After the long, long drive last night, and prepping my camera for diving, I got to sleep at about 3:30. I then woke up at 5:30 to drive down to Key West for my dive. Two hours sleep was not really enough. I snagged a double espresso at the gas station. Still stopped for a 15 minute nap en route.
I finally rolled into Key West a few minutes later than I needed to. Pulled up to the dive centre around 8:30 and raced inside asking if I was too late to catch the morning boat. "We didn't go out." he says. "Why?" I asked. "Too rough. 4-6 foot swells."
I was diving those in Key Largo! Why not here? The guy was grumpy too, and didn't have a great attitude. I was frusturated. AGAIN, I'd gotten up super early, and AGAIN, I would not dive. Unbelievable. I stormed down the street to another dive shop, and asked if the conditions were so bad that they wouldn't go out in them. The guy goes "Nah, our boat's out right now. We went out." Could you take me in the afternoon, I asked. "Well we're full up...but if you wanna stick around for a little, there's always cancellations. Come back in a bit when i'll know for sure."
He seemed like a really nice guy, and he was really trying to help me out. He even called a couple of other shops to see if anybody else had room. I cooled my jets and went to have a good breakfast to try to relax. I'm a breakfast person, and normally a relaxed person, so I figured one return to form might bring along another.
Wasn't much in terms of a greasy spoon breakfast joint in Key West...it mostly operates at night, so at 9 in the morning it's largely a ghost town...with the exception of the giant novelty tour bus shaped like a train that drives through the streets, towing little carts shaped like train cars. It rumbles along at all hours. I wound up at a Denny's, which was actually pretty good.
At the risk of being offensive...down here in South Florida, being ludicrously overweight could be a sport. People go hard. It's a little bit scary. I saw a woman in Dennys who easily is the largest human being i've ever seen in real life. How do you get to be that size? Isn't there a point where you see yourself and think, you know, maybe I should eat a bit less. It's like there's no filter. She struggled to her feet over a period of minutes, every movement accompanied by laboured breathing. She genuinely had trouble just standing up. It was obscene. It made enjoying a greasy Denny's breakfast a little more difficult than usual. But I digress.
Key West is the southernmost point in the United States, and boy do they want you to know about it. Everything is "The Southernmost Dive Shop!", "The Southernmost Ice Cream!", "The Southernmost Duck Tour!". Because if there were two coffeeshops, why would you drink coffee at the Second Southernmost coffeeshop? You wouldn't want to come that far and then fall just short, after all. So I had breakfast at the Southern Most Denny's.
You better believe it!!! Don't think even for a second that anyone was having breakfast south of me. Not at a Denny's in the continental United States, that's for goddamn sure.
After breakfast, I stepped into a little local coffee shop across the road (the southernmost, i'm sure) and sat down to write the blog I'd missed the previous day. I sipped a nice coffee, and relaxed. It was good. I checked out some of the footage I'd gotten. I was pleased. Once 12:45 rolled around, I went back to the dive shop to see if I was going to get in the water today.
Lo and behold, Southpoint came through for me and got me out, full gear, on an afternoon boat. The swells had subsided significantly, so the seas were pretty reasonable on the way out. This did not stop a number of people from getting seasick. I've never seen so many seasick people on dive boats in my life as I have in Florida. It's bizarre. But I got in the water! We did two dives at Eastern Dry Rocks and at the imaginatively named Sand Key.
Saw a big, BIG barracuda that I tried to mostly keep away from. He kept prowling around the place like a wolf.
The surge was up big time so most of the dive was spent trying not to crash too violently into the coral. All the sea fans and other filter feeders folded gently in the rocking breeze.
It was nice though. Really shallow, so very bright, colourful, and full of fish.
The nice thing about shallow dives, is the colour red. You see, red is the widest wavelength, which is why it appears first in the rainbow; and as such is the first to be filtered out by water. It's so wide it gets refracted out all over the place, and then removed altogether. At around 60 feet it starts to appear desaturated, by 90 it's almost completely vanished, and at 100 red simply appears gray to the naked eye. When you shine a flashlight on it at depth, you can see it vibrantly, because only a small amount of water is between the light and the red object. But shallow dives let you see all the reds in all the fish and coral, and it's quite vibrant and a noticeable difference.
The big highlight of this trip was on the second dive. We surfaced after the first and compared notes with the other divers. Some folks had seen a Nurse Shark, others saw Dolphins tear by at full speed...the boat was full of chatter of all the wild and dangerous wildlife we'd all seen below the sea. I'd only seen the barracuda...and...well, I mean a parrotfish might give you a nasty nip. But on the second dive, I saw a big 6 or 7 foot Nurse Shark.
Not an amazing photo but I was trying to stay at a reasonable distance. A real nurse shark this time, by daylight it was easy to identify. It was tucked under a little overhanging bulge of coral, doing its best to stay out of the surge. It still was tossed around a little bit though, but man...what a cool thing. We got right up close to it. Maybe...four feet away? So cool. I've seen precious few sharks diving, so it was a real treat. My dive buddy was similarly impressed, holding up his arms like a fisherman would, in awe of the size of this fantastic animal. The rest of the dive was not highly eventful, but very nice. Beautiful reef, beautiful coral formations, and lots of fish. All bundled together trying not to be tossed about in the surge. Like schoolkids waiting for the bus in a blizzard. The sunlight broke the water's surface and we leisurely swam back to the mooring line to make our ascent.
We were the last two back on board for the first dive, so we made a point of getting back in decent time for the second one. I'd lost track of what time it was, since my computer likes to show you how long you've been down, and not what time it actually is...though i've since learned how to see both. We powered back to Key West in the afternoon sun, warm and happy and a little soaked from the spray coming over the side of the boat. Today was a good day.
I stopped outside Key West for some good mexican food just off the Overseas Highway. Eating in restaurants by oneself is a bit weird...though something you get used to when travelling alone. Especially in a place as tourist-thick as this...servers usually know. The bill arrives as i'm finishing the main course, with still half a beer to go. Doesn't matter that I haven't asked for it. They seat you by the window, if there is one, but often in a corner where there's room. You get great service, because they know you won't be there long. Not talking whilst eating really shortens your visit. Good food, though.
As I travelled back to my hotel room along the highway, I pulled over to remark on something I'd seen before...a little zeppelin, coasting along above the keys. It was much further east than the last time I'd seen it, and it reminded me of a lonely little fish, in the sea of the sunset sky.
As it coasted off into the moonrise, I couldn't help but think about the vastness of the earth...just as you've gotten a peak into a world that's not ours, you're reminded of the size and magnitude of the world that is. Key west is ever so small, in the grand scheme of things...and we have so many places still to go. The sun is hot, and the night is warm.
It's nice.
-Jeff
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