Offshore from Drake Bay Wilderness Camp you can see a large island called Cano Island. We had heard that there were some SCUBA sites off this island and came prepared to dive. Instead of kayaking we went on a SCUBA trip this day. The first dive was to a site named "Ship Wreck" but there was no wreck to dive on it was just the name of 5 rocks on the bottom of an otherwise sandy area. The water was not very clear because it was full of little brown/green threads that I assumed were algae. These turned out to be animals instead of plans and were a small stinging form of jellyfish. I didn't notice them much because I was wearing my normal tropical garb: a lycra spandex dive skin. This garment can make you miserably cold when you get it wet in temperate climates. But in Hawaii and Baja I had discovered that it keeps me comfortably cool in tropical climates. And it protects my skin (from ankle to wrist) from the sun without having to smear sunscreen all over. It is designed for wearing in the water or under a wetsuit so I just wore it all day long in the water or out. I got stung by the jellyfish a few times on my hands but just assumed that I had bumped the coral or scratched my hand earlier. Maryly, Jason (another guest at the resort), and Salvador (our dive master) got stung all over their arms and legs. The stings didn't leave welts like mosquito bites and faded away to a tingle after an hour or so. The ranger on Cano Island later told us that these were the aquatic equivalent of no-se-ums. Usually you cannot see them unless you have huge concentrations of them like we saw on the bottom.
On this first dive we saw a few white tipped reef sharks resting on the bottom. These shy sharks swam away when we got too close. Salvador had told us we might be able to get close to them. He said if an opportunity presented itself he would call us forward one at a time. If we settled on the sandy bottom and pulled ourselves gently forward with our hands we might be able to get very close to one of these sharks. This is the same kind of shark I watched my dive master pet at Tunnels Beach off the island of Kauai. But no sharks let us get that close at Ship Wreck. After 47 minutes underwater, we got back in our boat and were taken to Cano Island for a picnic lunch and a chance to go snorkeling while we out-gassed our excess nitrogen from the dive.
Our second dive we went to a site called "Cave of the Sharks" and sure enough there was a white tipped reef shark sleeping in the mouth of a little cave. At the cave mouth Salvador signaled me over first. I thought "Oh goody! I get to sneak up on a shark now!" As I was settling down towards the bottom to start inching forward the shark jumped up in a puff of sand. Two more sharks zoomed out from the back of the cave. The one in the middle, heading towards me, shook its head back and forth and snapped its jaws at us. I froze and tried to look non-threatening. I was pretty sure this was just a threat display. I was pretty sure that these small sharks (couldn't be more than 1.5 meters long) could not do too much damage unless I stuck my fingers or elbow into their mouths. My fingers and toes curled up close to my body just in case. After a few short/long seconds all three sharks vanished, the middle one going at least a meter over my head. Everyone made the OK sign at each other and we finished the dive, seeing the sharks turn away from us from a great distance a few times.