Santa Cruz: Scuba Skills

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Day 75 – Saturday 3rd December 2005

After having yet another early Friday night I woke up with the first light, ready to make like a fish and breathe underwater. Today’s dive was just going to be an opportunity to learn some of the skills I’d have to perfect to obtain my PADI Open Water Certification (this would allow me to dive to a depth of 18m below the surface anywhere in the world).

Most of the skills I’d be learning were pretty basic, such as breathe into and out of my regulator and take off/replace my scuba mask underwater. To get my certification, I would have to complete 4 training dives, each dive consisting of roughly 40mins underwater. During these dives there would be a certain amount of things I’d have to do to pass the course, and get my PADI certificate.

Before we got into the water we ran through everything I’d be doing. Listening to this became a bit of a chore after ten minutes and my attention began to waiver. Despite my best efforts to keep my concentration, by the time we got into the water I had totally forgotten everything I had been told we’d be doing. It turns out this wasn’t such a bad way of doing things as we got through all the skills pretty quickly, just by me being like a sheep and following every move the instructor made, which was pretty much the idea anyhow.

Part of the course is to prove you are able to stay afloat under your own steam in the water, by swimming 200m and then treading water for ten minutes. Thus after being in the water for an hour and a half and not drowning, I had to prove that I could swim for a further few minutes.

With the diving over for the day there was little left to do but use the internet (I had to go to the next village along to do this – remember no electricity), do a little browsing for some clothes (hence the photo of me trying on the hat), read my scuba book and watch the 4 x 1hr long videos which accompany the PADI book. I quickly found out that scuba diving is cool, reading the PADI books and watching the videos is definately not.

By the time I had finished with all that it was time for the apparently traditional Saturday night cross dressing party at the Iguana, so I donned my frock and drank the evening away in true scuba diver style.