The Blue Hole is reputed as one of the best dives in Guam. It is located on the southern coast of Guam. I picked a night dive to go there. The hole is just that, it's a natural limeston vertical shaft going down into the reef on the side of a sheer cliff. You can enter this tube from the top at about the 60' level. It is about 20 foot across. As you decend you can see all kinds of sar fish and urchins on the walls of the shaft.

What a fish-o-rama. There were tons of fish. I saw a foot-long angel fish. The 500 yard swim on the surface was the only tiring part of the dive but it is worth it to get out to where the fish are. The sky had turned overcast and we got a slight sprinkly of rain.

Raul got us onto the Navy base which is accessible to US citizen but not really sanctioned for scuba use. It is the Clinton administration so don't ask, don't tell. There is a little park with a concrete pool right in the side of the bay. It is obviously used for training. Apparently this is known as Gab Gab. If you go about 500 yards out into APRA Harbor to a bouy, you come to what is known as Gab Gab II. The bout itself marks a cliff that goes from 50' down to abut 120' leading out to the channel. The bottom of the cliff is a sandy bottom and not very interesting.

The Micronesian Dive Shop put on a great lunch for us between dives complete with sushi. For the second dive of the day, we made a short boat ride from Shark Pit to Eel's Garden. It is named that for the Sand Needles which are eels living in the sand swaying in the tide like blades of grass. I also saw a small morea eel hiding in a coral. I saw a sea slug, many trigger fish, and angel fish. This was my deeped dive ever going down to 120' for the first time although most of our time was spent at the 40' level.

With my dive buddy, Raul Estravit, I went on a trip to the Shark Pit, just off the southern coast of Guam, on the Orote Peninsula. Raul drove us to the boat dock. The boat "Scuba Roo" was pretty good size with probably 40 people on board. We sailed out into the pacific to an area that was like an old dumping ground. I presume the sharks liked all the trash.

For the second dive of the day, we had a night dive. I had never been on a night dive before. Lee loaned me a flashlight. We had glow stick strapped on as well.

Even with the flash light vivibility wasn't much better than 3-6'. We went down along a wall to about 60' down. You could very easily get confused about direction. Shortly into the dive, the flashlight in my hand actually imploded under the pressure, which was only about 4 atmospheres.

On the weekend of the 4th of July, Lee and I went with some of Lee's friends to Lake Travis. Lee's soon to be wife was unable to go so I used Lee's wet suit and octopus while he used hers. Lake Travis is a flooded valley so there are pecan groves and lawn mowers to see. Visibility is not that great.

For the second dive of the day we opted for a more shallow dive between Cancún and Isla Mujeres. This was much nicer dive. The current was only about 1 knot. We saw a nurse shark, tons of fish and a few baracuda. The baracuda followed us around from a distance. I found a 3-pound weight on the bottom but then lost my nice weight belt on the boat. My weight belt used bean bags of lead weights instead of hard weights.

We did not need wet suits for these dives. I still needed 12# of weights because of the salt water.

On a family vacation to Cancún, Mexico, Jim and I went Scuba diving using a local "dive shop". This dive shop consisted of a shack down the beach from our hotel. The Dive guides were a couple of kids that were about 15 and a small whale boat maybe 20' long. There was one other divers in the boat but he did not seem to have any experience. We were given the option of a shallow or a deep dive. We opted for one of each. That was just one mistake in the chain.

Retuned to first boat and swam through interior. Returned to surface and then to shore when ran out of air. Used underwater tablet for first time.

In: 4:36 PM
Out: 5:00 PM
Rep Group: E-G