I'm not sure where the next photos were taken, but I love this progressive study of an anemone with its clown fish.

When I got back to the boat after the dive, there were several dugout boats hanging around the boat. Rob asked if I wanted to take one for a spin, so he had one of the guys bring one up to the dive deck and I climbed in. It took a little while to get the hang of it, but they are very quick and agile - very fun!

Friday, March 9, 2001 - Milne Bay, PNG
We decided to stay at Dinah's Beach for the morning and then move to another site. After the first morning dive, the satellite phone rang and it was Richard! He hadn't gotten my e-mail reply to his fax, so he got the phone number from the Chertan's office. We talked about the house and what to do with the well, and I told him how the trip was going.

After the second morning dive, Diane and I went with Paco, one of the boathands, to visit the skull caves up in the hills. Even the local villagers are not sure whose skulls they are and they were only discovered 3 years ago. Rob said it was a twenty minute hike, so Paco took us over in the dingy to a small cove on the other side of Deacon's Reef. Rob's time estimate was pretty good, but he didn't mention that the "hike" was straight up! Paco went ahead and we clambered over logs and rocks after him. At one point he had us wait and he went ahead and tied off a long rope for us to use to pull ourselves up - *whew!* We finally got up to the cave - a shallow ledge in the cliff that went back 20 feet or so. Inside were probably 200 human skulls! No bodies, just skulls. We looked at them for a few minutes (and tried to prepare for the "hike" back down!) and then followed Paco back to the boat.

After lunch we pulled anchor and traveled to a site called Tania's Reef. Unfortunately, the currents were running pretty strong, so we decided to try another site. By the time we got there, it was dark enough for the night dive, so I read my book while the rest did the dive.

Saturday, March 10, 2001 - Milne Bay, PNG
We dove the same bommie dive in the morning and it was really nice. There were two small reefs, and we swam to the further one to see if we could find an elusive Scorpionfish fish called a Rhinopias that they had seen on the night dive.

After lunch we headed to another site called Jason's Reef. It was a very pretty dive, with lots of coral and fish, and schools of small brightly colored fish called Anthias. They come in a variety of neon colors: pink, purple, electric blue.

In the afternoon I finished the last of my Dorthy Dunnett books and started on one that I found on board, "Blind Man's Bluff," a non-fiction book about the U.S. Navy's Submarine Fleet. Very good, and really one that is hard to put down.

Sunday, March 11, 2001 - Milne Bay, PNG
We all had flights on Monday morning, so we could only get a couple of dives in on Sunday before we had to stop to allow enough time out of water. We went back to Sullivan's Patches, our first dive site. It was a little murky, but there were some neat fish, including a huge school of filter-feeding tuna fish all swimming with their mouths open- very odd!

When we finished our dives, we rinsed out our gear and hung it up to dry on the upper deck. After lunch, we began the cruise back into Alotau, where we would anchor out overnight. About midway back, Gary called us to the front of the boat - there were two Bottlenose Dolphins riding our bow wave! We all went down and leaned over the bow and watched them swim so effortlessly in front of the boat. They stayed with us for about a half hour, and then peeled off to the side - what fun!

We got back to the mooring site around dusk. We had a nice dinner and began packing our gear for our departure the next morning.

Monday, March 12, 2001 - Milne Bay, PNG and beyond
We awoke, finished packing and had breakfast. Rob drove us to the airport, and we discovered that we were early. So early, in fact, that the airport staff had not yet arrived to open the terminal! We exchanged addresses/e-mail with Diane - she was going back to Port Moresby with us and staying in another lodge for a couple of days before heading home. We checked our luggage all the way through to Kaviang, which turned out to be a good idea. The flight to Port Moresby was fine and we said goodbye to Diane and went to get our boarding passes for Kaviang.

There was a group of men in line in front of us that were being hassled over their overweight baggage - all dive gear. We asked where they were going, and discovered they were going to be on our boat, the Febrina. There were nine of them - one guy from North Carolina (Joel) and eight Australian Jewish guys who belong to a dive group called "Unterwasser Yidden" ("Underwater Jews"). All but two of them were underwater photographers as well, so Mark and Gary fit right in. Hmmm...a week on a boat as the only woman and a "shiksa" (non-jewish girl) at that - should be interesting!

We tried to use the public phones at the Port Moresby airport, but couldn't find any that would take money - once the coin box is full they don't work any more! Oh well. We boarded the flight - another Fokker 50 jet - and took off for Kaviang with a stop in Rabaul. When we landed in Rabaul, the captain said that they had a technical problem that they were looking into and that it would be about 30 minutes until we left, so we waited on board since there was air-conditioning there. After a while, however, they announced that the radar system wasn't working (in fact, had gone out about halfway through the flight) and that they were checking as to how to get us to Kaviang, since they were not allowed to take passengers without working radar - important safety tip, I believe! They made us deplane and wait in the terminal - luckily we found the executive lounge, the only place (possibly in the entire town) with air-conditioning.

Since we had about 3 hours to wait until they could get another plane from Port Moresby to take us to Kaviang, several of the Aussies decided to take a cab up to view the three volcanos just outside of Rabaul. The most recent eruptions were in the mid-1990's and one of the volcanos is still steaming. The rest of us stayed and read or napped - Gary and I also tried to phone the states again, but the phones were "full" here too. The plane arrived (exactly when they said it would) and we reboarded and took off for Kaviang.