t quite so tough, but it is fun to watch them scampering around the rocks and hiding.

We had a nice long swim around the rock formations, which are impressive on their own, without all the fish swimming around. Then a couple of lobsters popped out to say hi before we surfaced. All in all, a good days “work”.

On the way back into the marina Claudia spotted a huge iguana, but before she could grab her camera, it dived down and swam away. One less iguana photo she will be showing her friends back home and I bet they will be happy about that!

Sadly, our friends have now gone back to England and I swear I can hear them moaning about the cold from here!