navelgazing.omphaloskeptic.net Journal

Getting There - Aneel's Travelogue

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Diving, Dragon Off of Rincha Island, Tuesday, 05 July 2011 9:00pm

My throat was sore for most of the night, and I was quite congested on waking. I felt much better once I was underwater, but my dive was unusually short. I'm not sure whether I was breathing badly because of the congestion, or if this dive was just deeper than our previous dives. I saw a beautiful deep red sea apple, a ghost pipefish, and hundreds of shiny silver fish near the surface.

We did a couple more dives near Rincha island, featuring many more nudibranchs, a big cuttlefish, a sea turtle that swam right by us, and huge numbers of fish.

In the late afternoon, we took the dive boats over to Rincha and walked around the beach for a few minutes before attracting the attention of a medium sized Komodo dragon. It clearly thought we were food and chased us back to the boats. The Komodo is fairly slow, but its bite is very dangerous. They carry infectious bacteria in their mouths, and they follow their prey for days until it dies of the infections. Modern antibiotics might be able to save some bite victims, but it's by no means a sure thing.

I decided against the night dive this evening, as I'm still congested and was having trouble equalizing my ears on the third dive.