The diving begins...

14/6/11

Being tight (apparently a feature of mine) I had managed to wangle a free boat pick up from the side of the island that we were staying on saving aprox 2gbp each (well every penny/ringet counts). Of course the boat man was on Asia time so was 40 minutes late but I calmed myself by thinking that he would come as we had not paid the dive school any money yet! Once safely delivered to the dive school I was paired with Sasha and told I would be doing 4 dives, 3 sets of theory in the water and watching 5 hours of instructional DVD. James would be doing 5 dives but had no DVD’s to watch. Little did I know that the DVD’s would be painfully boring but more on that later. I was also unaware that Sasha would be possibly the most boring person on earth. He was not unpleasant but it often felt like there was blood running from my ears when he was talking. Most of his stories started and ended with “when I was in university in KL/ in KL / in Malaysia I did something (incredibly mundane) and then the story would stop. Later he would push James when he was underwater sealing his fate in James eyes as being a” tosspot!”

It may sound as if it’s all moans but it was certainly far from that as Antonio the instructor was just lovely. A Spaniard with a slow and patient approach to dealing with new divers who inspired confidence without being pushy. Within an hour of stating the course Antonio had Sasha and I underwater and James was on his first dive Gus (a lovely Canadian) . The dive was like paddling in bath water as the sae was 30degrees centigrade. The water was postcard blue and the marine life even at the shallow depths was spectacular.

The afternoon was spent watching the PADI DVD’s. Oh my they are of a cheesy production quality and so dry. Surly an organisation that claims to have 70% of the divers registered with it could splash out on a decent DVD? Well anyway we persevered and completed the set questions. Realising that the answers were all in the accompanying book and having no oversight we skipped the next DVD and just answer the questions. Bliss as it allowed me to have a little nap!

Whilst we were watching the DVD James was on his first open water dive for the advanced course. This was a deep water dive the depth of which should not exceed n30 meters. When James emerged he realised he had been down to 35 meters but appeared not to have suffered any ill effects. The dive log will of course reflect the 30 meter depth as not to upset any PADI inspectors!