At Ocean Adventures we also got to watch a dolphin show and sea lion shows that were very fun!
These animals could do amazing things!
Bev-who is always up for an adventure-got poked a little fun at when we saw the look of complete surprise on her face when the fish she ordered for dinner showed up-the whole thing-skin, tail, head complete with eyes and everything. We ate at the open air Reef restaurant at our hotel while we were there. They had a mixture of American and Filipino foods. The breakfast buffet made me laugh-the had pancakes (we were all thankful for), scrambled eggs (which tasted a little off somehow), huge pots of rice, lots of things that we would never think of as "normal breakfast food". They did have cereal and bread for toast. I was excited because I saw these little rolled up things and a sign in front of them that said "lumpia" I had eaten cheese lumpia at the Philippine Fiesta at school and they were delicious. I decided that I didn't need them for breakfast when I got close enough to read the rest of the sign that told me they were "fish lumpia" oh well!
This was the view about 20 feet from our hotel room doors.
We laughed when we first saw this sign and made the boys pose with it and told them they would probably be hungry until time to go back to Manila! They didn't buy it at all!
Ryan LOVES turtles. We have no idea why but he was really excited to see the signs about turtles nesting where we stayed. One nestful of babies even hatched while we were there and the kids got to see all their teeny little flipper prints in the sand.
This is the dive boat
The resort's dive shop
On Thursday morning, we took Scott to the dive shop and after a little while, they decided that the gear could be found that would fit him well enough for him to take a Discovery Dive class and actually go on a dive with his instructor. Here they are trying things on!
This is the view back down the beach from the dive shop
Christmas decorations around the resort's lobby
The blue sign is for the reef restaurant and you could rent kayaks and canoes here too
These are the paths that lead to the rooms
Scott and his instructor practicing skills in the water
My handsome husband getting all ready to join them in the water-they were surprised that Greg wanted to join and were scrambling to get his gear out, so I just waited on the beach, took pictures, and sat and shed a few tears thinking about how much my daddy would have enjoyed diving with his oldest grandson.
My dad first scuba dived at Ga Tech in the 1960s. His gear was all rubber including a rubber wetsuit that you had to put powder down inside to get on. He came home one night when I was 15 and asked if I would be interested in learning to dive. I said sure and had no clue what I was really saying yes to. Daddy found an instructor that came to our pool. Countless classroom hours later, several dives (some very murky ones in Lake Lanier and some in a cold rock quarry in Birmingham Alabama), and many many laughs I am now a Divemaster-the level below instructor and Master Scuba Diver-have taken 5 specialty classes-night diving, search and rescue, underwater photography, and a couple of others so crazy I don't remember. We had an awful lot of fun though-me, Daddy, Stan, Steven, Kim, our instructor John and several others along the way. Greg is still telling people that Daddy wouldn't let him marry into the family until he had gotten certified to dive too-totally not true!
A huge thanks to Bev for hanging out with the kids on the beach so we could dive! She and Ashley really loved their own little playhouse on the beach-called a nipa hut because the roof is made of nipa grass-the green is a netting cover to keep the grass from blowing all over the beach.
Ryan and Ashley had a blast at the beach!
Practicing some more skills-if he didn't demonstrate that he could do certain things the instructor wouldn't take him on the dive
Scott trying to walk in his flippers-they are the bright yellow blobs under the water-now I understand more (it was partly so we would show up well in his underwater pictures) why Daddy always wanted us to wear obnoxiously bright colored gear!
Enjoying the sand, sun, and water!
Here they are-the returning divers! Greg said he had no idea that Scott would get to do/see so much-he said that it was a real dive-only to 18 feet-they saw tons of fish and several different kinds of coral. Scott really enjoyed seeing all the things up close that he had seen in books about oceans. and Greg loved getting to be there and enjoy him seeing it all for the first time.
Scott's biggest struggle with the gear was that the regulator (what you put in your mouth to breathe through) was a little too big for his mouth. That made me laugh to think that anything is too big for his mouth-Greg probably enjoyed being underwater-where Scott could not talk for the almost 45 minutes that they were underwater. We also joke that Scott spends more time underwater than above and in the swimming pool it is very hard to get his attention because his head is always under! So he loved getting to stay under and keep swimming without having to come up to get air!
Yes they did all come back up! Mom always said that her job was to hold down the beach, count heads to make sure that we all came back, and wash beach towels. In the next part, I'll post pictures that I took from the boat while Greg and I were riding out to our dive sites.
