The Gardens
The funniest incident that happened on a dive was when Tim was concentrating so much on video recording a juvenile Cowfish that he did not even notice the orange Seahorse that was attached to a rope sponge and was less than a couple of inches from his left hand. You can imagine the grief we gave him about that oversight.

Dive St Vincent Jetty
Whilst helping to unload the boat after a long days diving we were told that one of the Divemasters had found a pair of Frogfish on the legs of the jetty whilst he was doing some maintenance to the underside of a boat. Not wanting to forego the opportunity to see and photograph Frogfish, I donned my wetsuit, mask and snorkel and armed with my camera which still had a few unexposed slides remaining, hopped off the jetty into deep water, well five feet really but who is counting. There they were, bold as brass, an orange one in a sponge and slightly smaller yellow one just below it. I could not believe my eyes, but it does show that on St Vincent you do not need to go far to see something unusual.

After a week of diving Tim and Robin’s vacation was finally over but during their farewell evening meal they were already making plans to return back to St Vincent, possibly in May 2005 when they will be celebrating their wedding anniversary. We were delighted that St Vincent had impressed them so much, another pair of converts to St V.

One of the problems that present itself when you are diving in excess of 90 minutes each dive is hunger. By the time you return to the jetty it is the middle of the afternoon and you are ravenous. For the first week we satisfied ourselves with fruit but eventually succumb to Bill's suggestion that we should try a ‘Roti’, which is a local takeaway consisting of mildly curried chicken, meat or vegetable wrapped in a type of tortilla. It looks like a parcel, is very filling and boy does it taste good. So that became our regular after dive lunch.

A dive trip to St Vincent would not be complete without a visit to the Surfside restaurant. We invited Bill along as our guest by way of thanking him for his efforts. As we watched the sun go down, we swapped dive stories, ate pizza and drank the locally produced beer called Hairoun which means ‘Land of the Blessed’, a most appropriate description for such a wonderful island.

All too soon our vacation was over. Jeff & Marti departed back to Atlanta at ‘O dark hundred’ (a quaint English expression meaning ‘Too b**dy’ early) but were forced to overnight in Miami due to the closure of the airport by Hurricane Francis. We on the other hand had a much longer but far less eventful trip and got home before they did.

Plans are already afoot to return back to St Vincent in September 2005

Excuse me Tim have you seen a juvenile Cowfish around here anywhere?
(sorry Tim I could not resist this one !!!!!!)

What a great way to end the days diving, watching the sunset whilst drinking a cold glass of Hairoun beer.