Eyes opened at Marico Oog

The long awaited trip to Marico Oog finally happened!
And it took a bit of organisation: not sure how many times we tried, and when we eventually set the weekend, the Wits compressor broke, so we had to spend hours at NUC filling cylinders. Thanks Paolop! And we were missing some of the orinators of the idea (:( to Doug and Roach!) Then rushed day on Friday, but eventually we were in the car just before 4! At 5, we were about 30km – from home. At 6, we were still in Jo’burg (!@#$%^&* traffic). Eventually, we were in Rustenburg, then Swartruggens and finally Zeerust. With no music! Not because we weren’t organised or because we couldn’t decide on who’s music to play (this was a likely scenario) but because the GPS/music player kept blowing the radio/cigarette lighter fuse. So poor Paolo had to make do with Shona and I. I think he would’ve preferred our music!
Eventually though, with the help of cell phones with GPS, we were almost there. Or so we thought. The co-ordinates were wrong! And it was pouring with rain! And the roads were very muddy! And we had Alex following us in a little Taz. (Read we got stuck in the mud. And rain). Eventually, after SIX AND A HALF HOURS, we got there! And amazingly, it stopped raining for long enough for us to put our tents up :) And Julie and Chris had been there for an hour already!
Early Saturday morning, Hardy and family arrived. While having coffee and breakfast, we all took bets as to what time Peter, Jolande and Karen would arrive and were all hopelessly wrong when they arrived way before any of us expected them.
Eventually, we got to the water and decided to try some free diving. SUCH fun! I was so happy to get to 5m – and then watched the others showing off with Hern and Little easily going to 10m and Hardy and Alex freaking 1*’s out while they were doing skills by watching with no gear and swimming under the grid! We also free dived to an eye. Then it was onto SCUBA diving and the real eye! Viz was amazing – about 10m! Until we went through the water lilies and reeds that is – when lots of silt meant that half way through overhangs you could see Nothing! Nada! Niks! Niente! Was interesting :) But still absolutely amazing. While some of us made it out, others swam in “deeper” and ended up the other side of some reeds from us – and so ensued a game of Marco Polo. Eventually though, we all swam back through the fence (the cool reed beds are in another “angry” farmers land so the eye has a fence through it) and went for lunch.
The afternoon was spent relaxing around the campsite and getting ready for a night dive – which was also on the list of to-do’s for all the other divers. We were luckily the 2nd group in and were able to sit on the grid and moon gaze through the bubbles at the full moon from 5m under the water – AMAZING! But (insert expletive – use your imagination!) cold!
So while Shona and I counted the minutes until we could have a hot shower, Paolo cooked our food for us! And just as we got out of our nice warm shower, food was ready – perfect timing. And then we hit the sack early – 4 people in my little tent (when there was a HUGE tent free) meant that we all (except Chris) woke up at some stage during the night boiling hot and finding the tent very stuffy.
After a lazy morning and full cooked breakfast, we went back to the water and after a brief amount of training, Julie hit 10m! And Zena got to 7m! And then I got to 10m! And Shona swam under the grid! We finished off doing another SCUBA dive while Hardy and others were free diving. Hardy decided to “shadow” us – unbeknown to Alex. Resulting in an amazing face-plant/corkscrew action into the silt when he pinched her bum. We were all laughing so much we had to surface to catch out breath. And then we went back to the reed beds – and with just 3 of us and minimal silting, it was incredible – swimming under reed beds with caverns. And the viz was about 10-15m so we could see so much.
Then it was home time – packing up tents and all that wonderful stuff that has to happen at the end of a camping weekend. And back to reality! And even after loosing Flex, and going to find her, the return trip took about 3 hours!
Pics can be found at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lancasterjenny/EyesOpenedAtMaricoOog?authkey=Gv1sRgCLub5YvH-5_N_wE#
Or
http://picasaweb.google.com/lancasterjenny/EyesOpenedAtMaricoOog?authkey=Gv1sRgCLub5YvH-5_N_wE#