I woke up pretty early this morning, laid in bed and read for a bit. Book of choice was Angels & Demons. Definitely not my favorite book ever. Then to the dive shop to meet the boats with all our dive gear. My boat had members Chris (my dive buddy), Cathy, Nancy, Lonnie, Sue and Marty. Our divemaster for the week was a nice, young man Tyrone ('Ty'). Mmmmm. More on him later! ;) Our group's other two divemasters were Tim and Mackey. Two of our group had been to the Turks in '99 with a different dive operation, and Mackey was their divemaster then. The story goes that he would regularly drop to 120' to clear his sinuses. We tried to get on his boat, but it was all full up. Tim is a resident of the U.S. with dual citizenship at TCI. His great...great grandparents moved from Bermuda to Grand Turk to get in on the salt trade. They moved to TCI in the 1800's (I heard 1820 and the 1850's), built a HUGE, beautiful white house of 10,000 square feet (currently undergoing restoration), and proceeded to make a business of the salt. In the 1950's, England took the land to try to salvage the salt business there, but to no avail. At this time, the family is trying to regain control of some of the land surrounding the house. Not much, just a few hundred yards each way. Tim's boat got a tour of his house when we made our trip to Salt Cay on Thursday.

The two dives were nice and easy, with the usual first dive day 'things must go wrong'. We had a computer stop working, one flood, and I couldn't get my BC or weight belt situation nicely; things of that nature. We saw squid playing, and they were small, so I will go so far as to say "young squid". Things were otherwise uneventful. It took me a while to see why the Turks are so popular for diving. I finally realized just how much coral and sea life there is there. The coral is not as colorful as the flower gardens, but it is plentiful and although not dead like you will see in many other places, a lot of it is bleached (I brought some home that washed up on the beach).

After the dives, we went to lunch at The Water's Edge, owned by Shamus from Ireland. This is a beautiful restaurant and bar next to where our dive boats reside and right over the water. We would come to find out that it is not known for its speediness or care of tourists, but it was fine today. I had chicken goujons (aka chicken fingers) with fries.

After a shower, I relaxed all afternoon on the beach, on a lounge chair, under a shade tree. I did very well not getting too much sun this week if I do say so myself. Except for my nose, which was Rudolph Red my entire stay, but it didn't peel or really hurt, so I still consider that a success. Before dinner, I took my digital camera and my book, stopped at the bar for a rum punch, and plopped myself at the restaurant pool, in a lounge chair facing the ocean and the sunset, waiting for the elusive green flash, but alas, not this night. Or any night this week.

Dinner was back at The Water's Edge, Jamaican Jerk chicken and rice, with leftovers for later in the week. I don't think I made it up past 10pm.