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Sally and I were now back in the comfortable setting of the Dreamer hostel and I was excited to start my PADI Open Water Diver course. I chose to dive with Octopus Dive Centre because they had an association with the hostel and a few people I had spoken to said they were good. Octopus also aloud you to take a 3 day course over 2 days. This was great for me because I needed to cut a day out somewhere to make my flight out of Cartgena. That morning I was picked up by the taxi driver who asked me when I wanted to go. I said Octopus Dive Centre in Taganga, he knew Taganga but had never heard of the dive centre! When we got to the small seaside town of Taganga the driver stopped to ask a local who had also never heard of the dive centre! A couple of locals later we finally got directed to the dive centre. It seemed to be a very new place so I put it down to that, that no one had heard of it and not down to the fact that no one uses it. The place was very small but the people seemed nice and my dive instructor Carlos was a great guy. Carlos sat me outside and talked me through everythibng I needed to know about the gear I would be using to dive. Carlos left me to strip the gear and re-attatch everything a few times. Sat outside I was looking out over the bay wondering which of the dive boats I would be on. All the boats looked a reasonable size and pretty nice so I wasn´t too fussed little did I know the treat the had in the garage. When we were ready to set off they opened the garage to hook up a boat that was about a quater of the size of all the others to the 4x4 to get it down to the water. O well I wasn`t really fussed so long as the diving was good.
On the first day there was only 4 of us on the boat, an English guy and Ozzy girl who had already done 1 day of the coarse and then I can´t remeber his name but lets call him the clown for now for reasons you will realise and then there was me. Me and the clown had been paired up as dive buddy`s and our first task was to swim to a bay 200m with snorkle gear on. I headed for the bay and got there in a few minutes no problem. The clown somehow completely missed the bay and ended up in the rocks about 30m away, the waves were reasonable small but he was getting bashed about a bit. This was the first moment I questioned myself about the clown.
On the first dive down we had a few challeges to carry out like a position called the buddha. This is where we had to get ourselves neutrally bouyant so we could sit floating like a Buddha with our legs cross and make ourselves rise up and drop down using the air in our lungs. It took me a few adjustments to get it right but I got there. The clown spent the whole time kicking up sand and laying on the bottom. After a couple more excersises we swam around the corals. It was a really stunning and very peacful.... for me, Carlos had to keep racing off the pull the clown back down to us because he kept shooting towards the surface half through bad bouency and half through panic. I didn´t mind because it meant that I could glide around in search of interesting fish a corals. I saw some amazing things like a sea horse, a huge puffer that actually puffed up, a moray eel, scorpion fish and tons of others.
On the second dive one of our excersises was to take all of our breathing gear off underwater including weight belts. For me taking it all off was fine, putting it back on was a bit more tricky. The clown took of his oxygen tank ok but when he took his weight belt off he held it out to the side, this flipped him 180 degrees so he was upside down. I couldn´t help but laugh which is not easy when your trying to breath through your regulator at the same time, it was a brillient moment though. For the following dives Carlos added a lot of weight to the clowns belt to try and keep him from floating up to the surface. As we swam around the clown was trying to swim like you would on the surface with his ams flailling everywhere, at one point he took my regulator clean out my mouth. From that point on I tryed to stay just in front while still being able to keep an eye on my dive buddy.
At the end of the first day the clown and I were chatting and I asked why he had chosen to do the 2 day course. It turned out that he had actually opted for the 3 day but the day before he had, had a panic attack when carrying out the 200m swim. At this point it all started to make total sence to me. The clown also told me that on the surface he could swin 2 miles and he did exactly that on a regular basis to keep fit! Now I´m confused.
Before heading back to the Dreamer Carlost handed me a nice big book with everything I had to learn for the test the following day. Usually you have 2 evenings and some time in the day to get through all this but I only had 1 night! No relaxing for me that evening.
The next day there were a few more divers on the boat so it was pretty crowded. One person was missing...... the clown of course. He turned up 15 minutes late and with him he had his wife and 2 kids and he had paid for them to join us on the boat! It was certainly cozy to say the least.
There were some interesting tasks to carry out today like having our oxygen supply turned off and and having to ask for our buddy's secondary air. I have to admit that I was slightly concerned about having to rely on the clown for this but luckily it all went fine. Another excersise was to use a dive compass and swim 15m on a bearing then return on the opposite baring. Carlos had selected and area with poor visability so that we had to rely on the proper compass reads and not just on sight. The clown was up first, off he went into the murky water and out of sight. When a few minutes had passed Carlos and I looked at each other. After a while Carlos signalled that he was going to go and find the clown and that I should stay where I was. After around 10 minutes of waiting I decided that it was best I headed to the surface because they may not find me in the murky water. Once I was at the surface I could see the clown and Carlos swimming towards the boat. When I got to them Carlos did not seem happy with the clown and he told me he had found him already at the surface way of course! We headed back down for my turn at navigating using the compass. I have to admit that it wasn´t that easy in the murky water to to count the number of flips of my feet to measure distance and focus on the compass. I got there and back okay but I was just to the left of where I had started but it was close enough.
The clown making slow progress through the water as we swam around so Carlos kept an eye on him while I was just ahead of them both. I saw something flashing on a rock and wondered what it could be, when I got closer I realised it was a huge octopus. I have seen octopi before but never one that flashed so many amazing colours as this one. Carlos swam up behind me and saw a glimpse of the octopus as it headed into a hole. 10 minutes later I heard the clinking noise in the water that means Carlos had found something he wanted to show us. As I traced to where he was pointing sat there was a huge sea turtle! What a beautiful thing, it almost didn't look real. The turtle started to swim so we swam next to it for a while. It was like nothing I have ever experienced before, it was a great moment. When we got to the surface Carlos said that he had only seen 2 sea turtles in the last 3 months, this made me feel even luckier to have seen it.
After we had completed all our dives we headed back to base. Carlos sat me down to start my test. I saw the clown walking out with his family so I asked where he was going. He said that he wasn't taking the test because he hadn't had time to study! Nut case! So after all that he wouldn´t be getting his certificate. It´s probably for the best, it would be scary to think that someone might dive alone with the Clown as their dive buddy. I cracked on with my test and handed to one of the dive instructors who marked it. I got 100%, Yay! Then the instructor told me that this is just the warm up test and handed me the real test, damn! I worked through the questions and at the end there was only 1 I had left blank because i was unsure between 2 out of the 4 possible answers. Carlos asked me what I was unsure about so I told him and he cheekily hinted at what the answer was out of the two I had narrowed it down to. His answer was the opposite to the one I was leaning towards but he was the instructor. I handed my papers in and when I got the results I had got 1 question wrong, so close! Turns out the one question I got wrong was the aswer given to me by Carlos! I guess that will teach me for cheating even though I didn´t ask for the answer. The other guys on the 3 day course both got 2 wrong so I was still proud of the result and I am now a fully qualified Open water diver.... BRING ON THE GREAT BARRIER REEF!
- comments
Dad :-) Ah Pedro you shouldn't spend so much time inventing stories about other people to cover your tracks - I think we all know the real identity of 'the c;own' Messieur Pedro himself!!! :-) Actually sounds amazing - well done on passing Ped - Dad xx