Tasty Groove: Hanging at the airport is boring...but gives me time to write!

Hey all,

I am sitting in the Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv waiting for one of my coworkers to fly in. Since I was already here, I volunteered to pick him up on the way to Haifa since Tel Aviv was on the way from Eilat. Of course he missed his flight in NYC so is coming in 4 hours later than originally planned and although he DID send a mail in time for me to know had I looked, I didn’t…so now I sits. Oh well. I was worried about traffic from Eilat anyway since today is the equivalent of Sunday and all the vacationers have to be back to work tomorrow. Israel work week is Sunday through Thursday. So I sit here rather than near a beach…crap, you are right, I am an idiot. Oh well. Lesson learned.

Had a pretty good couple of final dives yesterday. Nothing like the life I saw on the Egyptian dives, but I did have my camera so there will be photos! Not a whole lot to report on the dives other than one of the guys ran out of air on the safety stop. No biggie as all of us were sort of clustered together and he buddy breathed off another guys octopus (all of us have 2 regulators: one for the diver and one for the diver who runs out of air). Really the dive master should have been paying more attention to everyone’s air supply cause he turned around later than he should have. On the other hand, right at the turn around I saw a nudibranch and took a picture so I was happy we went that far.

The other slight bummer is I saw this little white eel which, according a quick Google is a young moray eel. I was maneuvering in to get a picture when I guess I scared if off and it went under the stone it was peeking out from. But I got to see it at least so that was pretty cool.

Heading to Haifa this afternoon after John gets here. Not sure I will write much more since it’s going to be meetings and then dinner. Maybe there will be something exciting to share. Let’s aim for at least one more….and until then, some photos! As always, click to embiggen...although you might need to click twice.

Some fish hanging out around an outcropping of coral.

Nudibranch! This was down around 18 meters. White balance is your friend in the water :)

While the anemone is pretty cool, if you embiggen, you can see the shrimp hanging out on one of the tentacles in the middle

Derpy looking starfish.

Thought this was some kind of scorpionfish, but apparently not. I forget what the dive master called it and I don't have my log with me. Oh well. Pretty cool looking either way

Check out the two lower teeth on this dude. Nothing like being able to eat some coral!

Spotted sting ray. Could have framed this better, but there was another diver directly above him trying to get a photo too. I didn't want to include the other diver :)