B lue Hole
This is a spectacular, world famous dive. I was blown away. There was a chimney entrance – straight down to 85 feet in about 2 minutes, one by one, as there was only room for one person at a time in the chimney. After descending the chimney, known as the Bells, we swam through to the open sea – a massive, unimaginably vast coral wall dropping several hundred feet. Visibility was around 60 feet. We swam right (south) along the coral wall at a depth of 70 feet, the deep, open, vast, blue sea, with no bottom in sight, creates a sensation of flight. I flew in aquatic, bubbly, slow motion along that wall, heading south towards the Blue Hole. Scale and perception was skewed, enhanced, warped by the light, the deep blue color, the wonderfully strange weightlessness of it, hypnotized by this aquatic therapy, my shrink, my shoulder to cry on, my hero, my lover, my liberation, the big blue, the hauntingly serene sea, swallowed and enveloped, this liquid womb of mother earth, laws of gravity defied, reason and logic not applicable, joy, bliss, euphoria, this fleeting solitude through which I gently kicked.
After 25 minutes we ascended to a coral plateau, hovered like astronauts, bubbled over it, clown fish, cornet fish, parrot fish, a swirling troupe of day-glow fish acrobatics…into the Blue Hole. We entered a coral crater that goes down to 240 feet, a perfect ring of almost bottomless coral. As I floated out over that exquisite blue abyss, I realized it was not dissimilar to my Cessna flight out over the rim of Ngorongoro Crater. I stretched my arms out, an eagle soaring, a turkey buzzard off course, a rogue condor, wallowing in the weightless, mindless, guts of the Blue Hole. I rolled and kicked like a dolphin, onto my back, gazing up at the shimmering surface. I peered down into the hole, just to the periphery where things went out of focus. Transfixed, transported, long gone from the world as we know it. I slowly ascended to the surface, Red October-like, my periscope snorkel up and glistening, this submarine soul reluctantly returning to terra firma.
I need to thank someone for providing, allowing, giving that dive…so thanks a million Mom for my Open Water SCUBA course, 13 years ago, in the summer of ’95. Thank you, Mom. The Blue Hole was for you.