Lori's NZ Blog

Certified to 18 meters

I've spent the last week with the nice folks at Splash Gordon and a few mates from work getting certified to scuba dive. It's been a long week, but we made it through! We trained Monday through Thursday nights from 6 until about 10:30, with a few hours spent in classroom training and the rest of the time in a swimming pool. If you ever go through scuba training... you will NEVER swim in a swimming pool again! Clumps of hair, band-aids, phlegm, other unidentified globs and chunks... ewwww. We practiced skills like finding our "neutral buoyancy" -- where you neither sink nor float (trickier than it sounds), underwater equipment removal and replacement, clearing masks of water underwater, and what to do if you run out of air.

After several days in the pool, it was time to try out our skills in the ocean. The one thing I think none of us were prepared for was how incredibly COLD the water was! Even with 7mm wetsuits, hoods, gloves, and booties, we were all shivering. All the skills we did in the nice warm pool, we had to repeat at the bottom of the bay in 57 degree water. But we did get a chance to swim around a bit and check out the ocean life. Jalil even saw an octopus! I'm looking forward to trying out my new scuba skills in a warmer climate. Web album here.

posted by Lori @ 9:09 PM