I did my first free diving class today, and it went great! I was concerned about how it would go, but I’m actually a decent free diver. I think my snorkeling background helped. I was most concerned about equalizing the pressure in my ears, which has limited how far I could dive in the past. There is a special technique that free divers use. It’s different than the scuba diving technique. It’s faster and works better at deeper depths. I had practiced some before I got here, and I found the technique fairly easy. I’m glad I practiced ahead of time though. I can dive to 39 ft without much trouble, and I think I was down to 49 ft once today.
We did two types of free diving today. In the first method, you pull yourself down with a rope attached to a weight. This was easiest for me. The second method involved swimming down with fins. I don’t have much experience using fins. I don’t like them so I don’t use them when I snorkel. I had a hard time controlling them, but to dive deep, you really have to use them so I need to start practicing with them.
There was one other guy who took the class with me today. He struggled with equalization and was pretty frustrated, but he’s going to take some Sudafed and see if that helps tomorrow. He’s 28 and recently quit his job and is planning to spent the next year or two traveling the world and blowing through most of his savings while he tries to decide what he really wants to do. One of the other free divers on the trip had done the same things when he was younger. He took 4 years to travel and live off savings. Both of them work in tech. My dive instructor was from Argentina.
I have my second day of class tomorrow morning. I hope it’s less windy and the water is calmer. We were out for at least 2 hours today. The water was pretty choppy and I was starting to feel mildly seasick by the time we came in. My sunscreen didn’t work as well as usual and I have weird sunburn patches all over. They aren’t bad burns, but I’ll have a weird tan.
But, overall, I was really happy with how the day went. Bill and I ate at a good restaurant down the street. The food here overall, is really good. I’m thirsty a lot and the smoothies and lemonade are delicious!
Traveling with Emily! 