Finally...good diving pictures!

We went out for a couple of dives this weekend with some friends who are leaving the island. I finally got some good photos so I thought I'd share a few.

This dive is called the "Cheese Caves" by locals. This is due to all the caves in the rocks that make it look like a big piece of Swiss cheese.

Here I am at the beginning of the dive...And looking very sleek if I do say so myself :)

Now, I know this isn't the most amazing fish picture you've ever seen...but those little buggers are FAST, so I was impressed that I was able to capture it at all!

Cisco was definitely enjoying himself in this dive. Everytime I looked over at him he was upside down playing.

This was a super cute little starfish...talk about great natural camoflauge.

Cisco had a school of small fish swimming around him for a while. They didn't seem concerned by the giant man flipping his fins near them.

This is a fire worm. The have been pretty common on our dives, but this is the first really good picture I've gotten of one.

There were lots of urchins on this dive. I thought this little urchin community was pretty awesome with all the different colors.

Again...it may not look like much, but these fish are dang hard to capture on film!

Here's another cool urchin bed with some funky corals. The grey one looks like an underwater beehive.

This was forsure the coolest thing we saw on the dive. It's a nudebranch...no kidding...it's name sounds like nudy-branch. Anyway, it was REAL pretty and has a super cute little face and poofy tail. I am continually mistified by the variety in nature.

Cisco says, "It's all good!"

Avakas Gorge

One of the few places we had yet to go in Cyprus was Avakas Gorge on the Akamas Peninsula.

So last weekend we took a trip to see it. The gorge is about a mile from the beach through a walking trail. It has a lovely (in some parts...in other stagnant areas it's filled with algae) creek running through it.

And at one point the rock cliffs come together to form a very cool gorge. It was a really beautiful place. We're glad we got to see it before leaving Cyprus...in just 2 weeks!

Wreck Diving

I love using a sick day to go diving, don't you? :)

Yesterday, we went scuba diving to the Zenobia, last year named the 2nd place wreck dive site in the world. On her maiden voyage to Cyprus on June 7, 1980 she sunk about a mile of the coast of Larnaca harbor. The Zenobia is now lying on her side at about 42 meters below the surface. Here's a pic of the Zen as she was sinking.

We made two dives, each about 40 minutes, to check out different areas of the ship. Here's Scuba Cisco just as we're getting ready to go down for our first dive.

There was a lot of sea life surrounding the boat. Unfortunately, my underwater photography skills are still lacking a bit...or a lot. I wasn't able to photograph the baracudas or the huge groupers we saw, but I did manage to get the 50 silver sea bream that were surrounding us. Way to go me :) This one pretty much jumped in front of my camera while I was trying to take a photo of Cisco.

One of the coolest parts of this dive was getting to swim through the wheel house and canteen areas of the ship. We went in through old busted out windows on one side, and up and out through another. Here's Cisco heading into the canteen.

These next two pics are of some feather duster worms attached to the Zen. They were really beautiful.

I especially like this one with the bright orange fish. And the feather worm looks beautiful with its tentacles pulled most of the way into its protective tube.

All in all it was a great day. Gotta love swimming with the fish!

Animal Planet Weekend

We had a 3-day weekend this weekend and went to stay at a village house with our friends, Dale and Annick. We'll tell you more specifically about some of the events of the weekend, but first, let me tell you about our animal adventures over the three days.

Our first encounter with animals came in the form of flies. It is that time of year here in Cyprus and you mostly get used to them, but these ones were especially pesky. Cisco got a great close-up of one on a piece of our melon. Looks like something out of a sci-fi movie, huh?

Our next animal encounter was with the lizards. They were everywhere! They are real cute and very fast. It was hard to get a picture at all, so this one's not too great.

On our second day in the village house, we went for a drive around the country-side. Dale took us to the infamous goat village. There are a lot of abandon houses, a few still with owners in them, but most filled with goats. We happened to come at the goat crossing time. The goats you see here are only a fraction of the goats in the village.

Also on our second day, we went to Avakas Gorge. On the way, there was a restaurant with a bunch of pigs outside. There were two BIG mommas, one with a couple of older babies, and one with about 10 newbies. They were SUPER cute and reminded us of Babe or Wilbur from Charlotte's Web. In this photo, some of the babies are getting a little confused about who their momma is. I wanted to take the little pink one (in the top left corner of the pic) home with me...Cisco said no.

On our last day in the village house (and thankfully it was our last day) we woke up to do some dishes and squeeze some orange juice (the village house was in the middle of an orange grove). Cisco went to the sink and jumped about 5 feet back. This is what we found in the sink. A real, live tarantula! Its body was about the size of my thumb and its legs were big and hairy. Though we were both freaked out, I saved the day and caught it, then released it into the orange grove. I still have goose-bumps thinking about it.

Finally, shortly after the tarantula incident, we noticed something unusual in the pool. There was a little mousy swimming across, holding his little head out of the water, and paddling his little legs as fast as he could.

Don't you worry...we saved said little mousy and he was just fine, if a bit water-logged. Oh, the Walker adventures never end!

Cisco's Birthday

For those of you who don't know, Cisco just celebrated his 33rd birthday last week! Happy Birthday Cisco!

Cisco, Dave and Ray

We had a pretty mellow night...he is 33 after all...at one of our favorite restaurants, Abu Faysal. It's a Lebanese meze place with fantastic food.

Rachel, Lori, Cisco, Dave and Ray
Cisco's friends got together and bought him a day of scuba diving at this awesome wreck site in Cyprus. We're going out next Tuesday for the day...I'll definitely post pictures for that one.

Rachel, Lori and Hannah

Just after finishing dinner, there was a belly dancing show. Turns out the dancer is my belly dancing teacher from last year. She's amazing! And actually, seeing as how she was my teacher, you can just picture me dancing instead of her. I swear, I look just like that when I belly dance...except my outfit's purple :)

Mariza, I mean Hannah, belly dancing.

New Digs...

We've just made a reservation on our new home in Prague! We're thrilled with it. Many thanks to our friend, Rafael, who lives in Prague, and went out with a realtor to look at 10 different apartments that we had picked out. Our new apartment is in the green building.

So, we'll be living in Prague 2. This is a map of the greater Prague area. Prague 1 is the city center. And our new school is in Prague 6, which is aparently a very lovely residential area. But we wanted to be closer to the action :)

Our neighborhood is called Vinohrady, which has beautiful architecture, great cafe's, and a very quaint feel. We're right across the street from a park and the kitties will have birds to watch again :) Also, we're only minutes from Prague 1 & the old city via metro.

The apartment is brand newly remodelled, bright, really high ceilings, and maybe most importantly, there are two bedrooms and we welcome guests! We hope to see you in the next couple of years in Prague.

Scuba Steve and Scuba Stephanie

Way back when (1999), we got our open water scuba certification...in Seattle...in January...in the Puget Sound. Youch! Needless to say, the freezing cold experience did not encourage us to go back out for a long, long time.





Last year in Jordan, we took a refresher course to renew all of our skills. We had a great experience. The water was warm and clear, the Red Sea is packed with beautiful sea life, and it was about 80 degrees outside to add to our pleasure. We decided to try to get out diving more often.





Last week, we completed our second level of dive certification, advanced open water. We had a great time and got really comfortable under water.
We're attaching pics of the dive including a cool tunnel we went through, a sand collar (looks like a circular piece of rubber in the sand, but is actually about 5,000 moonsnail eggs held together with snail glue and sand), the "feeding rock" with loads of sliver fish, a cool pic of sea urchin that Cisco took, one of the whole group that went diving and one where Cisco's practicing his underwater summersaults. We swear, he's upside-down on purpose!