Manatees in Crystal River

My family have a pretty mental obsession with going to Florida, I think we've been six or seven times now, and every time it's like we've never left. So a couple of years ago we had a change of scenery from the classic theme parks and went out to Crystal River to go snorkelling with manatees (which if anyone ever met my dog Ellie, manatees are like the sea version of her) and scuba diving down a cave underwater. So the idea of it was obviously amazing, slightly terrifying, I'd never swam with manatees and I'd never done a cave dive. But at seven in the morning, there was heavy frost, and outside it was absolutely freezing. Can't say I wanted to get out of the car let alone jump into a freezing river with some pretty massive creatures. But obviously with my dad having experienced diving in much worse conditions he was totally up for it, and me being the other man of our family we were first to jump out, practically sprint to the changing rooms and whip on a wetsuit.

The water was warmer than outside and manatees were pretty brilliant. I freaked out quite a lot (I get scared just swimming with big fish...) but they were cute. Something I doubt I'll ever get the chance do to again, so I was pretty chuffed with the whole experience.

I learnt to dive when I was about 11 or 12 in the Maldives, and before that had gone with my dad using the extra octopus, so I was pretty confident with shore dives, reef dives and all that. But the idea of going into a cave was totally new to me. And when I first heard about I figured we would literally be diving round a big open cave. I soon realised (once I was going downwards) this kind of cave was pitch black, we were going down in a really thin space between the rock walls, and then into tiny little 'rooms' inside. I couldn't see a thing, I just followed the flashing of someones torch who was somewhere in front of me and feeling the floor and the roof and the walls next to me. It was definately one of the scariest things I ever did, I remember hardly breathing at all the whole time, because the bubbles in front of my mask were distracting and stopping me seeing the flashing light.

When we finally came up to the surface I was proper proud! Although the journey back on the boat wasn't exactly relaxing afterwards, it was the coldest I've been in my life. (Colder than coming back from that halloween party, covered in foam wearing practically nothing in London in the middle of winter. And thats saying something..) We had noodle soup on there, and all of our hands were shaking so much it was flying around everywhere.

But good times!