Diving - Day 1

Land iguanas

At 7am I was back at the dive centre. We would take taxis to the other side of the island to the canal Itabaca - from there we would grab their boat to Seymour North for our first dive.










I was a little apprehensive. I´m a novice when it comes to diving, this was only my 5th dive in open water (ie: not in a pool) and I was going diving with people who had between 70 and 350 dives under their weight belts - Gads!  ...AND we were going boat diving, which I had not done before, you know, that´s the one where you go over the edge of the boat backwards??!!

A sea lion at Itabaca canal

 We went down for our first dive after a quick "refresher", they want to make sure you remember two important basics: recovering your regulator (the breathing thingo) and clearing your mask...I hate clearing the mask.  We were then ready for our first dive. The length of your dive depends on how much air not just you, but your buddy or group has. Everyone breathes at different rates, has different lung capacity etc, etc, so even though you all start out with the same amount of air, someone may run out before you do and you don´t let people go off on their own. All this to say, we were aiming for an hour dive.

An hour underwater is like being in another dimension (well, what I imagine another dimension to be like). All you can hear is the sound of your breathing - the sssshhhhhhhh as you inhale and the blub, blub as you exhale - and a strange, watery, clicking. You move more slowly - pushing against a denser matter than you´re used to. Your field of vision is limited by your mask and quality of the water; and you have to look not only forwards and side to side, but up, down and behind as well. Colours change as the spectrum is absorbed, stripped one colour at a time the deeper you go....and the marine life...beautiful, elegant, sometimes odd and peculiar, but always graceful in their smooth, slow movements.

Our first day´s diving had good visibility and we did spot some amazing things - admittedly the others in my dive group (we were 4) saw more than I did because I was struggling to maintain my buoyancy - it´s kinda like getting on a bike after a VERY long time...you get the wobbles until it comes back to you. At the end of our 2 dives we went back to the dive shop to check out the video and pictures that the guide had taken - that was when I really realised how much I had missed! Everyone had a good chuckle at my antics - Nora´s underwater yoga they called it - I really need to work on the whole arm flailing thing.

Frigate bird - beautiful silhouette

That night I went out to dinner with a couple that had been on my dive that day. I felt completely awful. I was so tired, even after a nap, and my sinuses and left ear were completely blocked. I wasn´t sure if I could make it the next day.