The view from our new room

Up early this morning for my diver training. At 9:00am Lisa made her way to the pool for a spot of relaxation and I headed to Buccaneer Diving for my classroom session. Following this I went to the fun pool for a pool session where I had to demonstrate removing the regulator and being able to clear my mask. We then dropped down to 3 meters (the deep end) where I demonstrated my ability to control buoyancy and equalise pressure in my ears and mask. The dive was then planned at a Coral Garden for the afternoon so I went off to find Lisa at the other pool. She was enjoying a drink, poolside, with Mark and Gwin.

We grabbed a bite to eat and a drink at the poolside restaurant and took things easy until it was time for my dive and Lisas Swahili lesson.

I was taken to another beach where we kitted up for the dive and then as soon as the tide came in, walked out toward a waiting boat. The dive itself went down to 6 meters and around mainly dead coral, but the variety of fish was quite impressive. There were Pipe Fish, Crocodile Fish, Stingrays, Lobster, Anonomea Fish and Lion Fish to name those I can remember! The dive lasted 45 minutes and I had a great time so I immediately booked a dive for the following morning.

Lisa enjoyed her Swahili Lesson. I got back to her insulting me in ways I couldn't understand. The main focus of the lesson was the Jambo Song (click to see Jambo Song Lyrics in Swahili with an English translation)

One of the Verat Monkeys that terrorised the guests

After a quick shower and changing we zoomed off to get dinner at the main restaurant and met up with Mark and Gwin for drinks. While relaxing with my first Tusker of the evening, I was handed a folded up section of newspaper by one of the animators who provided the entertainment at the hotel. I'm afraid to say the action of merely accepting this piece of paper would lead to the ultimate embaressment of Lisa and myself. We were forced to play a sort of musical statues, dancing together until the music stopped at which point we were meant to unfold the paper and then both stand on it. I'm not sure what was more embarrasing, my dancing or the fact that we lost. But losing didn't mean the ordeal was over, we were then separated into 2 teams (men verses women) along with the other contestants of the musical newspaper game. A general knowledge quiz then commenced in which I (I am ashamed to say) played a major part in losing for the men. 69 as Roman Numerals is LXIX not CXIX dummy! It should have been quite impossible for the men to lose, as we quite unashamedly cheated.

After drowning our (well mine, Lisa was on the winning team) sorrows with a few glasses of Tusker, we set of for the land of nod.