Mingo Cay

Diving into the water off Mingo Cay was like slipping into a bathtub of warm sapphire gin. Below me, corals reached toward the sunlight, and tangs, grunts and angelfish swirled about like leaves blown in the wind. I grin into my regulator as the words to "Octopuses Garden" hum in my head. Slowly I fall towards the bottom, leveling out at 54 feet, and I spin a couple of barrel rolls just for the sheer joy of being underwater again. I must resemble a barber-pole with my orange and blue wetsuit, but I don't care: I'm exulting in the moment, in my freedom, in my escape from the surface to this beautiful hidden world. I'm tail-end Sam: last one in the water, so I join the group of sea-trek junkies and after a count, we're on our way to the beginning of the dive. This will be a drift-dive, where Mother Ocean cradles you in her strong arms and pushes you along in one of her currents. Charlie, our guide, has a few things to show us first, including the recent trawler shipwreck on the slope-looks like someone misjudged the rocks and current, with the hull smashed in and laying on its side like a broken toy. Already the sea has put its stamp of ownership on the wreckage, with sponges and soft coral already beginning to bud on the hull: in a couple of years, it'll look like the rest of the reef. We examine the wreck for a moment or two, then round the base of the reef and are pulled into the current. No kick needed except to stay on course, I fly like Superman's slow-poke cousin, in the company of a school of baby barracuda-only a foot or so long at the biggest, their teeth looking comically big in their pike-jaws. The reef is all reds and orange and imperial purple, with bright yellow brain-coral scattered about, Elkhorn and sea-fingers...Starfish litter the bottom like fallen constellations, and anemones wave their green tentacles like boas round the neck of a dancer...Coming to a sand-plain, what originally I thought was turtle-grass turns out to be hundreds of grass-eels all feeding on whatever is small enough that they can grab from the current. Such a wealth of life! A nudibranch inches along the bottom, burrowing in the muck for food, and as unaware of me as the sky above the stars. I move closer to a coral head, and am rewarded with the sight of a moray stretched around a bulbous growth, its brown speckles showing the garishness of the red of the coral It's mouth rhythmically opens and shuts allowing all a sight of it's gleaming long teeth- a fearsome sight, but a false fear, as it pulls itself away from the aquatic visitors drifting towards it. At the moment, it disappears from sight, a pair of hawksbill turtles meander into view like two old men out for a stroll in the warm morning light. They look befuddled that we're there, but munch away at a stalk of greenery anyway-breakfast in the presence of bubbling sea-monsters. With nary a backward look, off they go after a while, swimming with the current; they're lost in the distance as we drift along. I turn another barrel roll and see the sunlit surface above me, and I laugh silver bursts in the blue, the joy expands as it moves upward, and I am at peace.