PURA VIDA (costa rica update #2)

What is it really like to scuba dive?  I can only begin to describe the sensation.  Actually, my first thought as I began my certification class was that it seemed pretty primitive all the gear we had to equip simply to breathe underwater.  Since the beginning of mankind, I imagine three of the greatest aspirations of Man were to fly through the air, soar among the stars and roam freely underwater.  We've long since achieved the first, grasped at the roots of the second, but the water remains a largely elusive world.

To be perfectly honest, I've always found fish fairly dull.  Beyond the fish I eat, my only encounters with the animals are through the glass of their tanks in the aquarium and let's set something straight - there's very little difference between staring at a fish through glass and staring at a fish projected on your TV.  But it's one thing to see a fish swimming aimlessly around in a tank and another entirely to swim among fish in their natural habitats.  It's another to see a Moray Eel lurking in its cave with its mouth wide open, eyes unblinking, waiting patiently for its next meal to swim a little too close.  It's another to see tiny creatures half the size of the tip of your finger poking out of a reef, ducking away from your inquiring fingers like the many heads of a whack-a-mole game. As a lazy pufferfish floats on by seemingly oblivious to your obtrusive presence, you give its tail a quick pinch to cause it to swim indignantly away.  It won't bother puffing up for you.

Three of the most amazing sights I witnessed under water:

1. A literal tornado of silvery fish from as high as I could see down to the bottom where I hovered, a frenzied cyclone of fish seemingly determined to bore a hole straight through the ground only to at the last minute turn perpendicular to the floor in a cool, sleek stream extending beyond your vision.  What are they doing?  Where are they going?

2. A hawksbill turtle.  In direct defiance to the timid nature of most of the sea life you'll encounter, this turtle swam its long graceful spirals around us before the murky waters swallowed it up forever.  How old was this turtle?  What is it thinking?

3. An eagle ray.  We swam and actually stumbled upon it directly below us, a couple feet away.  It was sucking the floor below it vigorously, apparently too ravenous to bother to be bothered, an animal after my own heart.  To be sure, a ray is one of the most graceful and awe-inspiring creatures you can ever hope to witness underwater.  Rays are the swans of the ocean, the geese among the many ugly-ducklings of the sea.