Us and Them, Day 7

Us:

One of the highlights of our trip to Bermuda was going on Hartley's Undersea Walk, a.k.a. a helmet dive. You go out on a boat into the reefs, don a very heavy helmet and go straight under water till you reach the bottom (about 10 feet down, or so, depending upon the tide.) Your head stays dry (think of an inverted cup going straight down into a pool of water - there is always air at the top), you breath fresh air pumped into the helmet via a hose and compressor and you get so see amazing sights! We were right up to the reefs and could see many different types of coral. We got to feed coral, touch a sea cucumber, watch a hog fish and snapper fish do "tricks", and watch a parrot fish swim trough a hoop! It was really amazing. You have a guide under there, of course, who has been doing these dives for 25 years at the same spot. He has all the names of the fish and coral on these kind of pointer sticks so he can point to the name of what he is showing you. You are underwater for about 30 minutes total. The youngest person on the trip was 4 1/2 and he and his 7 year old sister went down with no problems! You apparently don't need to know how to swim to do this. If you ever get a chance to do something like this we'd highly recommend it.

The Rainbow Runner boat with all the helmets on the back.

This is what it looked like from the top when there were divers at the bottom - lots of air bubbles.

Nathan and I with Sandy the Snapper.

Them:

Saturday was spent walking to different yard sales in the neighborhood. S had $1 to spend, and she spread it out to purchase things at 4 different yard sales! There was also another trip to Dunkin Donuts. Apparently the blue raspberry coolata got S pretty wired for the day. My parents now recommend not to buy these for kids!