Day Five

Day Five - Cayman Aggressor

Day five started out a little rough - not weather wise. Our first dive was at the infamous Stingray City. You dive into the water and sit in a circle at 12 feet (13 feet if you bury your dive computer in the sand). The dive master comes around with squid and gives it to you to feed the stingrays. The stingrays are more than friendly as they are fed by tourists day in and day out. Before the food even arrives, the stingrays are swimming all over the divers. Sara played with them for a while and fed them and made one fatal flaw...when she wasn't feeding them, she held the squid in her hand close to her chest. Close to the end of the dive, she had one stingray swim up her body and latch on to her breast. Well, she screamed as you can imagine (stingrays use a lot of suction to eat their food) and tried to swim away. We're pretty sure the screaming was what frightened the stingray and he let go. At that point, she was more than ready for the dive to be over (in fact, you can almost see that look in her eye in one of the last pictures from that dive). While feeding the stingrays was a fun experience (and something not to be missed the first time you are in Grand Cayman) it is not something we are bound to do again.

The next dive site was Tarpon Alley. Known for the large number of tarpon that hang out in the alleys between coral beds, this was supposed to be a fantastic dive. Well...we went went down the wrong alley and ended up missing all the tarpon, save one. By the time we reached the right alley, all the other divers had already been with them and they had scattered. So, while no dive is a bad dive, we were having a rough morning.

After lunch, we moved over to the Wreck of the Oro Verde and things changed 180 degrees. The wreck is now more wreckage than anything, but teeming with life. We loved it so much, we ended up doing four dives on this site alone. Each time we went back, we found something different - and a few things remained the same. There was a resident eel in the coral just off the port side of the wreck who hung out all afternoon and into the night. On the first dive, the inside of the wreck was filled with silver sides - so much so that you couldn't see the person in front of you (there is a picture of Sara in the wreck surrounded by silver sides, but you have to look closely to see them in the photo). During the night dive, the inside of the wreck became the home of a large sleeping nurse shark. On the third dive on this site, Tom pointed out a large green eel under part of the wreckage. As we were ascending, he began to swim away. We were fortunate to get some great photos of him.

We really enjoyed our time on the Oro Verde - it was a perfect way to end the day.