Still Diving...

Well, my addiction to diving has certainly begun. I love it so much, and now that I'm done the second course am a little depressed! I spent the last two days, building upon my open water diver status. Last night I finished the 'Advanced Adventurer' course. We did 5 dives in two days and got to choose which components we wanted to do. Three were required: a navigation course with compasses and maps, a natural buoyancy course where we would try to neither float nor sink, a deep 30metre dive and a night dive. For the other two, me and my buddy opted to do the photography and I'm waiting for a disk of my fish photos to come out so I can post them.

The navigation course was the hardest, its' really difficult to figure out where you're going underwater, even with hand drawn maps!! My group got lost, and our leader just let us figure it all out. We had a big underwater arguement over which way to go, turns out I was wrong. It's quite difficult to argue underwater, it involves a lot of handgestures and ahhing and ooing. The buoyancy course was fun as well. I'm very positive so I have a harder time sinking and float very easily. We had to swim through this big square thing and control ourselves so that we could do it without hitting the sides, as well as standing on our heads underwater and spinning around! Our deep dive down to 30meters was also fantastic. There's this thing that happens to some people when you go deep, it's called narcossis and basically gives you the feeling that you are very drunk or stoned. Before we went down we did a number test, pointing to numbesr then to our noses, and would retime ourselves at the bottom. Well I got down there and went nuts. I couldn't hit my nose and would poke my mask and neck and everythng but. Yvonne (instructor) gave me a funny wave saying I was 'narked' and I insited that I treied again, and still couldn't do it. She then gave me a shrunken plastic bottle to play with and it was the most bizarre feeling! It felt as though I had just had 5 tequila shots. My buddy had to drag me out of there, litterally. He grabbed my tank and pulled me upwards because I didn' want to leave! It was so crazy and everyone was jealous that I got narked but they didn't. The other great dive was the night dive. Scary sounding, I know. We went out on the ocean at sunset and watched it set and then got suited up, grabbed our torches and went down, and you can't see a damn thing. All of the fish are sleeping and only where you shine the light can you see anything. I was scared at first thetn realized that it was amazing that I was 18 metres under the ocean in the dark. The fish look dead, they just lie on the coral sleeping and a lot of the corals looked brighter and more colourful. We stopped and stood on the sand 18 metres down for a bit, and turned off the lights, and when you wave your hand in the water, all of the plankton light up and flash. It was really beautiful. I was having a great time until Benni, one of the guys in my group grabbed my ankle and I screamed thinking it was some sort of shark. My buddy Dwayne said he could fully hear my scream through the regulator and everything. I was so mad, I thought he had done it on purpose. Turns out I almost kicked him (his fault for following too closely) and he put his hand out to stop my fin, but still!! It was terrifying momentarily. As soon as I get my photos I will attempt to post.

We are forcing ourselves to leave tomorrow or else I would do the next course....but I am leaving some time at the end of the trip to come back and potentially do a bit more. We are heading to Krabi tomorrow and not going to the full moon party. We've heard too many bad stories around here and it really screws up our plans and cuts back on our time if we hang around this side of the country. Besides, last night we had a party and it was almost a full moon!

Like I said, I'm falling in love with this island and diving. Getting up for a morning dive and watching the sun rise from the boat as we head out to sea is the most amazing feeling. Same with the sunsets. It's unbelievable. Love it.