We were up bright and early this morning for our scuba lesson. The scuba place had equipment for us, so we were able to go. It was a much better experience than last time, and I only sucked water into my lungs once during the training! It was easier this time partly because we had done it before and knew what to expect. Our instructors were both young Dutch guys and they were good teachers. One of them was becoming a certified scuba instructor and the other supervised, but in practical terms, we had two dive instructors. Both did a great job and they have a better scuba environment here than in Colombia. Rather than training in a swimming pool, they have part of the ocean near the hotel roped off and you train there. It’s much easier to do it that way and once the training is finished, you just swim out into the ocean.
I still had some problems. The equipment is really heavy and hard to manage. My scuba mask is new and it kept fogging up. It was fogged the entire time and I had trouble seeing clearly. Apparently, you are supposed to let it sit overnight covered in toothpaste to clear off the film that new ones come with. I wish I had known that. My regulator (the thing you breath with) was also broken. There are pieces that you bite into to hold it in your mouth. One of mine was missing and the other was barely hanging so I had to hold the regulator in my mouth. This will be apparent in pictures that I’ll post with this blog. Despite the problems, it was a way better experience and I’m glad I tried again. I was under for about 35 minutes and I think Bill was under for about 50. He did great and was able to film and dive at the same time! After half an hour, I was ready to surface! Bill went back down for another 10 or 15 minutes. I’m really glad I tried but I think I like snorkeling better. About 30 minutes in, I started to feel desperate to surface. It might be partly because my mask was so foggy or maybe scuba is just not my thing. I really want to be a water rat, but I think I’ve spent too much time on land! My mask is currently sitting in the bathroom covered in toothpaste so it should be ready to go for our snorkeling trip tomorrow.
I met a French Canadien family at the scuba shop. They have done scuba all over the world and seemed really excited to talk to someone about it. They were also impressed that an American could speak even bad French to them. It was nice to be able to practice French with them. We mostly hear Dutch and Dutch Creole. There have been surprisingly few other languages.
After our scuba lesson, we set up a kayaking/snorkeling mangrove tour for tomorrow and a coastal snorkeling tour in 3 different places for Sunday. I’m really looking forward to both of those. Bill’s underwater camera is great and he has gotten some really fun pictures and video. He is more into technology than me, which is good because I would have probably ended up with almost no pictures. The internet here is not good so I’ve had a hard time posting pictures. The hotel rooms only have internet sporadically but I’m going to try to post stuff near the restaurant tonight. The signal seems stronger there.
This afternoon, we went souvenir shopping again. More stores were open so it was more fun. We found a store with beautiful metal art. I love metal art! The art is made by a Dutch artist who lives here and is friends with the store owner. I bought a very pretty turtle and I think I’m going to buy another piece to hang over my fireplace. It’s pricy, but I’ve been waiting to hang something over the fireplace until I found something I loved and these pieces are lovely. One piece was a big octopus and the owner had a picture of someone’s house with the octopus above the fireplace. It was striking but I’m not sure I can pull that look off in my house. There were also some beautiful sting rays in sets of three but they also don’t really go in my house. There is a school of bright blue fish that arch and I think they will be perfect. The store ships stuff to the US so I’ll have to do that.
There is live music at the hotel restaurant tonight, so we’ll probably see what what’s like for a little while. Hopefully I can post more pictures tonight. I have some from yesterday that I wasn’t able to post plus the scuba pictures from today. If anyone has questions, feel free to email me!
The following pictures are from yesterday. I’ll post scuba pictures with Bill’s post if I can get them to load.
Traveling with Emily! 