Finally Finishing Maldives

 One of my resolutions this year is to blog every day. I have three blogs - this one (my travel blog), a review blog, and my mermaid/conservation/marine life blog. So, if I blog every day that doesn't mean that this blog will have a new post every day, but I will try to post more regularly on here and update ya'll on finishing my Maldives stories and some of my other 2021 travels. So please bear with me. Thanks 

Okay so going back to finishing Maldives since that's where I left ya'll off on... I ended with the manta visiting our boat and the beach party. To be honest I don't remember what order things happened on so I'll be using my Google Photos to keep things in order and keep me on track, but as you know Maldives was all the way back in September 2021 so don't expect as much detail as if I did keep up as it was happening as I am supposed to do. Maybe this year. 

Next up on my Google Photos after the beach party night is a picture of my bed glowing green underneath because I thought that was cool so I guess I spent more time listening to music while the boat moved from one location to the other. 

There are also more dive videos but nothing out of the ordinary. While I traded some spa for more dives, I was still there to mermaid so I went on about 2 dives a day and 1 mermaid excursion a day. The next mermaid we did took us to another private beach, but we did underwater shots this time, woo hoo. I've swam literally all over the world and man, that had to be the saltiest water I've ever swam in. I couldn't last very long due to my eyes burning so bad! However, I did bring 2 outfits, my mermaid tail obviously as well as a Christmas outfit I really wanted shot underwater and would have gladly sacrificed my eyes for but they didn't give me another opportunity. I was disappointed about that but at least I got to swim at the beach. 

After the photoshoot the divers came to join us as well and we had a cocktail party on the beach. It was a fun time. The palm tree and drinks made the sunset (honestly I think southeastern US sunsets are prettier but the Germans made it seem like this was the best sunset they've ever seen). The crew also relaxed and that was the most they've talked to us I think. It was dark/late when we got back so after dinner I just went to bed. 

The next day we did another shark dive. There were tons of silvertip reef sharks, a few sleeping baby nurse sharks, and some grey sharks. I love sharks so it was great! I'm not sure if this was Fish Head or if the shark dive I already told you about was Fish Head, but I just reread what I wrote for the other main shark dive and I didn't mention Fish Head and I feel like I would have if that was it so I'm going to explain it now and we'll say it was for this dive. So Fish Head is where years ago, fisherman would go to fish (duh they're fishermen) but when they'd reel in the line, all that would be left is the fish's head because sharks would have eaten the body before they got it back to the boat. Now that I've typed it all out, I remember that Fish Head was actually a place that had sharks in the past so it wasn't one of our shark dives but anyways whichever dive we did at Fish Head I was like "cool so that means there'll be shark teeth from all the previous sharks" and I found 2 shark teeth during that dive which was super exciting and made my week. Yeah, pretty sure I do remember already telling ya'll about that but whatever. 

Anyways same day, not sure if it was the same dive or the next dive, we had to perform an emergency rescue. Jens the videographer is a big boy so he has large lungs that use a lot of air, plus carrying the video equipment causes him to use even more air as well. He was at 70 bar so we were already on our way back when our guide ran into the guide of the other group, so he sped off super quick to go show the other group a ghost pipe fish. Then Jens's air was suddenly only at 20 bar so our guide gave Jens his octo and our entire group started to make our way up but we kept swimming while ascending so we could still see things and did our safety stop because there was enough air left. Additionally I barely use any air so Lydia and I were prepared to give Mizzy and Jens our octos if Mizzy's ran out as well. Ariane took Jens's camera equipment, Lydia deployed the SMB, and I was prepared to offer my air hose to whomever needed it next (like I said I was still almost completely full). We made it back up to the boat safe and sound with no real problems and the guide said it was the smoothest rescue he's ever done, go team. 

That night was our last night aboard the Scubaspa, so we had a celebratory party onboard where they gave us a free drink woo hoo! They also had sushi and dumplings for dinner and it was the best dinner of the entire week. 

The next day my flight wasn't until late so the took us to Hluhlue Resort to spend the day because due to the rona, no one was allowed into the city. Which is unfortunate because that's why I booked such a late flight so I could explore Male on the way back, but oh whale. 

So we get off the boat and there is a shuttle to the hotel but Europeans like to walk and they're like "it's right there we can see it" so for some insane reason we walk to the hotel??? I'm mad about it tbh. & I tell them I'm taking the shuttle back to the hotel. So eventually we make it even tho we're all sweaty and gross and they give us a hotel room in pairs (I shared with Emma) and a coupon for a free drink and 20 minute spa massage. So we go refresh in the room then head down to the pool and beach. We end up going in the pool and it's a bit cold but oh whale. 

After the pool we go to get lunch in the restaurant because I'm starving. I get a steak sandwich and it is amazing, much better than 99% of the food we had on the Scubaspa. Once lunch is finished, we go to the spa to redeem our coupons. The drink is the same ginger tea they had onboard but cold instead of hot or hot instead of cold I forget which was which but they were both basically straight ginger so I couldn't drink either because it literally burned my throat. But whatever it was free. After our 20 minute head/neck massage I go to the beach and Emma goes back to the room for a nap. The beach is pretty packed because the entire football team of I forget which country is also at the hotel due to the no exploring the city rule. I think Sri Lanka? Anyways so I go back to the pool where I meet up with Kat and the gang. Then they start doing cheer stunts and don't include me on them despite me being a cheerleader as well so I go back to the room to take a warm shower and have a lie down. 

When we are ready to leave, the whole gang is there to give us a grand goodbye as we board the shuttle to the airport for our flights. 

I get to Doha and I am exhausted and do not want to spend another 10 hours in the airport for my layover. It takes going back and forth to several different desks, being sent literally all over the airport, but I finally get switched to the flight that leaves within the next hour. It cost $200 and I didn't get a row to myself but it was worth it to get home literally an entire day earlier. I'd go to Maldives again, but after being so many other places in the world I do think Maldives is overrated. We saw whale sharks, mantas, and lots of other sharks so that's all great and it's definitely the best place I've been for mantas but in terms of overall I preferred South Africa and French Polynesia. 

Until next time,

xoxo,

Tasha

Mermaids and Sharks

 Hola! Buenas dias mis amigos! Una otra dia en el ScuaSpa en Maldives con las sirenas. Esta manana, me despierto a las sies para mi secunda dive! This dive was to s a shark cleaning station. (also please ignore my inccorect spellings and such as I don't know how to get accents or the upside down ! on my American keyboard) I applied the advice from yesterday and didn't have much problem getting down, yay learning! 

The vis is still ... not... Idk how to describe it, like I can see the sharkies far away-ish, but the colors are not there, but like they are but not bright like other reef dives. 

Anywhos it was a much more exciting dive than yesterday. Tons of whitetip reef sharks, even some pregnant ones, a few blacktip reef sharks, and some grey reef sharks. There were also more schools of different types of fish than I had ever seen, which was really cool. I also saw an eagle ray. In Soddie we saw eagle rays like everyday but they're on the bucket list for these people so I guess they're rarer than I thought so that was special. I didn't see a turtle but another group did. Some of our team had to go up early for air but they let the rest of us stay for longer so that was lovely. It was a good dive. 

Despues del dive, comemos breakfast then Emma did my makeup for our first photoshoot. She did amazing; I want to take her home with me and have her do my makeup all the time. I look amazing. We went to the beach for semi-dry photoshoots. I live at the beach so I wasn't excited for beach photos but these girls are from Germany and Sweden so they rarely have the opportunity for such. We were split into 2 groups because there are 2 photographers so everyone can get done quicker. I was first to go in my group and Lille was a great help with making sure I was posing right for the best picture. After Lydia and I finished, the boat was back to collect us so I felt really bad that I went first and took up the time when I have a beach at home. But the second boat back didn't come back until much later so I think they let the girls finish their shoots as well. It was also really windy so when we weren't being shot we had to help hold equipment so we didn't have any time to swim for fun or GoPro videos. The island was not that great and I hope we go to better ones throughout the week; this one is just sand, coral chunks, and trash. No greenery and kinda painful to the feet. 

My worried face! Scared the night dive would be cancelled again.

Lunchtime was when we came back, then we were supposed to do group drone shoots on a different island but the weather was not in our favor. I am going on the night dive at 5:45 so I was worried about time to get back, then I saw the clouds and was worried the dive would get cancelled again (was supposed to be yesterday but cancelled due to weather). Have no fear; it all worked out! 

It rained too hard for us to go to the island, so we did group photos on the bar instead. I was mostly okay sitting there but then when it was time to get down, my legs were weaker than after 6 hours in tail at MarlinFest. When the divers from the afternoon dive got back, it had finished raining and the sky cleared up for us to do our night dive! 

Off the jetty of a nearby resort, food is dumped nightly into the ocean. Therefore, sharks and rays know to linger at said jetty for their nightly meals. It is an active jetty so divers have to be extra careful for boats. We all took flashlights down and sat on the sand in a semicircle as we watched the sharks and rays play. Dozens of nurse sharks and probably 3 or 4 Jenkins whiprays. The nurse sharkies swam right up/past me! See, I didn't need to spend all that money to go to Bahamas to play with nurse sharks; I can just do it right here in Maldives. Oh wait, this is much, much farther than Bahamas and probably around the same price. Oh whale, at least now I finally got to hang with the nurses. When we got back, buzzing with excitement, it was dinnertime. After dinner, a nurse shark joined us on the back of the boat! I guess she just couldn't get enough of us. It was great. 

Until next time,

xoxo,

Tasha

'Cause Ya Had a Bad Day

 Okay, wow, so it's already almost April and I haven't caught up since the end of Feb. I think that I'm just gonna work backwards and maybe when I post I'll post them in the right order and if not, sorry. Internet and time are two commodities that I just don't really have here. So yeah sorry. 

March 22

Today is Monday, March 22. We finally have a day off so I could sleep in and I only slept until 8am but I guess that was good enough because no puking this morning, yay! For those of you that don't know, when I don't get enough sleep, I throw up. It's not the heat or bugs, this bed is just rough and the walls are literally made of paper so there's so much light and noise constantly coming in. But I finally got some good sleep last night so that's very exciting. 

So yesterday we went diving again! Woo hoo. Sam is on vacation and Nick isn't at Sharklife anymore (he'll be back to Sodwana in a week but with Scuba Center). So in the past week we (Craig and I) have gone diving with Coral 3 days and it was my week to dive Raggie Reef. So I've been diving a lot. Glad to get my logged dived numbers up as I didn't even have a dive log until my Advanced (so I'm missing all the dives between open water and advanced) and everyone keeps harping me on not being "experienced enough" even tho I only need 40 logged dives to start my divemaster, which I'm gonna go to Honduras to get after mermaid season.

Sidenote, I turned music on to help me focus but it's doing the opposite and I've been jamming instead of writing for a half hour lol ya'll might never get these blog posts just know I'm having a great time and I love South Africa. 

Anyways, yesterday's dives. So I love diving with Donno. It's so fun when we go diving because I can just relax and we just have so much fun finding shark teeth and booping regs and making bubble rings and such. So whenever I dive with Coral and he doesn't get to come I get a little sad but yesterday's dive was actually SO GOOD and Donno wasn't even on it. I know a lot of the Coral divers because as Matt said, I spend like every night at Vis-agie, the bar/restaurant/resort (they have the best Wifi in town). So we were supposed to go diving with Liam, Craig's old instructor, so I was like "okay at least I know him" but then he got bumped off onto a different dive so we ended up with someone I didn't know, but it was one of the best dives I've had here. 

We got to go to Ribbon, which is on 5-mile, which is so much sweeter than 2 mile AGAIN. I hadn't been to Ribbon so I was actually pretty excited. So our divemaster, Stef, actually has family on Kent Island, of all places! and NoVa and Annapolis, so he actually visits Maryland quite a bit and learned to sail in Baltimore. Interesting. So I should make friends with him (4/14 as I'm typing update I did make friends and have his WhatsApp). But back to the dive, we saw a grey reef shark! I love sharkies! (Duh) and I was working on my breathing because the day before at Raggie Reef, Grant said my bubbles are too loud and scare away the raggies, so I need to exhale slower. So Nat was saying how she breathes in 8 out 16 and it helps preserve air too. I'm already really good at not using air but I need to not scare away the sharks so I tried and I was like very concerned because breathing like that actually makes me breathe a lot more, but it is more controlled and after the 45 min dive I still had 140 bar of air left so even tho I breathed more it used less.

There was also a Scuba Center boat there before us and on our fancy dive I found a GoPro! I figured it came from Scuba Center boat and I'd look at the footage to see who to give it back to but dude our boat wasn't even pulled onto the beach yet when the Coral guy driving the tractor was like "did you find a GoPro it's from Scuba Center" like yes I know that, chill, they'll get it back. So we took it back over there and turns out it's Nat and Summer's manager/friend, Nikki's! I just had dinner with her yesterday. Honestly, not a fan but whatever, she gave me a piece of peanut butter fudge as a thank you and since I was already at Scuba Center, I went to say hi to Connor and them and he was like "go back to Coral" ok fine then, be that way. Whatever. 

By the time I got back over to Coral, Donno had arrived but he was busy with some Caitlyn girl from Joburg that he met on Valentine's Day which is 4 days before he met me and she was just back down to visit for the weekend and they were gonna go spearfishing after her dive. So between the Scuba Center encounter and being replaced, if only for the weekend, had me feeling a little salty, which is sad because I was in such a good mood after the dive and talking to Stef. & ya'll know how I'm not very good at fixing my face and when I get upset it looks like my best friends just died. So Donne and Donno kept asking me if I was okay, oopsie. So then Donno and Craig and I went snorkeling until it was time for our next dive and my dang GoPro was dead! Wouldn't even turn on even tho I thought I charged it all night. The stupid wire was loose, it's fine now but I didn't have it for snorkeling with Donno or my second dive. 

So anyways since I was in a mood I was like "oh wait I'm a mermaid, I can just go chill on the bottom til I calm down" so I go down and LOL I am in a town of divers so Donno comes down too but he's wearing a weight belt and I'm not so he can chill down longer than me so that plan went horribly lol. On the way back up from snorkeling Donno was like "did you have fun" and I was like "sure" and he was like "well if you didn't have fun I just won't invite you again" and I know he was joking but I probably looked like I was going to cry. Then we got back up to the Coral area. He was hungry so I gave him a granola bar and pretzels and I didn't want any pretzels but he kept feeding them to me anyways and with each pretzel I felt a lot better lol 

Our second dive was with Sascha and in the afternoon the winds and current pick up so it was a drift dive over 2 mile. There were only 5 of us including Sascha so she tried to convince Donno to come with us but he had a blister on his toe and his gear was back at camp so he refused but at least she tried. 

The topography was actually really cool and there were a lot of places to swim in/out/below/through so that was fun. I also practiced breathing like Natalie said again and this time over about 76 minutes only went from 225 to 130 bar. Craig is amazed at how little air I use. With Natalie's way of breathing I can't even hold my breath (which you should never do on scuba anyways!). Unfortunately, I really, really, really had to pee and I have 2 rules - don't pee in the tail and don't pee in the wetsuit. So I was really hoping Craig would run out of air soon so we could go up and he did, but it was only like less than 10 minutes before everyone else anyways. 

Then when we got back I saw Caitlyn was using the towel Donno brought which is actually Nick's towel and it put me in a mood again but then My Girl (the country song, not the Motown song) started playing and reminded me of home and my Bville boys and I was comforted. Then we got back to Sharklife and I had a Snapchat from Jacob! 9000 miles away and he still got my ESP. I really love those Travers boys. They always pull thru when I need them. 

So I spent the rest of the night snapchatting Jacob until our CSP scheduling meeting. I was scared Morgana wouldn't book me due to me being in Africa and therefore not vaccinated yet, but the first few gigs are in Delaware/Ocean City so I was the first one offered! I'm pleasantly surprised the internet worked for the whole thing but it did and now my schedule is full and after the call I determined where I can fit in Mermaid Camps and holy poop, it's gonna be a busy summer/fall. Literally no days off because lifeguarding, but I only have those few months to make all my money for the year so bet I'm gonna make it worth it. & the mermaid camps are all client depended of course, I think I need at least 4 per camp to have it run. Then it looks like Nov-Dec I can go to Honduras for my divemaster and be back in time for Christmas. Things are looking bright for a career/future full of mermaiding, diving, and travel. 

Until next time,

xoxo,

Tasha