So we padded out of bed on Wednesday morning at 3 in order to pick up Lori and be at the airport -- left to get her near 4:30 a.m. We saw Don for the first time in a while, grabbed the girl, and headed out.
Morning at the United Red Carpet lounge was nice, hope they don’t change membership rules now that they have merged with Continental.
And off to the island hopper. First stop was Majuro. They no longer let you go into the main terminal when you get off the plane to go see the vendors, so that was a bummer. Hopefully we will find a good dive operation there sometime in the not too distant future. There was XXXX beer (bitter) and VB, so I was hopeful for some Aussie goodness in the future today. Lori encouraged me to buy some to bring on the plane, but I demurred. Dumb redhead. Or perhaps just unenlightened!
We arrived on Kwaj, went through immigration, got our passes (no shopping privileges, gasp!), and met Jim for the first time. We had to wait around for our bags, but they did finally let us in after they were inspected, and we headed off on the golf cart for our housesitting job.
We unpacked quickly, and got ready for our test dive -- out at Troy’s Coral Head. Nice site, lots of pelagics, and we cruised by the Prinz Eugen on our way there. I was a little underweighted yet again (same as in Mexico), but still enjoyed the dive. Grey reef sharks, barracuda, eels, pipefish, and all sorts of other goodies made for a wonderful dive day. And then we had dinner over at Jim’s home, meeting his son, his younger daughter, and wife, along with Jan and Malcom and their daughter. I got to show off pictures of Maiya (long story, ask later), and eat some wonderful Filipino cuisine. Yum! We were exhausted before long, and wound up heading home to crash at about 8:30. Although the day was Thanksgiving Thursday due to crossing the international date line, we were informed that the actual celebration would be on Friday. But no diving. Boo hoo.
The waters were very much a combination of diving in Majuro and Hawaii, most pleasant. Definitely looking forward to more time wetting the gills.
