Ocean Dive 3. Certification Day.

Whereupon Lena learns to love diving.

This was the day when diving officially became fabulous. It was a beautifully sunny day, and the sea was relatively calm, despite the red flags still on the beach. I’m starting to suspect they’ve lost all the other colours.

This time it was Ryan, a kid called Brandon, a Spaniard called Oscar, who was also certifying that day, and me. We headed down, and my ears were being a lot more cooperative. We did our “skills” on the ocean floor--fin pivots, regulator removal and replacement, mask flooding and clearing (I hate that one), and there was a decent current, which made it a little challenging.

Then we got to swim and have fun--and see a Moray eel, lots of little blue fish, more Lion fish (“very very poison” said one of the staff later), and a mermaid. Ha! I was just kidding about one of those.

It was just beautiful, and relaxing, and fun, and Ryan very kindly grabbed my foot and pulled it out of the way of more fire coral (where was he when my hand was getting ravaged the other day?). We did “out of air” testing on the way to the surface, and then we were done. I was the last to do my “out of air,” and it involved going down and up again, while the current made us drift, so we had to hang around in the water for a while afterwards for the boat.

It was glorious not to feel at all queasy, but just to float and enjoy the sun. So we got on the boat, and unhooked all our equipment, and Ryan made the announcement that both Oscar and I had certified today, and everyone clapped, and then they threw a bucket of sea water over each of us.

I decided to buy the video of the dive, and Tomas offered to edit in turtles and sharks as we didn’t get to see them today, but I told him I liked the original version. Although it was sort of tempting to see if he could CGI me onto the back of a dolphin or something. I'll see if I can upload it. It's rather soothing to watch.