The People!

After ten weeks of cruising in the Indian Ocean, mostly with very little opportunity to connect to the Internet with what I consider a workable bandwidth, the big question is "what do I post first?", and a lot of people ask me "what was the best dive you had?"...

The more I think about it, and the more obvious it becomes that beside some spectacular events on the dives, what will really remain after this trip are the memories of encounters with fascinating and interesting people.

One of the pleasant surprises on this trip was to find out that Valerie Taylor was going to be onboard the National Geographic Orion during a big portion of the trip as a Guest Speaker, from the Seychelles to Bali.

Some of the youngest divers might not know about her, or her career, but I became aware of her achievements quite early in my diving career, in the last century  ;-)

I had seen a few of the movies she made with her late husband, Ron Taylor, and it was a real treat to hear her introducing them, and presenting slide shows "in the flesh", and sharing meals with Valerie, but most of all, sharing underwater time with her was a real treat.

Another speaker was Lawrence Blair, writer/adventurer, with whom we unfortunately shared too few dives, but fortunately many breakfasts and movie projections.

And then all the other divers, and non-divers. What a fascinating time...