We're now officially certified to dive anywhere in the world! It's pretty exciting to have that kind of license and we hope to make a few fun dives in other countries we're going to be stopping in along the way.
Our last two days of the course consisted of four deep dives to our maximum allowable depth of 18 metres. It wasn't all fun and games because we had a lot of skills left to demonstrate. Near the end of our second dive (at about 12 metres) we had to demonstrate that we could take out our regulators (the things that go in your mouth to provide the air) and breathe off of our "buddy"'s reg. We had demonstrated the same skill at about 3 metres so it shouldn't have been a problem. But I forgot the very important step of clearing out the water from the reg before sucking in. So, when I took air from Magi's reg I got a mouthful of water, couldn't figure out why, and then I panicked. I held my breathe (the most important rule of diving is to never hold your breath!) and tried to go up to the surface as I exhaled my last gasp of air. Jimmy held on to me and yelled something indecipherable then handed me the cleared reg. I sucked on that air like it was the best thing I had ever tasted and took about 10 deep breaths before I was feeling calm again. For a moment there I really felt like I was at the end, it was really scary. That sort of set the tone for the other dives we did, I was much more anxious while descending but that was all that went wrong. Magi had one of those lessons too, the kind you only have to do wrong once before learning never to do it that way again. You've probably got an idea of what a diver looks like when she steps off a boat. They take a long stride forward with one hand at their face holding their mask and reg on. Well, one part of that you can't see is that the vest you're wearing is full of air to keep you buoyant once you hit the water. Hence the name, it's called a BCD or Buoyancy Control Device. On our first entry, Magi forgot to put air in her BCD vest and plunged deeply with her really heavy scuba gear into the depths of the gulf of Thailand. When she got back to the surface of the water, she pledged her retirement from scuba forever. When she realized what she had done wrong, she felt much better and all the following entries were smooth and comfortable.
It's hard to put into words what it's like to be swimming along underwater watching the fishes and the coral and their environment simply exist. On one hand it's very peaceful and soothing to swim along in the relative quiet (when you breathe you sound a little like Darth Vader). On the other hand you have to remember to never stop inhaling and exhaling deeply and you have to continuously equalize your ears and try to remain neutrally buoyant so you can swim and so you don't disturb the underwater environment.
I think it must become much more of the former once you dive many dives. I'm so excited to have seen the fish we saw when we were out there. Just to name a few we saw blue spotted stingrays, clown fish, more barracudas, many schools of small tropical fishes, all kinds of coral and we were even attacked by a trigger fish. A triggerfish is a beautiful but big and territorial fish that isn't kind to strangers. We were warned about going into their space and knew that when Jimmy signaled a gun with his hand, he meant we were coming upon a trigger's home. Charlotte, a Brit from our group, didn't take kindly to this attack and went straight to the surface. Magi was quite scared I found out later but the rest of us were just kind of floating there, enjoying the art of the attack with our flippers out in front ready to protect ourselves. Eventually we worked our way out of trouble.
Everyday we were on Ko Tao the sun shined and both the wind and the water were warm. It was the closest thing to paradise that I have ever experienced. It was a very sad moment this morning to board the ferry and leave.
Tonight we're in the sleepy town of Ranong on the west coast. We arrived here today after taking a ferry from Ko Tao and then a minivan from Chumphon. We're only here for a few days before heading deeper south to Phuket.
Tomorrow is Emerson's FIRST birthday! Happy Birthday Cutie!
inthesea,
k&m