Dive Rarotonga - 1st day

It was Wednesday September 30th. Blaise was sleeping in bed and I was up early and just itching to get going with my day. Why? I was going scuba diving in the Cook Islands today.

So I highly recommend Dive Rarotonga to anyone visiting the Cook Islands. They were recommended to me by Island Bay Divers here in Wellington. I thought why should I use them because they are on the opposite side of the island and there is a dive shop just down the road but let me tell you I am ecstatic that I used Dive Rarotonga. The owners came to get me in the morning and drove me to their shop. I had brought a lot of my own gear: wetsuit, fins, mask, snorkel, knife, etc. so all I really needed was the BC, tanks and regulators. The staff were friendly and showed me a cool way to package my gear for transport. We went down to the boat in the harbour where I expressed nervousness about a boat entry. I had done the practice on a pool edge; it seemed higher from the boat itself. After a thorough briefing we suited up and waded out to the boat. The water was sooooo warm. We zipped out the channel and were into the ocean proper, the dive spot was not far from the harbour exit and Jason, the guy who would stay on the boat helped me gear up, buddy checked me and walked me through the boat entry. After the initial feeling of panic as I was rolling backwards I realized that this was actually kind of cool and I love boat exiting now. I got a personal dive master, Charles, and another staff member, Henry who swam behind us. Turns out I came in a slow season so I got essentially private diving. These guys do the dives so often that the older fish know them; in particular the Triggerfish (named Tommy) came up, he was big. Seriously big, about ½ my size and he knows he gets fed. They cut a spikey urchin for him to eat and then there was a swarm of fish feeding and they’re so engrossed that I could put out my hand and touch them.

The water was warm, even 18 meters down I was warm in a 3-2 wetsuit. And visibility was 30m!! So clear and blue and full of fish…words cannot express the amount of fish species I saw. I will do a fishie sum up at the end of what I saw over the 2 dives.
We came back up and returned to the harbour to grab another tank and sit on the short for a SIT (Surface Interval Time) to release nitrogen from our bodies. They gave me hot chocolate and some cookies. I even got an added treat of seeing Blaise who was trying to find the police station to get his Cook Island drivers license. So I got to squeal to him for a while and bounce around like a fool explaining what I had seen so far. Back out to the ocean we went and went to another dive site where I saw even more fish, different corals and a …TURTLE!!!! I saw a Hawksbill turtle swimming through the water 15 meters down; anything I see after this is icing on the cake, I saw a turtle!

We returned to the shop where they had an excellent system set up for rinsing gear and setting stuff out to dry. Charles my dive master/buddy then proceeded to sit down with me with the fish charts and books and show me exactly what we saw, he put up with all my questions and kept going to get new books to show me the fish I was asking about. They suggested I leave all my gear with them for the rest of my stay so I wouldn’t have to bring it each time and that way it would dry thoroughly between dives. So nice of them and then they were going to drive me home but Blaise showed up on the scooter to take me home. So they said “We’ll pick you up Friday on the road, see you then.”
And I get to do this four more times, this is incredible.

A short list of what I saw (grey ones have pictures, click on the grey word):
Hawksbill turtle
Manta Ray (but only the back end as it swam away)
Moray Eel
Spikey Lion fish
Tommy the triggerfish
Pineapple sea cucumber
Multiple varieties of Butterfly fish
Multiple varieties of Wrasse
A lazy Spanish Dancer(it didn’t move but its supposed to flap around like a butterfly)
Ghost coral
Christmas tree worm
Trumpetfish
Peacock Grouper
Yellowfin Tuna