Diving in the morning, leatherback turtles at night

At 8 am, our diveshop came to pick us up and to prepare for 3 dives in the southwestern part of Tobago. Allison was clearly already up, but it took me a bit to get ready.

Allison and I were nervous, because we hadn't dived in awhile, but it was definitely like riding a bicycle. We dived in 3 parts of Mt. Irvine Bay: the extension, the wall, and Dutchman's Reef. Each dive was just under an hour and we saw turtles, a spotted ray, eels, trumpet fish, angel fish, lizard fish, batfish, and octopus.

In between the dives, I napped on the boat. I find the older I get, the more prone to sea-sickness that I am. So I would nap and then the guide would set up my gear and urge me off the boat when it was time to roll (backward).

Our dive guide definitely had a sense of humor and made jokes all day long. His name was Sledge, but his real name which he hated was Handel.

We returned to the villa around 2:30 and ordered villa service for lunch. Allison had a club sandwich and I enjoyed a cocconut curry chicken with basmati rice. We napped and lounged around our infinity pool.

Ryan and Siobhan organized cocktails at 5:30 at a villa resort across the street where we had spent the day yesterday. All the guests for the wedding had finally arrived and we enjoyed drinks and appetizers. We got to meet more of Ryan's friends and family. We drank the night away and ordered pizza until about 11 pm.

On a whim, Miranda - Ryan's cousin, Jim's wife and I went down to the beach to see if there were any leatherback turtles. Allison yells, "look a large rock!" Lo and behold, it was a leatherback turtle coming in from the water to lay her eggs!!!

We waited for about 2 hours to see it come in (it sways its tracks) and then laid about 60-70 eggs and then buries them and makes a fake nest before returning to the ocean. It was really awesome and SOS (Save Our Seaturtles) was there to protect and measure/record the turtle. The turtle was about 5.5 feet long (on the small side) and in such a trance while laying its eggs, that people could touch it.

Ryan had asked SOS to call if they saw any turtles and I would have been really upset if that call was at like 3 am. But we were lucky to be by the beach, drinking Caribes, and eating pizza to witness this awesome act of nature!