The Boat, The Boat!

Well imagine the delight after looking at the fresh ( week old) lettuces' that are at the local supermarket rotting in their bags, to find out that the boat has been and delivered more produce and groceries, by crikey were we in there fast to buy as many fresh fruits and vege's as we could, as we are all sick of eating pasta and canned fruit.

The amount of sugar the Americans put in their food is amazing, imagine looking at the nutrition labels on a pot of yogurt - serving size 140gm total sugars 47gm! - oh well it looks like by time i get back i will have lost a bit of weight - as the safest things to eat are just the fruit and vege's ( even bread tastes very sweet!)

Have been trying out being without the pump for 2-3 hours each morning - which has been a little trickey - today i think i got it right however - so that is a good step, the problem being that it is hot so us kiwi's are dehydrating pretty quick, add to that running blood sugars high and getting deyhdrated from that as well - it could be a bit of a disaster.

I went and visited the local medical clinic as part of the prep for the competition as Medic. It was a lot more advanced than i thought it would be, and the Dr there, was very re-assuring when he said ( imagine the following in an indian/island sytle accent ) " No one die on dis island...unless they want to. I call plane and plane take dem to other island where dey die, no one die here" this was his way of re-assuring me that if we do have any "incident" we are all in safe hands here. I was relieved to see an ambulance parked out the back, BUT then i realised that it hadnt been used in a while as the grass growing from underneath it was quite impressive.

Kerian did a great dive yesterday - reaching 60m - which is a personal best. Today, and he tried Variable Weight for the first time, which is the discipline that he wants to set the record in, and got to 50m. When he surfaced he was very happy, and saying that was wayyy too easy - tomorrow he will try for 70m.

Well im being kicked off the pc now - so Kerian can do his - stay tuned - theres only 2 days till the competition starts!

Down she goes.

Talk about being like a fish to water, that blue hole is something else – i jumped in boots and all, no worries at all and had a great time swimming around with bi-fins. I even swam back to shore ( all of 15m or so!!) with Kerians Monofin!

But the big achievement of the day was ....drumroll please...I gave the line a crack and got to 4m “free immersion” which is pulling yourself down on the rope, its really quite fun...and quite a bit of hard work as i am very floaty...so pulling down is hard...but coming up, you just let go and weeeeeeee.

I took a few underwater pics at the hole, but we dont have the download cable for that camera here, so they will have to wait till we get back

We are training with Natalia and Karol tomorrow – so it will be very cool to see these 2 ladies dive!..and i might have another go if the line is free for a few mins ( well all i need is about 30 seconds!!!

AARRRGGGHHHHHH Kerian theres an animal!!!

After spending 4 days in getting to the Bahamas - we are finally here at deadmans caye, haven't done much on day one however, drove around with Will who had to get his truck fixed on the other side of the island, and met some pretty amazing free divers, who's reputation comes before them ie William Winram, Ryuzo Shinomiya, Guillaume Nery, Natalia Avseenko, Karol Meyer, Christian Maldame – the list goes on but needless to say It will be great to see them perform over the coming weeks

Well I spent the night not sleeping because just before dinner we were told a delightful story about how someone found a tarantula by a mat.....and then this morning, after getting up and organising a few things, I grabbed a book off the dresser and saw something move. Then I yelled at Kerian who was in another room " Kerian...theres an animal" - ok so it was only a small skink, but I got a hell of a fright, and why oh why did that thing have to jump on my side of the bed???

We are off to the blue hole shortly, we are both pretty excited after all this is what we came here for. I have decided – before seeing the hole, Im going to give this freediving thing ago – my big goal to freedive “no fins” to 5m, I know its a huge goal, what will these superdivers who dive to 100+m think of that!!!!

Oh – by the way for those people who think the Bahamas are idealic and ohh soo romantic....the shopping is ghastly ( ie a box of cereal cost $8!) there is no “creature comforts” ie the hotel we are in doesnt get serviced while you stay, for a 4 person room – they supply 2 towels and you have to purchase your own toilet paper, soap, dish wash etc. The TV doesn't work, there is no cell phone coverage and the internet...well lets just say theres no watching of youtube here!!!!!

The Big Trip

Here we are in the USA ( well Bahamas actually) and boy - its not like i thought! The first thing that struck me is how big the cities are and flat the land is, it took about 35 mins to fly over LA to get to the airport - and the whole time all you could see was housing, buildings and it was all on flat land, not a hill in sight, it was strange to see - and in fact i still don't believe what i saw - its a very very different landscape from NZ. the other thing that is remarkably different is that the metropolitan areas are in grids - all plotted out nicely and tidily with big straight roads in the middle of them, not like our sprawling towns with roads going in all directions.

Our baggage got checked straight through from LA to Nassau - which in theory was great, however it would have been great to change out of our clothes in LA - instead we spent nearly 2 days in the same stuff - it was great to get a shower when we got to the hotel in Nassau!!!!

We are staying overnight at the Wyndham ( shot of the slide to the pool to the left)- which in itself is a small city, it has a casino in it and we went down there a short while ago to give this gambeling thing a go - we spent ( lost) a total of $9 - but were there for around an hour and a half - the other patrons looked at us funny when we said to each other " i just won 8 credits...or 10 credits...or even wow i just won 200 credits" 1 credit = 1 cent!

Tomorrow we head off to Deadmans Caye, and of course the blue hole - lets hope the weather is better than here ( blowing a gale like it does in wellington at the moment, and its not that hot really...well afterall i am wearing my jacket!)