I’ve spent the past four days doing the PADI open water diver course, I’m now officially an accredited open water diver, yay!
It was a bit scary, but absolutely brilliant once we started the open water dives. The first two days were theory and confined water dives. The third day we did two dives off Solitary Island, did another two on the fourth day in the same location but we went to different parts of the reef. I saw lots of Grey Nurse Sharks, bit scary looking but they are non aggressive (at least during the day when they are not hunting!) At one point we had to swim up a gully with the sharks behind us, I had to force myself to stop looking around to make sure they weren’t chasing me. They are a protected species and quite endangered so I’m very lucky to have seen them! Yesterday our instructor found us a turtle, which made me very happy as I’d been talking about wanting to see one for the preceding three days! It was a Green turtle, fast asleep on a rock, fabulous! The visibilty wasn’t fantastic the first day (about 12m) but that encouraged all the little fish to come out. There were millions of different species of fish all around us! I found several species of clown fish hiding in anemones and thought of Jen, (being a big fan of Nemo). Also saw some puffer fish and loads more that I don’t know the name of!
The visibility was really good yesterday and we swam over shallower parts of the reef and saw lots of tropical fish.
Extremely coincidentally, one of the dive leaders who was on the boat with us the fourth day was wearing a Madagascar T shirt, I queried this and it turned out she was working for Frontier in Madagascar but left just before i got there! Of all the dive shops in Australia I could have gone for I picked the one with a former Frontier researcher working there, very weird! It made the trip seem more real somehow, because I’ve been talking to lots of people to whom my travels are just a story and talking to someone who has been there and knows the same people concreted my memories somehow! (Any Frontier types reading this, her name was Elissa).
I completed all my dive ’skills’ without much fuss, although I had to keep my eyes shut for all the mask removal bits so I didn’t lose my contact lenses, that would have really ruined the rest of the dive! My buouyancy control is pretty terrible though, I suspect my dive profile would look like a two-year-olds attempt at drawing a straight line! Have to work on that one in the future! I took tablets and thus didn’t get seasick, a big relief! The swell was quite big both days and several people got very sick. The dive boat was a very nice one although it did go up and down quite a lot, it was well stocked with hot water, teabags and biscuits so the inner Sarah was pretty happy!
Today I have mostly been wrapping presents and chilling out, the diving has completely exhausted me! My parents get to Coffs harbour this evening so my whole family will be together and I might allow Christmas to happen!
Merry Christmas peeps, I’ll think of you while I’m lying on the beach!
XXX Sarah
