Today Gwen & Greet are coming along to snorkel during the first dive.

The first dive is at a location called "El Bajo" on request of Miguel, its his last dive before he goes back to Belgium.We dive for 54 minutes with a maximum dept of 30 meters. The first 10 meters we got a visability of 25 meters, We went down along the side of a wall of corals, at 30 meters we only had a visibility of 10 meters. Going back up, I saw the sun shinning true the corals, beautiful! We saw a trompetfish, parrotfishes, a balloonfish...

Suddenly i feel someone pulling my fins, i turn around and there is sharky with a mask and a snorkel and a big grin on his face – hehe, i wave, he waves back and he turns around again – i was wondering, are we so heigh up that he can comes so close? I looked at my deptmeter 8-9 meters deep!

During the 2nd dive, @ the location "Los Palos", we dive 52 minutes with a maximum dept of 16 meters, visability 20 meters. We dive from one boatwreck "Camaronare" to another boatwreck "Patana". We see again a school of purple blue barberfish, trompetfisch, damsels, parrotfishes, and the little purple shrimps again, i let them walk over my hand.

My mask keeps on having water inside, i just keep on clearing em, making sure there are no hairs getting stuck there. Fidel sees it & makes a sign, i get his mask, and he gets mine; its doing the same on his face. After the dive, he takes my mask, and will put a flame to it, i can go and pick em up later at 5 pm @ the diving centre near my hotel.

@ 5pm, i go and pick up my mask, Fidel gives me 2 big nice mango's – We will take them to El Nicho on Friday. We have a chat. He asks what i do back home, what were my studies – so i say i finished my degree in fotografie, but now i'm teaching little kids.
He is talking about his 2 little girls, his youngest is 6, so she could have been in my class. He sais he has an underwatercamera, but can't find 400 ASA films anymore. I said i would send them to him – or send them to Miguel and he can give them next time he goes.

I ask him if he has already had the chance to go diving outside Cuba. Cause all the tourists here (me as well, cause thats what divers do i guess) are asking eachother in english, "Where have you been diving already? – Thailand & Australia, You? – Oh, euh Thailand and Egypt and euh Mexico....". Fidel sais he has been diving in Russia when he was in the army, but the circumstances were very bad, bad gear, very cold and bad visability...

I Said that every system will change, also this system he might get the chance in the future. Fidel explains that for example a teacher gets 300/400 peso nationale a month, thats only 12 euro's, even if the system change tomorrow and they are allowed to go travelling, they will never be able to save enough, unless they have family outside Cuba maybe.

Miguel (not the Spanish/Belgian), a very good looking black Cuban man, who works in the hotel (one of the gentle friendly employees) has a free evening later on, he asks me out. But i don't go.

We, The tree chica blanca's are having dinner outside again, we are watching a beautiful sunset and got bitten by mosquito's for the first time in Cuba.