Day 7- Diving - the Sequel & A Little Night Adventure

At the end of my last post I was anticipating the assisted dive I had planned for this morning and had intended to wipe the slate clean, forget all about Honduras and look forward to a fresh start!!!!

Well it turns out, I'm not very good at that sort of thing, so was feeling particularly anxious as I made my way to the Dive Centre.

Shaf welcomed me, asked if I was nervous, to which I gave a very vigorous nod of the head.  He told me not to worry - everything was going to fine.  Now where have I heard those words before?

He gave me a clipboard with umpteen forms to fill in and I sat down and prepared to lie through my back teeth.

There is a section on the form that lists miles and miles of medical conditions and asks if you have had them at any point in your life and for some of them, whether they run in the family.  They also ask if you smoke.

You have to put yes or no by each one and if you put even one yes - you have to get a medical certificate from a recognised Doctor (who will no doubt charge a hefty fee) before you can dive.

I found this out the hard way in Egypt, when I nearly missed out on 2 assisted dives because I was too honest.  

I have no idea who these "super human beings" are, that can put a "no" to everything - it just doesn't make sense. No-one could possibly have been that healthy all their lives - so I can only assume that everyone tells the odd teency weency little lie.

I on the other hand, was going to have to lie a lot.  If I were to be truly honest, I could put a yes by at least half of them.  Family history of heart disease - yes, asthma - yes, problems with ears - yes, claustrophobia - yes, panic attacks - yes, smoking - Oh yes! and so it goes on.

At the end of the day, whilst honesty is usually the best policy, my feeling is that as long as the diving school are in the clear, it's my body and my life, so if I chose to risk it, that's up to me.  

Just as I was coming to the end of my forms, a family of 4 who were staying at my guest house arrived.  We'd chatted briefly the previous day and I'd found out they were Anna, Joe and their teenage children Daniel and Bea.  They were from Portugal originally, but now living in Cardiff and a nicer family, you couldn't wish to meet.  After a brief chat with Shaf, they were handed the forms as well and it slowly began to dawn on me that we might all be doing this first assisted dive together.

Initially this was a bit of a worry ( surprise surprise) because:-

a)  I was convinced that I would suck up all of the instructors time and attention and therefore deprive these lovely people of the instruction they were paying for.

b) I was worried that it would take me five times longer than everyone else, to do the skills - therefore holding them up.

c) Every group, in every training session, always has one complete pain in the arse and because of points a) & b) - I just knew that on this occasion, it was going to be me.

On the plus side though, it was lovely to have someone to chat to while we waited to get started and they were so positive, supportive and encouraging, I was actually starting to believe this might all be OK.

Things improved even further when another Dive Master appeared and Shaf explained that he would be joining us, as 5 people was quite a lot for one Instructor.  As he said it, he looked directly at me and I realised that he'd brought this guy in, just in case I needed "special help".  For that I was eternally grateful.

We all began the process of getting our kit on and so began  "Diving - the Sequel."

First we had the weight belt humiliation. In Honduras the weights were hidden away in my BCD (Jackety thing), so no-one, apart from Jim was aware I was carrying 6.5 kilos (which is quite a lot for a woman of 5'3").  Here we were each given a weight belt, so the amount you were carrying was on plain view for everyone to see.  The family all had between 2 and 5 weights - I was last to go and presented with 6!  I made a feeble little joke about being so floaty, but it didn't make me feel any better.

Next it was on with the BCD which Shaf had already assembled (I had to do it myself last time -and those tanks weigh a ton).  We all managed to remain upright and make our way to the edge of the dock.  Bea went in first and I was second.

The minute I surfaced, I started rolling around uncontrollably - heavily listing to one side.  It was like the "Hover" (see my previous post for details) all over again - except this time I wasn't even submerged.  The instructor came over and told me to relax - but that's pretty difficult to do when you are sculling like a mad woman in an effort to remain upright.

Eventually I stabilised - sort of, and realised that my BCD was so loose it was halfway up my back.  They are supposed to be a snug fit, but the gap between it and my back was so big, you could have got another diver in the space.

I let the instructor know and he went down to make some adjustments.  That was definitely better but now something was sticking into my arm pit and it really hurt.

This was ridiculous - we hadn't even started and already my worries about being a complete pain in the arse were coming true.

I had a fiddle around the place it was hurting and discovered a padded bit that was supposed to lie underneath something sharp and pointy, had got caught.  Once I eased it down into place, the pain stopped and I felt much better.

Shaf told us all to lie on our backs and kick ourselves to a point in the lagoon.  Everyone else set off but as soon as I tried to lie backwards, I started the whole rolling around malarkey again.  I finally managed it by sticking my arms out to the side, paddling my hands up and down furiously and kicking gently.  The trouble was, I didn't seem to be moving.  If I kicked too hard, I started rolling, If I kicked gently, I didn't move!

This was not an auspicious start.

I finally arrived at the rendezvous point  -  I knew I had arrived because I swam into Daniel.  I couldn't possibly be expected to look where I was going - that would have started the rocking and rolling all over again.

So now it was time to put the regulator into my mouth, deflate my BCD and sink slowly to the bottom.

I got the regulator in and started breathing without any bother (Yay - go me!!!)

I pressed the button to release all the air from the BCD and....... nothing happened.  I was still right up there on the surface.

The instructor came over again, pulled the emergency release valve ( which lets all the air out in a big whoosh) and I think was quite shocked to realise that I had already managed to deflate it completely.  I did warn them I was very floaty!!!

The only option was to add more weights.  He picked up 2 more from a little pile of them that had been placed on the seabed nearby ( presumably for just this sort of eventuality), added them to my already heavy weight belt and we tried again.

This time I did go down and managed to rest on the bottom on my knees as I was supposed to. 

The problem was now that  I had cramp in both my calf muscles, was struggling to breathe and was perilously close to tears.

This was never going to work.  If I couldn't even manage to rest on the bottom of what was very shallow water, how on earth was I going to cope when we headed down to a depth of 12 meters.

Of course the poor man who was doing his level best to help me, had no idea, just how much of a state I was in and so following the procedure, he gestured for me to take my regulator out, let it float away, find it and put it back in again.  I shook my head and gave the signal to go up.  He gestured, lets try again and held the emergency air supply right by my head, so I would feel better.

Sadly, his efforts were in vain - I was having a full blown melt down and so ignoring him completely I pushed myself back up to the surface.  Which only goes to prove that I must be the "floatyist person on the planet - how many people can swim up to the surface with a completely deflated BCD and carrying 8 kilos in weights? 

I apologised profusely for wasting his time and for ignoring him underwater (always polite) and although he suggested we try again, I respectfully declined.

The tragedy, is that these guys were so lovely and patient, I genuinely believe that if I had come to them first, the outcome may have been different.  But I was clearly unable to put Honduras behind me and as I soon as I was in the water, all those negative feelings came flooding back.

So if there are any Dive Masters out there who are up for a major, huge, "ginormous"  challenge ( and have a nice swimming pool so that I can do the confined water skills in actual confined water) please get in touch!!

After I'd handed back my kit, I went for a nice leisurely snorkel to calm down and managed to spot Anna, Joe, Dan & Bea moving along the sea bottom.  I took some photos and followed them back to the Dive Centre.

This will never be me

I spoke with Shaf, apologised again for flunking out so quickly and said I would be back later to pay for the session ( A Pergande always pays her debts).  He said we wasn't going to charge me, which was very kind of him, because it clearly wasn't his fault that I am such a complete wuss.  He suggested I come back the next day to try again and this time they would take me down without doing the skills first.  I promised to think about it, but knew in my heart, that wasn't going to happen.

However, my friends got on remarkably well with the assisted dive, progressed to the Scuba Diver qualification and will have completed their full SSD certification by the time they leave.  I'm delighted for them - but I haven't wished it was me, for one, single, second!

When I got back to Holiday Village Retreat at lunchtime, I saw Adam ( the tour guide) and asked if we could do something later - I just needed to end the day on a positive note.  He said "what about night snorkelling" and I said "I thought that would be fun".  

I wasn't at all sure it was going to be fun, but I was determined to do something a bit challenging to restore my confidence.

We arranged to meet at 5.30pm which I thought was a bit odd, as the house reef was only a few minutes walk away and it didn't get dark until after 6.30.  So I decided we must be going in to the water when there was still some light  and be out snorkelling as it got dark.

At 5.30 I was ready and waiting with all my gear, wearing a fluorescent yellow top and long Black leggings.  My rational for this deeply unattractive get up was that:-

• The top would make me easy to spot in the dark

• The leggings would stop things I couldn't see brushing up against my bare legs!!

As we walked up the road towards the beach, Adam suddenly turned right.  My first thought was that we were going to another part of the island where the reef is better at night, so I trotted along beside him.  A few moments later, we saw the Ahmed, the boat captain coming along on a push bike. As he whizzed by us he shouted "just 5 minutes OK?".  I had no idea what he was on about, so just smiled and gave him a friendly wave.

When we arrived at the harbour, everything started to make sense.  I explained to Adam that I thought we were going to the house reef, he smiled and said "no, no, I'm taking you to a very nice reef.  Very good for night snorkelling".

Well this was an interesting twist.  Not only was I going to be snorkelling in the dark; it was going to be on a reef I wasn't familiar with and probably, knowing these guys, in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight.  I asked Adam if he definitely had the torches and he confirmed he did.

Ahmed and Ibrahim arrived complete with boat and Adam and I, hopped aboard.  Ahmed explained that we were going to go slowly, I wasn't really sure why, but I trusted he knew what he was doing.

We moved away from Bod and out into open ocean, as the sun was starting to go down and it was magical.  I've been on boats at night before - cruise liners, car ferries and the 12 passenger + 6 crew touring boat in the Galapagos - but I've never been on anything this small at sunset and it was actually rather lovely. 

Eventually we stopped and as I'd guessed,  we were in the middle of no-where.  "Is this it", I enquired and when the guys said yes, started to get my stuff ready.  "No wait" the captain commanded, "not yet - still too much light".  They were clearly taking the term "night snorkelling" literally, so I did as I was told and we all watched the sun drop down below the horizon.

As soon as Ahmed considered it dark enough, it was on with the gear, torch firmly attached to my wrist and over the side into the unknown.

The reef below us was amazing - there were of towers of coral and great odd shaped rocks that gave it a surreal feel.  By now, Adam was fully aware that I was a confident snorkeller and so had never felt the need to stay closely by my side ( and frankly, I wouldn't have wanted him to), but on this occasion, I had given him strict instructions to stay with me at all times.

I needn't have worried, we both had bright torches, so it was actually easier to see where he was, than in the daylight.

I tried taking a few pictures, but at night, the flash picks up all the little bits in the water that are visible to the naked eye, so most of them got deleted later.

The first major find was a beautiful turtle, making her way across the reef .  We followed her until she disappeared into the darkness at the drop off.  The next heart stopping moment was when Adam swung his torch around and in the circle of light was a reef shark. Now I know swimming with sharks is high up on a lot of people's bucket list - but it's not (and never has been on mine). 

So I think, on balance, I would have preferred to have my first encounter in broad daylight, but at this point, I had no choice in the matter.  It was actually rather beautiful and I could appreciate it fully, because it was a fair distance away.  Had I come face to face with it, in the dark, I'm pretty confident I would have needed a change of underwear.

Adam later assured me, they are not the biting kind, but I wouldn't want to get close enough, to put that to the test.

After all that excitement, we snorkelled around taking it all in and I felt relaxed and actually quite proud of myself.

However, I still felt the need to pop my head up every so often to check where the boat was.  I've watched far too many movies about people stranded in the middle of the ocean and being in the dark, sort of amplifies those fears.

Eventually we were called back to the boat.  I had one little niggle - if I dropped one of my fins, as I took them off in the water, Adam would never be able to free dive down to find it in the dark.  Nevertheless,  I managed to get all my gear and myself back on board without mishap. 

We returned to Bod at full speed, but there was one more delight in store.

People that live in towns and cities never really get to see the night sky in all it's glory, because of light pollution.  But here in the middle of the ocean, in the pitch Black, it was incredible.  I don't think I've ever seen so many starts and so while the boys chatted amongst themselves, I just lay back and took in that beautiful sight.

So despite my (quite reasonable, I believe) apprehension about snorkelling in the dark over a hidden reef in the middle of nowhere, - all in all, it was an amazing experience and would I do it again? - definitely.