Bill and I started the day planning to go snorkeling. Scuba diving requires training, and I didn’t think we had time to fit that in on this trip. When we arrived at the dive shop, we learned that they had a crash course in scuba diving. Bill and I were excited about this because we have been wanting to try scuba. We’ve talked about doing a scuba trip over Christmas break.
The dive shop took us to a marina where a massive fork lift was lifting sail boats off of racks and putting them into the water. I’ve never seen anything like it! Some of the boats were 1000 sp. ft. or more and nicer than people’s houses! There’s a lot of money in Cartagena.
We took an hour boat ride to a hotel in the Rosario Islands. We got outfitted with scuba gear and got our first lesson practicing in the pool. It was much harder than I had expected. Part of the training is learning how to eliminate water from your mask if it leaks. You have to lift the mask up a little bit and blow through your nose to force the water out while also remembering to breath through the mouth piece. The biggest part of learning to scuba dive is learning not to panic when you feel like you are going to drown. We also had to learn what to do if we lost our mouth piece or got water in our mouth. You have to blow bubbles out of your mouth while you search for the mouth piece, then put it back in and flush out any extra water. It takes incredible calm not to panic under water when your breathing apparatus is taken away or your goggles fill up with water. My mask is not very good and kept leaking. I almost broke down and cried in the pool because I didn’t think I could get the intense feeling of panic under control to go back under the water. In general, I love to swim and be in the water. I made it through the hour long pool training and got cleared to try the ocean. There was a Lebanese woman in our group who also struggled like me.
After our training, we headed out to the ocean. Scuba gear is extremely heavy. We got all strapped in and I successfully jumped out of the boat. The water was pretty choppy and it’s hard to swim with fins on so I struggled to make it to the front of the boat where everyone was waiting to dive. Ideally, the dive instructor deflates your vest, you have weights on a belt around your waste and you hold onto a rope and slowly descend into the water. While you are going down, you have to equalize pressure in your ears by pinching your nose and blowing. This has to be done several times during the descent.
I had my vest deflated and started going down. I was already really nervous but when I tried to equalize the pressure in my ears, my mask filled up completely with water. I panicked and came to the surface immediately. I couldn’t see because my mask was full of water, and I accidentally grabbed my dive instructor’s mask and pulled it off of her. I didn’t even realize was beside me but when I got my mask off, she was coughing and choking on water. I almost quit, but she showed me how to pinch my nose without filling my mask up so I tried again. I was more successful the second time. I made it down but kept floating toward the surface. It was really hard to concentrate on breathing, emptying my mask of water and swimming successfully with dive equipment. The instructors kept us in a tight group so it was also hard not to run into the other inexperienced divers. There were neat fish and corals, but it was hard to pay attention to them and focus on not drowning!
I think I would like to try again. It’s probably an activity that would be more fun with additional practice and maybe additional training. It really is incredible to be under the water with no need to surface and plenty of time to be around marine life. There were lots of pretty, colorful fish and interesting corals. I would try again and I would recommend it to people as long as they understand that it’s harder than you might expect.
We met some interesting people today. There was a young woman in our group from the French speaking part of Switzerland (there are lots of Swiss people here). She was an experienced diver and has done dives all over the world. We also met a French family from Paris. The parents were vacationing their their sons, all in college. The youngest is going to be an engineer, the middle one is in medical school, and the oldest is studying astro-physics. Very high achieving family!
We had a very interesting day, but Bill and I were both happy to be back at our apartment and clean. The salt water and sun are harsh on your skin! I have a few pictures but not many. I had a water proof case for my phone, but there was no way I could take pictures and scuba at the same time! The water was incredibly blue and crystal clean in places. On the way back to the marina, the water was extremely choppy. The boat ride was like a roller coaster. I still feel like I’m moving on the waves!
Traveling with Emily! 