The journey to the Queen's Gardens has been, as always, long and tiring: but these islands' charm, covered by mangroves and inhabited just by iguanas and tortoises, consists in this; here time doesn't exist: everything has remained the same as 500 years ago, before the arrival of Christopher Columbus, and the difficulties to get here makes them a paradise for few people. And every time is in some way a return home, "mi casa flotante entre cielo y mar", as they call here the floating platform on which we are lodging.

During all the summertime, our Cuban friends that work with us at the diving in Calabria have told us about these wonderful places, and here we are: the expectation is great: they assured me that in November, when the water is turbid (in a manner of speaking, obviously) because of a higher quantity of plankton, it is more likely to meet a whale shark. The promise is big: we all have photo and video cameras with us.

Commander Trigo tells us that in the last few days they have sighted shoals of bonitos and therefore the whale shark should be around here.

Trigo is a true character: he knows these islands and the sea that surrounds them like his pockets. As in an epic novel, he is telling us of when he was still young, time in which he used to bring Fidel here to fish, when in the control cabin a great agitation blows up: there, there, can't you see.? Us, actually, we couldn't see really anything. ...Can't you see.?. Yes, there, now there is something on the horizon: seagulls are flying in a circle: we get closer, the birds fly low on the water that is all a foam: the shoal of bonitos jumps on the surface while it runs after a cloud of microscopic fish, and in the middle, all of a sudden, like in a whirlpool the water opens up: the whale appears in all its majesty, the enormous mouth wide open to eat. He's in vertical position and the enormous remora that stays tied to him slips risking to detach itself. Just the shark sucker itself is more than a meter and a half in length!!! We remain enchanted for a while and then, all in the water: we aren't wearing our wet suit, there isn't enough time to get ready: a jump in the blue with mask and flippers and we swim by him: the enormous animal doesn't seem frightened when he sees us: he swims calmly, he lets us get closer. We feel very small faced with his length of at least 10 metres: it's difficult to describe in words our enthusiasm: it's a spectacle beyond every imagination: these are emotions that have to be lived, they are too deep to be recounted! He is enormous, with his incredible skin with bluish spots and squares: around him, the bonitos chase the shoals of fries. We come back up to the surface to take a breath, and then under we go again: it isn't simple to photograph him in apnoea, but the clicks of the photos come one after the other until the roll of film is finished: surely something good will come out of them. Then, as suddenly as when he had arrived, he engulfs himself and we watch him going away with nostalgia.



We get back on the boat: we are close to the place that should have been the diving area, the famous Azul Tunnel, a canyon in the rocks that starts at -35 and finishes in the blue at over 50 metres. We check the equipment with a lot of care: the immersion is difficult because of the depth: we are getting ready to dive in the blue when around the boat the prophetic fins appear: my friends hesitate, won't they be dangerous? We joke, but nobody wants to be the first to wait for the others in the water, surrounded by the sharks: I jump in the water: the silky sharks, the small barrier reef sharks, go round me, they even rub on me, they let me caress them. I'm not afraid, I've done it many times and I know they aren't aggressive if you don't irritate them. Certainly being in the middle of a shoal of about fifty sharks makes a certain effect. They swim sinuously, elegantly around the boat. Finally everybody's ready, we dive until the 35 metre platform. The sharks follow us for a while, then they go away. Who knows if our friend is still somewhere around here.?

Certainly there are enormous sea-bass, curious of our second yellow stages. Here, actually, everything is big: we're in a park, with very strict rules, and the fish, although not very used to the presence of scuba divers -not many of them get to this point-, aren't frightened in the least. They get closer, curious: here there isn't a sensation of participating in a tourists' attraction, but of being well-accepted by the real owners of this sea. A kind of magic relation has been set between humans and animals!!!

Here we get to the entrance of the tunnel: a crack in the rock covered by luxuriant branches of black coral, and by sponges of an incredible purple: we enter in single file, we swim along the first metres of the tunnel, then it begins to curve to the right and to descend quickly: we can just see the blue of the exit.. : outside there -our guides will tell us- two sharks bigger then the first ones, the Caribbean reef sharks, seem to keep guard over the passage. An unusual rope is hanging in front of the exit. Strange, I think to myself, the boat wasn't here, before: I lift up my eyes and I realize what it is: it's a sea eagle, enormous, that is passing in front of the tunnel: it's majestic, it seems it's flying; we follow it for a while: it has got an incredible wingspan, and even its back is spotted with light blue patches.

But a last surprise awaits us. We're finally going up again along the anchor chain (the real one, this time!), and we have already finished, unfortunately, all the films, when a shadow darkens the sea over us. He has come back: the whale shark has waited for us!!! To see him in the water, wearing scubas, is a very rare event: normally there isn't enough time to prepare ourselves that he has already disappeared and then, usually, he is disturbed by the bubbles. This time, though, we have been lucky: he is there, above us by about ten metres and he doesn't seem to notice we're there!! You realize how big nature is. Everybody is out of breath: this corner of heaven doesn't stop amazing us. Each time it's a new emotion, a new experience.

My friends are over the moon: not often does it happen that you manage to see much more than it is permitted!!! Today it's my birthday, and tonight we will celebrate together with Gualberto and Noel, the Cuban instructors that have accompanied us in this splendid immersion, with Trigo, with his fantastic sea stories: a lot of rum and cakes that I have brought from Italy. A big party under the incredible starry Cuban sky.

During all the week, between an immersion and an other, we go around searching for the enormous animal, and we'll meet him another two or three times. He isn't always the same one, once a mother and her child pass us by. If we didn't have the photos, and, above all, the videos to testify everything that day after day we see, on our return back home nobody would believe us!!! It's now time to leave, but I don't feel sad.I know that soon I'll come back!!!

Luisa Sacerdote
Written after my third trip to the Jardines de la Reina - November 2000. Organisation: Avalon diving Center - on-line reservation