another world .................. from P

We finally got down there. 25 feet down today. Our oldest daughter, E, and her boyfriend, Nick, flew down to key west for four days to hang out with the old folks. K's nephew from Miami and his girlfriend (John & Sara from the previous airboat blog) drove down also. John towed his powerboat down, so the six of us rented tanks and equipment to fill in the holes of what we don't already own, braved the 2-3 foot chop, and headed out on a reef diving excursion! At first it was tough going. The flat bottom boat was pitching hard against the chop as we wrestled on our BCs, weights, and tanks. With 3 to 5 mil wetsuits we were more bouyant than expected in this super salty water, so K had to scramble back onto the boat to add more weight. That is tough work when you are loaded with equipment and the boat is slapping up and down 2-3 feet at a time. Sara stayed on the boat, helped out, and kept watch. Once we were all finally "at depth" - wow! We glided through alleyways between walls of coral reef teeming with odd, colorful fish. Past big brown, orange and purple coral, under a ledge, up through a school of light blue fish. Around a bend of more coral ledges, John waved and pointed under a shelf - two big caribbean lobsters were eyeing us. John quickly reached around behind one and grabbed him! After a few minutes he let him go - panicked, the lobster shot away from John like a bullet - straight into my crotch. That was one of the many surprises today. Tomorrow we are going back out to do a deeper dive on a wrecked trawler. I can't imagine a more interesting and fun day than the one we had today, but I have said that a bunch of times already on this trip, so I will try to just stay open to whatever happens.