When it rains it really does rain!
Well, to be fair, it is Cyclone season. Not sure whether it is because the buildings are pretty flimsy and not at all water tight. Or whether the rain and the force of the winds make it sound really that much worse than in the UK. But the combination of large noisy crashing waves, white caps where there shouldn't be, and horizontal rain makes for a very interesting evening for sure. Your mind does play tricks on you at night. Are things really that more intense and loud, or is it just the stillness of trying to get to sleep. Anyway, we had our first proper side of a cyclone.
To me it seemed really bad weather, to the locals it was nothing! Of course I have been saying for ages that we are still really dry here, but after the first of, no doubt, a series of inundations and the worst to come, we now have lots of little green shoots coming up through the sand trying to make the football pitch all green. Of course the goats soon nibble anything they can find, but in this circle of life that will eventually end up on our dinner plate! The fact that the goats also eat the used paper out of the bins in the toilet will not get more of a mention than that! Enough said, I think!
Shutters were all banging and walls leaking, but thankfully only 36 hours of the wet weather before it subsided and we hope with better visibility to start the first diving of this expedition tomorrow. In the aftermath, all the wood has swollen, the doors aren't locking and the decking has all been pulled up. But hey, the sun is shining, there is a slight breeze, and most importantly we have electricity back on again, and fewer electric shocks now things have dried out a little.
A great day to be in Coco Beach.
Sunday, 14 January 2007
Saturday, 13 January 2007
Christmas in Andavadoaka
What a whirl wind of a non-holiday.
On 20th December all the volunteers left the site and took with them the majority of the staff who were having a well earned break. But that left a few of us on site to pick up all the pieces and sort out 3 years worth of accumulated junk. In addition to having to sort out a lot of stuff, we were fumbling everything and were super-inefficient as the staff who had gone had also taken with them a lot of their accumulated knowledge and expertise!
Who planned a 5am dive for the first day??
Well, lets just say that the mind was willing, the body wasn't totally capable. Getting up in the dark and having to dig out a fleece to keep warm and find all my dive gear with a feeble torch was a sleepy and very inefficient process. Not mentally prepared to find out that there didn't seem to be a fuel key anywhere around and all the key protectors had left site. Breaking the door down started to look like a distinct possibility until the discovery of another keyholder but that was to a second lock (which revealed the lock to which we did have a key). Bingo.
I also had to go on the death march a couple more times to retrieve the satellite phones, then to collect another GPS to get the correct points for our sites. All this was undertaken wearing a full 5mm wetsuit in the now 28degree sunny weather over ultra reflective white white sand. Slightly uncomfortable!
But so worth it! The dives were fantastic.
A double dive: Andravamaike: Sea Mount at 25m. A myriad of large schools of large fish(unicorn fish, snappers), a 1.5m potato grouper who just hung around, a couple of large barracudas, a massive mackerel which dwarfed the shark that was apparently in the distance (we all got distracted). Slight current but that just enabled us to drift through all the schools. Fantastic, unfortunately as it was a deep dive we were restricted to 20minutes.
FAD Fish Aggregating Device: This dive was to check out whether there really were many large fish, pelagic predators hanging around the device set at the surface of 300m (in the deep blue). Some talk of sharks, deep, deep water in the open blue and near where the shark fishermen cast their nets had me slightly nervous, but hey, I have neoprene and lots of bubbles. This was the reason for the full length 5mm suit, no flesh showing means I look nothing like a tasty fishy!
A good dive just to hang out in the open ocean, see the FAD, see lots of little juvenile golden trevally etc, but no big fish. At least none that I saw! Apparently there was a 2.5m shark cruising just above and around us, but I managed to miss the whole thing. I got that there was some alert (shouting through the regulator) but didn't see a sausage. Needless to say the snorkeler above was well out of the water!
Was pretty pleased with myself having taken my first lot of good underwater photos, sure some of them will be badly out of focus, but the charismatic grouper was dead still for the perfect shot. Of course there is a reason for me to congratulate myself in that previously Alasdair the Boss/coral freak, extracted all the photos from the camera and proceeded to delete all the fish pictures as they weren't of interest to him 'Why? Because there were no coral pictures!' Yep, that was the only copy and pretty much it. So I was upset.
OK that was just one morning. The rest of Christmas was taken up with doing chores mainly and the odd dive. Most of the staff left on site had cut feet and weren't able to get into the water so diving was off!
An odd Christmas time really, too much to do, not enough time. Really quite a whirlwind. The day we did take off to visit the fancy Italian hotel, it rained and rained, and it was a long walk there (1hr20mins), but we managed to get a lift in a truck on the way back. The food, though nice, just happened to be pretty much the same as we had for our evening meal, rubbish!
Ah well! back to real work and time to relax! Sorry, is this paradise or something.
On 20th December all the volunteers left the site and took with them the majority of the staff who were having a well earned break. But that left a few of us on site to pick up all the pieces and sort out 3 years worth of accumulated junk. In addition to having to sort out a lot of stuff, we were fumbling everything and were super-inefficient as the staff who had gone had also taken with them a lot of their accumulated knowledge and expertise!
Who planned a 5am dive for the first day??
Well, lets just say that the mind was willing, the body wasn't totally capable. Getting up in the dark and having to dig out a fleece to keep warm and find all my dive gear with a feeble torch was a sleepy and very inefficient process. Not mentally prepared to find out that there didn't seem to be a fuel key anywhere around and all the key protectors had left site. Breaking the door down started to look like a distinct possibility until the discovery of another keyholder but that was to a second lock (which revealed the lock to which we did have a key). Bingo.
I also had to go on the death march a couple more times to retrieve the satellite phones, then to collect another GPS to get the correct points for our sites. All this was undertaken wearing a full 5mm wetsuit in the now 28degree sunny weather over ultra reflective white white sand. Slightly uncomfortable!
But so worth it! The dives were fantastic.
A double dive: Andravamaike: Sea Mount at 25m. A myriad of large schools of large fish(unicorn fish, snappers), a 1.5m potato grouper who just hung around, a couple of large barracudas, a massive mackerel which dwarfed the shark that was apparently in the distance (we all got distracted). Slight current but that just enabled us to drift through all the schools. Fantastic, unfortunately as it was a deep dive we were restricted to 20minutes.
FAD Fish Aggregating Device: This dive was to check out whether there really were many large fish, pelagic predators hanging around the device set at the surface of 300m (in the deep blue). Some talk of sharks, deep, deep water in the open blue and near where the shark fishermen cast their nets had me slightly nervous, but hey, I have neoprene and lots of bubbles. This was the reason for the full length 5mm suit, no flesh showing means I look nothing like a tasty fishy!
A good dive just to hang out in the open ocean, see the FAD, see lots of little juvenile golden trevally etc, but no big fish. At least none that I saw! Apparently there was a 2.5m shark cruising just above and around us, but I managed to miss the whole thing. I got that there was some alert (shouting through the regulator) but didn't see a sausage. Needless to say the snorkeler above was well out of the water!
Was pretty pleased with myself having taken my first lot of good underwater photos, sure some of them will be badly out of focus, but the charismatic grouper was dead still for the perfect shot. Of course there is a reason for me to congratulate myself in that previously Alasdair the Boss/coral freak, extracted all the photos from the camera and proceeded to delete all the fish pictures as they weren't of interest to him 'Why? Because there were no coral pictures!' Yep, that was the only copy and pretty much it. So I was upset.
OK that was just one morning. The rest of Christmas was taken up with doing chores mainly and the odd dive. Most of the staff left on site had cut feet and weren't able to get into the water so diving was off!
An odd Christmas time really, too much to do, not enough time. Really quite a whirlwind. The day we did take off to visit the fancy Italian hotel, it rained and rained, and it was a long walk there (1hr20mins), but we managed to get a lift in a truck on the way back. The food, though nice, just happened to be pretty much the same as we had for our evening meal, rubbish!
Ah well! back to real work and time to relax! Sorry, is this paradise or something.
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