Certified PADI open water scuba diver
Yep, that’s me. After being washed out in Honduras by Hurricane Wilma, I figured I’d have to wait a little longer to try my hand at scuba diving. Flipping through my book, I realized it was just as cheap, if not cheaper, to take a scuba diving course in Panama, in a place called Bocas del Toro. So, I decided to check it out. It’s just over the border from Puerto Viejo, so I headed there the day after Thanksgiving. I actually had a really annoying day getting to Puerto Viejo, getting ripped off for a $10 cab ride (I knew it, but just gave in, for some stupid reason), and all this business…I got into town pretty pissed at the world (and myself), but I’ll skip the details because it annoys me to rethink it. Anyway, I got into town, found some crap hotel, and went right away to sign up for a diving course.
I got a good night’s sleep and headed to the dive center. There was only two of us in the course, the other one being an older lady from Canada, and I really enjoyed the small class. The morning was all theory, watching some videos and taking some quizzes. After lunch, we were introduced to all the gear, put it on, and went in the water, just off the dock. This is called a confined water dive, where you’re in shallow water in a confined area. I was quite nervous going down. You breathe out of this thing called a regulator, all through your mouth, so that’s the first thing you have to remember is not to breathe through your nose (which is in your mask). The second thing is equalizing the pressure on your ears, which I found I did with no problem. If you don’t do this, though, you can blow out your eardrum…I met one guy with a pretty serious ear infection because of this. The whole breathing thing was a little difficult at first. I found that I didn’t want to exhale fully, and I felt the breathing to be slightly constricted. At first we were only about 3 meters deep (10 feet), then we went a little deeper, to maybe 10 meters (33 feet). We had all these drills to do, like taking our mask off and on, clearing the water out of it, and learning how to control our buoyancy. This is the whole trick to scuba diving – controlling your buoyancy. Everyone wears a wieght belt and a vest that is connected to the air supply. To make yourself go down, you let air out of the vest. To float on the water, you put air in, which is really nice, because you don’t have to do anything to stay on top of the water. After this, you can fine tune your buoyancy by taking breaths; inhaling makes you go up, exhaling makes you go down.
I did have one bout of water up my nose and in my mouth, and I almost darted up to the top, pretty sure that my equipment had failed. All I wanted was a fresh breath of air. But, and this is the key to diving…you just relax and sort yourself out. In this case, you just cough it out through the regulator, and it’s really fine. In extreme cases of failure, you always have a buddy who has an extra air supply to use. This is a buddy sport, and since there’s no talking under water, there are tons of hand signals that you learn to communicate with people under water.
The next day we did our first two dives in open water, which just means out there in the sea, and not going into any sort of wrecks or caves or anything…just basic scuba diving. I was again pretty nervous just before going in, but once I was down, it was all surprisingly easy. Both of our dives were cut short, unfortunately because Alice seemed to have some buoyancy issues and would find herself at the top all of a sudden. I think it may have been a combination of her getting confused and nervous all at once.
The bad news of the day is that my watch broke, and I was quite disappointed. The damn thing is water resistant up to 100 meters, and I only went 15m. This has now left me not knowing the time, the date, or anything. Of course, Timex said they ould replace the thing, but being in a foreign country really makes it all that much more difficult. I tried to fix it (I didn’t really think it would work), and well, I just ended up taking the whole damn thing apart and not being able to put it back together. While I was doing so, I met some guys who were at my hotel. One guy, kinda dumb, from southwestern Missouri, and another guy from Chicago, Wicker Park. He’s living in Costa Rica now, but he lived right above the AngelBarn or whatever that weird place is on Augusta. He was even familiar with Broadview…his dad works there, at a company called Replogle, the largest globe manufacturer in the world. Now there’s a claim to fame for Broadview. At least we got something.
The next day Alice decided not to dive, and I was definitely happy about this. She was the weakest link, definitely, and I knew today that none of my dives would get cut short. We went to a super cool place that normally is not diveable this time of year, due to the current and low visibility. This was my favorite dive of all…tons of fish, huge fish, small fish, blue fish. I would often just turn my head and find myself in the middle of a school of fish. I was a lot more comfortable this dive; in fact, at this point, I decided that I was more comfortable under the water than I was on top of the water, where waves splashed me in the face and there was no frame of reference, just lots and lots of water – so much unknown. Once you’re under the water, it’s very tranquil and peaceful, where you now have a sense of where you are, not just floating in the middle of nowhere. And you really are floating…you definitely feel this weightlessness down there once you get your buoyancy down.
The next dive, and my last of the class, was a little scarier. My instructor was setting up a drill for me to do, and went under water while I waited at the surface. He came up and told me there were lots of jellyfish down there. Well, there sure were. The jelly fish only sting when you touch their tentacles; the longer the tentacles, the worse the sting. Well, I was all eyes wide open down there, looking all around me for these damn jellyfish; I ended up alright. I finished my last few drills and when I was done, both my instructor and I did backflips to celebrate.
Returning back to my hotel, I discovered that my towel and a tshirt I had hanging out to dry had been stolen. My blouse was still there, so I’m assuming it was a guy. Man, what bad luck…first my watch now this stuff. It’s really not too bad because the shirt had some nasty stains already and the towel really stunk all the time, so it’s not like the guy really made off with good stuff. He would have been better off with the blouse. I tried to not believe the stuff was stolen and went for a little swim in the water, thinking maybe the stuff fell in there. Well, this ended up in me scraping my feet on whatever was down there, in the midst of slimy sand…I hadn’t realized that all the waste water (and god, I’m hoping not the toilets) were just emptied out into the lake. Oh it was disgusting.
Included with my course were two free dives after receiving my certification, so I took those the next day. I was like a pro…no concerns, no nervousness, nothing. I was totally comfortable at some 30, 40 feet under the water, and I couldn’t believe how easy it was. We saw some really cool starfish – they were huge, some sting rays, and some squid, not to mention tons of fish, and even an old ferry ‘wreck’ that was sunk under water, which had tons of stuff growing on it. Really cool. At the end, I was totally disappointed that there would be no more diving for me, at least not for a while. But it was really cool, something that I never even thought about doing, and something I totally recommend.
Back at the hotel, I met a little 10-year old local girl named Lisbeth, who was really cute. She had the day off school and was helping the lady who runs the hotel. I took a shower, and she really wanted to comb my hair, so I let her. She made a braid, and then another, and then, well, she did the whole head. So now I have a whole head of braids…I’ve not been one to get braids the whole time people have been soliciting them to me along the entire Caribbean coast, but how can you tell a 10 year old girl to stop? So, yeah, now I have a whole head of braids. It does make life easier, though.
Later that day I ran into some of the guys I had met in Granada, which is always fun…running into people you’ve met before. Some people seem to think, wow! What a small world. Well, it’s not. We’ve all got the same book, going the same places, and we just so happen to be at the same place at the same time. I went out with some diving buddies that night…off to another island that was teeming with crabs (it was pitch black and sounded like the whole ground was crawling), then back to the mainland and out with some other people. I ended up out until two, and trademarkedly overslept my alarm the next morning to catch the direct bus to Panama City.
Tags: Panama, Tag Index
Tania