Venetia

Ma omoara timpul… N-am despachetat, n-am spalat, nu m-am pieptanat, nici macar n-am ajuns la zi cu posta… Alerg din dreapta in stanga si din stanga in dreapta, insa macar atat trebuie sa va destainui: Venetia e superba! Gondola e un must! Si daca va prinde un apus de soare pe plaja de la Lido in Adriatica, puteti spune ca viata merita traita! Azi! Mai ales de cand am aflat ca sunt muritoare si ca timpul se scurge unidirectional.

A trecut, ca un vis frumos, vacanta

Full day

painting windows, full house, grill, Ginny smiling at me, awful tired (last night I’ve been out in my metropolis-home-town),  I love when my house is full, at the end of the day people are the most important, isn’t it?

Did you?

and one more

Ok, enough of dreaming, get back to real life and go paint the windows, woman! Winter is coming!

She just needed a friend

Everything which is good is imoral, illegal on makes you fat! I’m so sorry that she’s dead – I really really liked her 😦

Catamaran, my first love

When it’s the right one – you just know it! I don’t believe that you actually need time to be sure, or to over check, you just „click” and there you are, chained to it! I have been on big ships, on smaller ones; on speed ones, on rowing boats, on water bicycles, on sailing boats, but from all of them I love the catamaran. I have met him in 2009 in Malta. For some reason, because of Eminescu’s “knights from Malta” I was under the impression that this country is a must to be visit. I was a little disappointed until I met him. Outside it was unbearable hot, the hotel air condition was not the best, the sand was killing my skin and I couldn’t wear any of my beautiful shoes, but then he came walking down the see, singing doo wa diddy diddy dum diddy do. It was tall and fresh, I could lie on the net between his hulls and feel the wind, see the water and hear my heart beating doo wa diddy dum diddy do. His name was the Spirit of Malta. (in case you’re too laisy to check my links).

Now in Maldives, with all the diving there was no  much time left – but since you must have 18 hours between your last dive and a flight, we had time to book a catamaran in the last day.

A smaller one this time, but love was there, in the air… The ocean was tough, the wind was blowing, the sky was clouded and the skipper was sailing with 20nodes/hour (he said laughing). Nothing to worry about! He rush us from one hull to another, we were in the air, smashed by waves, with the ocean sneaking under my life vest, touching my skin, salty, demanding, totally on control. My heart was bumping, I had no voice left for screaming, it was love all the way… I definitely could live like this!

Dancing with the sharks

When Shamil told us that there are baby sharks around the island, I thought that he’s joking… He said that they are not dangerous – they are just looking for food…OK – maybe it wouldn’t be good for the business to scare the tourists, so I didn’t dare to go close to any of the baby sharks, not after seeing Jaws anyway…

Ignorance is bliss – who said this knew what he’s talking about… so after some days I believed all the “just don’t touch anything”, “no peak and poke” and “marine creatures attack just to defense themselves” theory written in the 262 pages of Open Water Diver Manual. Since the internet speed was quite low and I was in vacation –already reading and doing homework for the course –I didn’t need any extra research on the subject. Bottom-line being that nothing can hurt you there. In addition, the over 1m long shark sleeping under a pear and appearing from time to time in quite shallow waters, inspired trust, somehow.

Getting over the fear and technical issues, you start to feel like in an aquarium in the home reef. The mask makes everything looking like in a movie. Thousands of small and big fishes are fling under and over you and if the visibility is good they look like birds flying in a cloudy day. And all of them are looking inoffensive. Even the lionfish which was very close to my leg and which by a miracle I didn’t hit by mistake. The scorpionfish didn’t look to friendly, so if you don’t walk over it, since it looks like a rock – you should be ok. Octopus on the other hand was amazing. It was looking like a black phantom when swimming; changing its colors to the ones of the environment as soon as it stops. Now I read that all of them can kill you – or at least poison you. The snake fish as well. But ignorance is bliss – so they were all wonderful.

The guitarfish on the other hand was not so wonderful anymore. It was over 1,5m lying on the sand and not paying any attention to us. We stopped; look at it, facing it, no sudden moves and wait. He wait too and in the end moved 3m further in other direction. So what’s the danger?

The big encounter was with the grey shark in open waters. No so close to the reef anymore, no bottom see, no corals, just one diver making some noise to tell us that is there. We were 8 divers all together, he was one. Swimming gracious, not paying us any attention, maybe 3 meters away, one glance and he was gone. Nobody took any picture and thanks God for that because I’ve just read that he hates paparazzi. He was the top of the food chain but we were not on his menu list. Not that day. Maybe next time.

A lot of words, no pictures – our camera could stand only 10m deep and we were up to 23. But this guy has got most of everything – check it out!