Isabella and dive master "Vincent" who took her down on her first open water dive
Today is our second diving day. I got up around 6:30 to the sound of the neighborhood roosters and dogs. Another beautiful day. Bought some bread from the bread van. Saw the others gradually come up. We ate breakfast at our bungalow around 8, or at least we started then. I was still typing away at our diary. By 8:30 my coffee was cold and I had not yet eaten. I rushed down the food and then helped out getting ready. Sophy and dad came by and said they planned to hike up the 1st Chute de Carbet. They left before we did. Before we were ready to leave, Thierry got up and we had a little morning chat.
At around 9 we left for diving with Barry in our car. Did not make it far until Lilly realized we had forgotten the wet suits! Went back home and got that into the car too. At least we had not yet reached the Traverse. Half an hour later we were down at the diving place and started to unload. I hoped that Isabella would be able to dive today. Lilly got an extra short wet suit to pull over her regular one, hoping that it would keep her a bit warmer.
Isabella and dive master "Vincent" who took her
down on her first open water dive
We got a new dive master today for Barry, myself and Lilly: Christophe. He was nice. Like Bruno, he could not speak any English. So I acted as translator for our group, like last Friday's dives. We jumped off the boat again. This morning we dived around the Pool of Ilet de Pigeon. We did a few mask and out of air exercises, then continued to do a underwater tour. We went a bit deeper than on Friday. We reached about 15m (45ft) . It changed our buoyancy and at least I had to tinker with the BCD a few times to get it right. As we got up to the surface, Karl greeted us. When we got up on the boat we saw Isabella with a big smile. She had completed her dive with Vincent and it had worked out very well for her. What a confidence boost! Lilly's extra wet suit had helped her stay warmer. That was another plus. On our way back to shore, Karl got to steer the boat. It made a few S-turns and the passengers looked somewhat confused. Karl had a big smile on his face.
Karl gets to drive the dive boat standing on an icebox with
Ti-ponch
We decided to not walk over to the beach and instead use the little table on the cliff next to the dive place. That saved us time and also gave Isabella and Erik a flat surface to do some homework on. I read a book by the table (The Last Dive). There were little lizards that walked down from the trees and onto the wood floor. They distracted the kids a lot. Lilly went down to the dock and laid in the sun, reading a book. Karl played on his Nintendo Gameboy with a little french boy he had just met. We later learned that he spoke a bit of English. The two boys swapped Gameboys and sat on the stairs leading down to the dock.
We went back out again around 3. On top of being translator for our little group, I also had to translate for Isabella's new dive master: Flavien. We jumped off the boat with Christophe. Shortly thereafter, Isabella got to jump off the boat for the first time. She did well. Our dive was nice. A few more exercises, including out of air. We also practiced buoyancy with our lungs, trying to find a sweet spot where we would go up and down with each breath. After a few exercises we went on a small underwater tour around the island (Ilet de Pigeon). Christophe intentionally made us go through varying depth and that caused problems with our BCDs, of course. You could be cruising along without problems and suddenly start raising to the surface almost out of control. A few puffs from the BCD and we sunk again. But not with the finesse of a more seasoned diver.
Lilly and Barry enjoying some Ti-Ponch after a
dive
Isabella's dive had been nice. Her dive master was happy with her progress, but suggested she needed to practice mask removal underwater. We got our customary Ti-Ponch after coming up. That was nice. We spent a bit of time organizing for tomorrow in terms of finalizing our paperwork and booking a dive for Erik. We were able to pull out of the diving place by 5:30. We drove off to meet Thierry and the others in the town of Basse Terre in a hurry. The road is there is rather windy from Bouillante. Tonight is a special night because it is the last night of the Carnival season. It is the night they bury King Carnival. There are big parades in most towns and people dress in black and white. We wanted to see the big events planned for the town of Basse Terre so we had agreed to meet Thierry and the others over there at 6. We drove through at least one town with Carnival on our way and arrived in the town of Basse Terre about 1/2 hour later than planned. By luck we pulled into one parking lot and found Thierry's and Susan's cars right in front of us, by the seashore. We talked up one street at bumped right into them. They had been there for a little while.
Crowds of people dressed in black and white parade the
streets of Basse Terre
The Carnival is rather interesting. It is not like a 4th of July parade where things go through town in an organized train of floats, etc. Here, instead, there are lots of independent groups of people, mostly with trucks/cars loaded with music instruments and loud speakers, each taking its own route through town. So groups of 100-200 people kept coming every 5 minutes. The music was incredibly loud. Behind each truck is a long line of people dancing in the streets. Many of the guys are dressed in drag. We were looking for a place to eat, but nothing was open. Everyone was out on the streets. We walked by a police station in town and asked. We learned from another couple standing there that we could get food in Trois Rivieres, but not here in the town of Basse Terre. So we gradually made our way through town, watching one dancing group after another, and finally ended up at our cars.
 Man on the roof, singing and dressed up as King Carnival |
 Truck bed filled with a band |
On the way to Trois Rivieres we had to make a slight detour in one town because of a Carnival group was blocking the road by slowing moving forward, dancing in the streets. When we got down to the docks of Trois Rivieres (near where we took the ferry yesterday), there was indeed a restaurant open. We were quite happy and we sat down to order our food. The service took forever. In fact, it took about 2 hours for the first plates to arrive on the table. Almost unheard of in a reasonable restaurant. The waitress seemed out of place and kept promising us that things were on the way. We suspected that the restaurant workers were in the carnival and, perhaps, the owner was left to take care of business. But she was not quite ready to do it... We were so close to just walking out of the restaurant a couple of times but food got on the table within our virtual time limits. It took forever to get our bill, too. We were not out of there until about 11 o'clock. We deliberately did not leave much of a tip. Erik and Karl had slept in our car after they had gotten fed and were in deep sleep by the time we got back to the car. We got to bed late.