I have just been to magnetic island for the past 6 nights. 3 of those nights were spent at a Kuala sanctuary/hostel and 3 of those nights were spent getting my Open Water PADI Certification. This means that I can now dive 18 meters deep without a dive master hovering over me. Though the buddy system is still a rule, I can now just pop on a rig and go diving with a friend. Much more importantly, I understand what the hell is going on when I am under the water. You can go diving without the certification, but I feel a thousand times more confident with all of my newly learned skills including: How to fill your mask with air if it gets flooded, how to swim to the surface safely if you run out of air, and how to swim under water in zero visibility and still know where the heck you are going. These are only a few of the many skills I picked up in the past 3 days. The certification package included 2 pool dives, 4 ocean dives, 3 nights accommodation, and 3 dinners all for about $200 US. This is a screaming deal compared to the $500 US price for just the certification back home.
I was the only American in the course and there were 9 people total. Part of the course was proving that you could swim 200 meters continuously and tread water for 10 minutes continuously. There was no time limit on the 200 meters and you were allowed to lie on your back for the 10 minute water treading session. Sure I’ve been bodyboarding for 12 years, but I’ve never have a formal swim lesson in my life, let alone been on a swim team. I don’t consider myself too too strong of a swimmer back home at a public pool. In fact, I see holder men and women in their 40s smoking me in speed and endurance almost every time I go to a public pool. But when it came to doing these tests in an international crowd, you might as well have called me flipper in comparison to the pathetic doggy paddling that the Germans, Swedish, English and Serbians were using. I wasn’t trying to show off, but I was literally swimming circles around them. I just didn’t have the patience to go as slow as them. I would sometimes swim an entire lap of the pool underwater because they were all in the way so much. I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone (including the instructors) could stand a chance to me (the same guy who gets smoked at home in the public pools) in a 50, 100, or 200 meter race. None of them could tread water correctly for even 2 minutes before having to flip on their backs and rest. They said I looked like I was standing on a underwater latter because my head was at such a steady position above the water.
And then it dawned on me. I’m from the best swimming nation to ever walk this planet. Does Michael Phelps ring a bell? We’ve got enough gold medals in this stuff to pay off the national debt. Well let’s not get too carried away. But damn right I’m proud, even cocky. You put YOUR head in the fucking water during a swim test and then get back to me.
Aside from the swimming, there was a degree of comfort that I had in the water that everyone but the Swedish guy in the group didn’t have. Especially those German girls, just floundering around and panicking up to the surface the moment a drop of water slipped into their mask. At the end of each dive, I had significantly more air in my tank than everyone else because I wasn’t panicking. I just breathed normal or even less than normal; the water is soothing. I remembered back to the swim test that I took (against my will) for junior life guards WHEN I WAS 9 required me to tread water (the real way) for ten minutes. A bunch of nine year olds were stronger swimmers than these foreigners.
But let’s get to the interesting stuff, the ocean dives. What did I see? Well, the standard response was that I didn’t see a single dolphin because there were too many sea turtles in the way. That was the joke at least. The truth was that this is still the windy season and the visibility of my first ocean dive was about to the end of my outstretched arm. I might as well have been at the bottom of a peat bog. We entered the water from the beach and there were 3-4 foot waves that day. As all of the foreigners struggled with getting into the water (including my dive instructor) I wanted to see if it was possible to body surf with a scuba rig on. One thing that did get the best of me was the motion sickness that I felt when being thrown around on the bottom in the murk. I so close to throwing up in my regulator (what you breathe the compressed air out of) that I was seriously wondering what would happen with all that compressed air at 20 feet deep. We had to swim along a rope that the dive instructor held the front of in order to stay in a group when diving in such murk. I just had to make sure that the guy in front of me didn’t kick me too hard in the face, though I knew how to put my mask back on and flush out all of the water.
The second day we dove in the ocean in the morning and the visibility was much better at about 6 feet. The waves were a lot smaller and I have the foresight to take a motion sickness pill before I dived. I really enjoyed the experience that I gathered in the water and though the other students were a bit of a drag, I enjoyed their company.
Next I am going to Cairns to dive the Great Barrier Reef (Scuba this time). And after that I am going to go to the middle of the country to see the real outback.