Swimming with da fishes...

Hello all - and yes we are completely safe from the tsunami which has tragically hit the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific. We are absolutely nowhere near there!

Today we spent recovering from our end-of-dive celebration party and finally took a walk right around the island which we have been meaning to do for almost a week! Tomorrow we start the first dive of our Advanced Openwater (might as well, now that we are on a roll!) - Deep Water Diving. Really looking forward to it and we are hoping to see some White Tip sharks which have pretty much eluded us on our other dives (Andrew saw one's arse as it swam away, not sure that counts).

We have however, seen a myriad of other sea life some of which I'll attempt to list below until I get bored: Fusiliers, Sweetlips, Squirrel, Porcupine, Puffer, Trigger, Rabbit, Tang, Idols, Surgeon, Unicorn, Parrot, Trumpet, Butterfly, Angel, Bat, Tile, Snapper, Clown, Lion, Wrass, Glass, Cat, Anthia, Remora, Titan, Harlequin, Flute Mouth, Cleaner and Cawrye fishes plus many sub species of each which I won't even attempt to go into. We have also seen many turtles both Green and Hawksbill as well as a resplendent variety of sea slugs, giant clams, starfish, eels, oysters, worms, sponges, squirts and seacucumbers.

Impressive hey? Please excuse spelling etc as Marine Biology is something I could never even attempt to fake. Not sure if it would even be called Marine Biology. To be honest without our dive instructor my list would look more like this: pretty fish, turtles and lots of other 'stuff'. Check out our Gili pics here - no underwater ones (alas), but certainly some of us sporting dive outfits :-)

Coming up on the 5th is my birthday. Very auspicious year because not only do I turn 33 (3 being my lucky no.) but it is also the year of the Golden Pig (have we been in Asia too long now?). All good stuff so I am expecting a good one.

Like this year hasn't been good?