It is finally approaching the time when I will be able to
remove the temporary label from the blog and I will finally return home to my
family. But, before that happens, I must spread the word of my last adventure
in Djibouti.
For my last adventure, I went on an overnight dive trip.
After weeks of flopping back and forth over what I would do for our great
two-day weekend, an opening for the dive
trip came about and I jumped in.
We left Camp Lemonnier Sunday morning and headed down to the
fishing pier. There, we loaded up on the Farragallah and set sail for our first
dive site. It took a couple hours to reach Shark Island which got its name from
the shape of the pile of rocks that make up the island, not from any sharks
swimming around the island. It’s located on the windy side of Ras Eiros and is
a nice reef surrounding a tiny pile of rocks. This trip we mostly dove from the
mothership rather than skiffs. At the far end of the reef there was an enormous
school of tightly packed Ehrenberg’s Snapper. The dive ended and we headed
towards Lake Ghoubet.
At Lake Ghoubet, we anchored at our dive destination and
camp site. We made a sunset dive and a night dive with sleeping turtles before finishing up the
evening with drinks, food and sleeping on the beach. I think I can speak for
everyone when I saw that we were sleeping on cots rather than fighting for sandy
beds with the crabs. I was also pleasantly surprised the temperature was
bearable and by early morning the wind shifted and had an occasional chill to
the air.
A small group of us headed towards The Crack to set the buoy
and check the conditions. Along the way, we saw a pod of dolphin playing on the
glassy water. With the lack of wind, I could tell that this tour of The Crack
would be much better than the last trip. We dived down and found our buoy tie
off point. After a quick swim through The Crack, we surfaced to find the
Farragallah waiting for us. We briefed, suited back up and made another dive
tour. We found a giant Eagle Ray and a Manta Ray waiting for us. The dive was
great and I followed it with a quick trip to search for a lost weight belt and
a knife while getting the buoy. No luck with the search and we headed to one of
the best dives in Ghoubet.
It was a great trip and I could not have asked for a better
way to spend Memorial Day. Or…at least spend Memorial Day over 8,000 miles from
home…in Djibouti.
Here are a few photos from the Farragallah. The wind block you see at the front of the ship is the galley (cut down 55 gallon drum full of charcoal).
