62) Martinique

Marina du Bakoua, Pointe du Bout, Martinique

14° 33.382 N 61° 03.265 W

I made it to the dive boat at 9am this morning and I think a large portion of French tourists did too.  This is what in the dive industry we call a cattle boat.  When you get to a dive site several tons of flesh and dive gear are unceremoniously dumped in the drink effectively scaring the hell out of the wildlife.  The only sea life left is either too dumb or too slow to get out of our way.  Or, they were just messing with us by showing us who is the boss.  Luckily for the first dive they paired me with a guy from Canada, eh, and he spoke great English.  The best part of all was that he was a very good diver.  We managed to break the dive profile described to us by making it to 111 feet.  The descent was spectacular and I admit I got a little distracted taking pictures.  Besides, that cage that I saw off in the distance wanted me to see it up close.   

  

This dive was very picturesque.  The sponges were large and everywhere; lots of small fish, etc.  Eighty-one degree water at depth was quite toasty compared to Monterey at 52-55°.  After getting back onboard I took off the heavy gear but kept my wetsuit on but hanging.  I was prepared for the surface sit between dives.  I was looking forward to the snacks and pastries and fruit that is common on dive boats between dives.  But, I could not find the goods.  While walking around I smelled alcohol and figured out it was coming from divers.  I thought, well, it’s a French thing.  Then of all things, I see this shelf with a couple dozen plastic cups with, uhm, sugar, a piece of lime and rhum.  What?  

So, between dives and after dives they drink rhum and smoke cigars and cigarettes.  I tried this local concoction and it was horrible.  They use the cheapest rhum and it has to be cut with sugar to get it down. 

Now that the crowd was back onboard I was getting prepared for the next dive.  But, the boat headed back to the dock.  What?  I thought I paid for 3 dives and I thought I was going to dive all day.  Ugh.  What happened at the counter when I gave up the ghost of USD via Visa?  So we get back to the dock and I talk to the leaders on the boat.  One young guy spoke great English and he told me that this boat is not like other dive boats that do multiple dives.  They go out once in the morning and once in the afternoon.  What?  I told him I paid for 3 dives and he verified it and put me on the afternoon dive.  This just proves that I did not fully understand what occurred at the counter when I paid. 

Well, I had 3 hours to burn before the next dive and went back to the boat.  I needed to be back at the dive boat at 2:45pm.  I left the boat early to look for a phone card and go to the Internet café.  Uh huh, closed.  Luckily I had my paperback and read.  It was too far to go back to the boat lugging gear.  Upon reaching the dive boat on time I saw another crowd.  Here we go again.  Moooooo.

  

This dive I was paired with 2 other divers.  They spoke rough English.  And in our discussion I relayed that I dove this morning to 111 feet: roughly 30-32 meters.  They could not fathom that.  They said that on the morning dive they only went to 14 meters.  They were very confused because the dive leaders said it was a shallow dive and I managed to make it a deep dive.  They were still confused.  We agreed to go no deeper than 25 meters and I agreed.  I didn’t want to go deep again.  We did manage to get to 75 feet, though.  They were good divers and that made this a pleasurable dive. 

  

While I was sitting in front of the closed Internet café and reading my paperback Nancy walked by scouting restaurants for dinner tonight.  I was happy that she agreed the pizzeria was the place to go.  She said they planned to go at 8.  I said that I needed to take a shower after the dive and expected to be back around 5. 

On the way back from the dive site the sun was going down.  I was watching it the entire way in and it was very nice.  We were almost back to the marina and just offshore of where the sailboat is and the boat was stopped mid-channel so the entire boat could watch the sunset.  I have never experienced this before and thought it was nice that someone on board knew enough to stop and watch the final sunset of the year.  From the marina I stopped in the Internet café and burned almost an hour and got to the boat around 6:30pm.  I managed to get a quick shower and everybody was ready to go.  I had a pizza again and loved it.  The wine ordered with dinner was not up to speed.  Geez, the red was fresh in that it won a medal in 2005.  I was not much interested in drinking wine tonight anyway.  While sitting there fireworks went off 3 times in the surrounding hotels. 

At midnight the hotel where Clive and Rhonda stayed put on a fantastic fireworks display.  This was the first time I have been that close to that kind of display.  They launched them about 300’ from us and luckily we were not downwind.  I heard the sizzle of the burning pieces coming down.  I even heard one hit the boat and found a small grape sized burnt chunk on the deck the next day.