Scuba Diving!

This summer after taking my STCW course with a group of people training to become dive instructors, I decided that I wanted to learn how to dive and obtain my Open Water Diving Certification. At first I figured that I would do it in Australia, but then before camp I started thinking about doing it in Cape Town. I now find myself in Plettenburg Bay, a coastal vacation spot 6 hours away from Cape Town. I am here visiting with my first cousins on my mom’s side of the family. I rarely get a chance to see them as while my mom and Aunty Ruth both chose to leave South Africa, my Aunty Lorraine and her family live in Johannesburg. We have been here since January 2nd and the weather has been mostly cuck. So being in Plett with some sub-par weather and feeling a little cooped up, I thought that I might as well do my diving course here. Thank god for the entertainment options provided by timeshare resorts! So I have been going to lessons for the past week and as of Thursday am now a certified Open Water diver. This is tremendously exciting, as it feels wonderful to have already fulfilled one of my goals of the year, as well as a lifelong dream to be a mermaid.

Diving involves a lot more skill and knowledge than I had previously thought. Plus there are some serious risks involved. The number one rule of diving is to always breathe. This might seem simple, but isn’t really when you think that a swimmers instinct is to hold their breath underwater.

We went on four ocean dives during the duration of the course and yesterday I had an incident with my regulator, the mouthpiece through which you breathe. We were practicing losing and replacing your regulator underwater. This is simple enough with some practice and as I was clearing the water out of my reg so that I could breathe through it again, I hit a minor glitch as it malfunctioned and went into free flow. I managed to stay calm and switched to my octo (backup regulator). My instructor however was more than a little spooked, as she had never seen that happen before. But it’s good to know that I can maintain composure in a potentially fatal diving situation, as it really is an incredible adventure sport. I look forward to future dives this year in Australia, Thailand and maybe even Cairo!