Unfortunately, it appears that wasn’t all he brought with him, it rained last night and has rained most of today!!!!

Remember I told you about the price one pays for being in ‘paradise’. Well, when Roger saw how the sand flies had abused my body while he was away he took this photo, so you can all wince together!! It’s not just on my back, but my arms, legs and surprisingly, on my scalp! Now you see why people here look like they are contagious.

Anyway, despite the miserable weather and my itchy bites, we went diving with Janey and Bill, a couple who travelled in with Roger, plus Dewhite, a paramedic from Colorado with a penchant for rum and cokes.

We went to a dive site called Gold Chain Reef. It was very disappointing and Janey admitted later that after 30 mins she was actually bored.

Disheartened and cold, we all decided to skip the 2^nd dive of the day and retired to the restaurant for coffee and cookies, which then turned into lunch. Hal, one of the investors in the resort very kindly showed Roger some of the nicer anchorages and loaned him a book with lots of info for our next island, Guanaja,

The rain came down and the temperature dropped, as did our numbers, with Bill & Janey opting for a siesta instead of a dive.

We hardy few, then went out to Forty Foot Point for our dive. Boy what a great dive, with lots to see.

Roger spotted a large Octopus, the biggest I’ve seen (though I have only ever seen 3), there were Morays, Scorpion fish and Flamingo Tongues and the coral was really diverse.

All in all, a dive well worth getting cold for.

Well today turned out to be yet another cold, wet miserable day, so there was nothing for it but to dive, again!

We could tell it wasn’t going to be a nice boat ride when Travis, the captain put his dive mask on to steer the boat!!!

We did a dive called Menagerie, which is just off the beach from Fantasy Island.

Now one of the things about this dive is the number of shoaling fish.

This is mainly because, though I and many others strongly disagree with the practice, the dive outfit from Fantasy Island feed the fish.

Well, as I said I don’t agree with it, I was taught that you look, but don’t touch, take only photos and leave only bubbles.

We found out, first hand, what the consequences of fish feeding were, when, later in the dive, just as we were about to do our safety stop, Janey was attacked by a school of Bermudan Chubb. They were biting her tank and her hair.

She thought someone was slapping her and was not impressed.

But it got more serious than that, when Roger was attacked.

Unfortunately for Roger, unlike Janey, he doesn’t have copious quantities of hair.

So when the fish started biting him, they were taking chunks out of his head and he was bleeding. So he had to finish the dive with one hand stemming the flow of blood  

So the next time you get the opportunity to go on one of these ‘Shark or Grouper feeding’ dives, just think about this incident and how much more serious it could have been if it had been sharks!!! You see, the fish come to associate food with divers and lose any fear they may have and then get miffed when there is no food.

As we were so cold and wet we decided to skip the 11 o’clock dive, instead opting for coffee and cake. Well dear readers I have to say I have failed you. I told you I was on the quest to bring you a seahorse, yes, you guessed it, they saw one on this dive. Nobody was going to tell me as they knew I would be upset. Talk about Murphys law!!!

Determined to see one for myself, (I could have got Steve to e-mail me one of his photos, but my professional pride forbids me to do that) we did another dive. By this time the rain was coming down in buckets but we dropped into the deep blue sea in search of the elusive seahorses.

Dewhite, who had just qualified open water, was doing his first ‘qualified’ dive with us and spotted a large peacock flounder, which is no mean feat at the photo shows.

They are so well camouflaged.

We saw Moray, Spotted drums, you name it, but no Seahorses.

Roger did spot these 2 cute Banded Shrimps, who were standing guard at the entrance to a big Barrel Sponge. They looked like they should have been a couple of bouncers in a Disney film.

Anyway, in an attempt to find my personal holy grail Nick a great Dive Master and who would only need an eye patch to be a Cap’n Ron double, is going to take us back to the ‘sea horse’ dive site tomorrow.

Let’s just hope the sea horse hasn’t sought greener pastures or galloped off into the sunset!