Parguera, Puerto Rico

La Parguerra, Puerto Rice - July 5, 2005

Since 1995, I've been spending a couple of weekends each year in La Parguera, Puerto Rico, diving the wall with Captain Angel.



I went to San Juan, Mayaguez, Caguas, Aricebo and Ponce on business, helping one of our subsidiaries through their audit in September and installing and upgrading computers, new software, local area networks, telephone equipment, and wide area networks.

There were lots of problems with computers broken in shipment, power failures and burned out electronics. Eventually, I had all six of the Puerto Rico offices interconnected to each other, Tampa and the National Office in Atlanta by a wide area network. When we started they didn't have a single computer.



The picture above is Captain Angel. One of the fringe benefits of my side duties on the island was always a diving weekend in Parguera. I took Mrs. Phred there a couple of times. My last time I took my son. Once I took a strange consultant named "Bob" from Chicago when we changed accounting systems. When I went online to book a dive trip today, I found that Angel closed down last January. It is a shame. He is a nice young man with a lovely wife and two young children. Sometimes he would get a call on the boat and smile and say that the baby just had a bowel movement. He had a nice life running dive trips out to the wall. I had hoped that he would succeed.



The dives were among the best I've done. They started at about 60 feet and went down a coral covered wall with lots of fish and eels.



There is the last time for everything. Due to the tenuous nature of existence, we can never be sure when it's happening. I'm going to miss the Parguera Divers polo shirts and the rainbows over the phosphorescent mangrove bay.



I'll really miss the cool Parguera Divers polo shirts with the little neon fish logo.



My son enjoyed the last trip. He's a poet/lawyer/guitar player with (so far) six very handsome and well-behaved children. I'm not biased about that in any way about that.

Off to See the Lizard with Gordon and Ken

Aboard Blackbeard's Dive Boat

I talked Ken and Gordon into flying down to Nassau to spend a week on the Morning Star. Here they are eating cracked conch at the Poop Deck.

At dawn, on the day after we arrive, I take a walk by myself and see the local fishermen set up for business...

Our bunks are in the main cabin with a galley...one bad thing is that I put on ten pounds...now I have to lose them again....but the food was great and the rum was free...

Fruit for the week in a hammock..help yourself...

I think these railings are called lifelines? Maybe not....anyway they are mostly full of towels and dive gear....

The water temperature was 78 -80 F. I wore my two millimeter shorty wetsuit...it was plenty...the air temperature was about the same....it was the first week in December...

We did 18 dives including night dives, shark dives, wall dives, wreck dives, drift dives and just plain pretty reef dives...

I think I have the bends...my old motorcycle injury shoulder is really hurting....the shoulder is the most common joint to manifest the bends....maybe I'll stop laughing at the kids with the dive computers and get one myself? Real men have dive computers too?

Time to dive....

There goes Gordon...

Hey Gordon...hold this trident while I take your picture....

Ken is more enthusiastic about the trident...

Gordon checks his gear...

Sunrise? Sunset?

Sailboat...

Another sunset...

Bob with the trident...

Bahamas Blue

The.Morning Star...Carol and I dove from this boat in the 80s and 90s...

Endangered Bahama Iguana...
Bahama... Iguana...Madonna
Bahama ...Iguana...Madonna....Nirvana
Bahama ...Iguana...Madonna....Nirvana...Piranha

Gordon gives a grape...Why am I thinking of Gordon Gekko quotes as I snap the picture?
"If you need a friend, get a dog." or "if this guy owned a funeral parlor nobody would die!"

Want a grape? Some guy cooked one of these endangered iguanas and put it on Facebook. They extradited him and put him in a Bahamian prison....If I had Facebook, I would put all the stupid things I do on it instead of here ...

Finally! They put up the Bimini the last day....

May I take your picture, officer? Eventually, Gordon and I find the Cuba Tour Company and talk to the tour lady about Havana....High season for Cuba is December...

Daphne's on the Dock....we get Conch fritters and Junkaroo Kalik beer...."We're rushin', we're rushin', we're rushin through the crowd ... K-k-kalik, k-k-kalik, k-k-kaliking k-k-kalik, k-k-kalik, k-k-kalik, k-k-kalik, yeah."

Gordon and Ken at Daphne's...

Good companions....

Bahamas Diving

Eluthera Islands

I book another week on the Morning Star, a 60 foot sailboat that provides the opportunity to do up to 24 dives a week in the Bahamas. I do 15 dives, skipping the night dives. I've lost count of the number of times I've done this trip. I think it must be around seven. Carol used to go with me on this one back about 30 years ago.

One unusual dive is called the "Washing Machine".  The tide blows over a dip in a cut between two islands and tumbles you for about a minute. I fly up from about 50 feet to zero and back again a couple of times. Another dive is on a wreck where they feed sharks with a big chum ball and you get to watch them in a feeding frenzy for about 30 minutes.

The food on the trip is excellent. Last time I gained ten pounds. I skip breakfast and dinner this trip but gain two pounds anyway....It might be the barrel of rum punch they break out at night?

My dive buddy is Mike from up around Boston. I forgot my dive watch and compass. He does a good job of taking care of me so that I don't stay down too long or lose track of the boat.

The grog on Blackbeard's Cruises is all-inclusive. To get here you fly into Nassau, 52 minutes from Orlando. Most of the week is spent near the Eluthera Islands, about 50 miles east of Nassau.

The water temperature is 82 degrees. The other divers are all from up North. At first I'm the only one who doesn't struggle into a wet suit. They wear them all year in the great Lakes, I guess. After a few days they all shed their rubber suits and enjoy the clear, warm water.

We get some nice sunrises and sunsets. Will I do it again? Once more into the abyss? Should I do it again? Can I do it again? Only time will tell.

 It's astounding
Time is fleeting
Madness takes it's toll...

 Ahh...

 But listen closely...

 Not for very much longer...

I've got to keep control.
I remember doing the Time Warp.
Drinking those moments when
 blackness would hit me.

and the void would be calling.

 Let's do the Time Warp again.
Let's do the Time Warp again.

-Rocky Horror Picture Show

Frolicking in the Surf

 West Palm Beach, Florida

 I decide to go diving and take advantage of one of the free hotel nights that we've earned over the last two years by booking though hotels.com. They give you a "free" night for every ten paid nights you book though them. The value they spring for is equal to the average cost of the ten paid nights.

We have enough credit to get an ocean view room with a king bed on the top floor at the Hilton on Singer Island in West Palm..

 The surf is fantastic and the water temperature is a perfect 84 degrees.

 Our room isn't quite ready at check in time so they give us complementary breakfasts and also comp the $18 resort fee which covers Mrs. Phred's Pinot Grigio habit.

The dive master gives the dive briefing, He says the bottom time on the 85 foot first dive will be 60 minutes. My dive table says 24 minutes, so I ask him WTF? He says "everyone" uses a dive computer which results in longer bottom times. However, I am not investing in a computer at my advanced age. The other five younger passengers are all using Nitrox, but I'm still breathing air.... The tables have worked for me since 1965 so I close my mouth and stick with my table (it's in Spanish but with Arabic numerals).

They've opened the locks on Lake Okeechobee and dumped the muck into the gulf stream, so this is the worst visibility dive I've ever experienced. We sink into murk and gloom with 5-10 feet of visibility. We do manage to hit the wreck. I find that with the darkness and my declining eyesight I can't read my watch, air gauge or depth gauge.  That makes me feel uncomfortable. After a while, the dive master leads the other divers off the wreck and then proceeds to become totally lost. I decline to follow him and surface after 15 minutes....this is no fun...I knew the visibility would be poor, but this was way beyond my expectations...The next dive on the trench by the Breaker's Hotel is a little better.

A selfie with Pinot Grigio while waiting to check in.

Dawn on the Atlantic Ocean.

We drove back to the West Coast after the dives....it belatedly occurs to me that I missed the chance to get the great sunset on the same day over the Gulf of Mexico....a lifelong ambition along with:
1. A week on the Thorfinn diving the Truk Lagoon in Micronesia.
2. Seeing the Aurora Borealis.
3. Seeing the Southern Cross (see #6).
4. Catching a salmon on the Kenai River...Wait! I did that in August. 
5. Experiencing one more total eclipse of the Sun in 2017.
6. Carnival in Rio (see #3).
7. Renting an apartment in Chiang Mai for a month.