this is what our day consisted of:
the experience was incredible, and there is soo much to write about it. besides the fact that we saw tons of cool stuff, diving itself was mentally stimulating, phyiscally challenging, relaxing, and enlightening, all at once. i'll get started.
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after a well-rested night, alex and i woke up around 9am-- the latest day yet by over an hour. we met up with our guide at 11am and waited fifteen minutes for the other woman, but she never showed. luckily, alex and i had the wonderful french nemo to ourselves. at twenty-four, he had only been diving for two years, and teaching for three months. he, too, got certified in ko tao. though his jokes were corny and his attempts at charm were painful sometimes, we loved him as our teacher, and truly appreciated having him to ourselves.
ban's, the competition and place we chose not to stay, is one of the biggest diving schools on the island. but they tend to have 8 to a class in the water and up to 30 to a class on land. they are often called the machine by rating books, turning out divers for profit. our school didnt allow any more than 4 to a group. it made us feel much better.
in case you don't know anything about diving, it's easy to die. and there have been deaths on ko tao. though nemo couldn't tell us anyone on the boat that had deaths in their groups (four other instructors) or that anyone had died with him, it happens often enough, and kills an instructor's career through lawsuits and validity of your instruction capabilites. as a diver, once you're in the water and get a few meters down, you absolutely can't panic. but it was a very scarey feeling.
i guess i should go in order.
we met up with nemo and he took us to a table outside. "hookayh muy beybe die-vas, ia half muy pic-cha bouk forh yoou" he said with his french accent. in case you dont know what that is, because i sure as hell didnt, it was "okay my baby divers, i have my picture book for you." then he read aloud in a deep voice, "would you like to learn to dive" and in a high pitched voice and with his head cocked to the side "yes id love to dive!"
oh, he's crazy.
we laughed, and he stopped. "no no, i'm kidding, this book says too much, let me tell you what you need to know."
it was a good thing weeks had explained some things to us beforehand because we would have been completely lost in his thick accent. there were three things we needed to know: first and foremost, when you dive, you never, ever ever ever stop breathing, for any reason, at any point. ever, ever. when you're under water, your lungs begin to expand the further down you go. if you stop breathing and moving air through them, they explode.
i told you it was easy to die.
rule two. you always equalize as you descend. again, when you go under water, there is a lot of pressure, so you have to make the pressure in your head equal to the pressure under water. it is equivalent to when you go through the mountains and your ears pop... to equalize, you hold your nose and breath out at the same time to let your ears pop. you can do this anyone where from one time each meter to sixteen to thirty to fifty times a meter. you can't overequalize, so i spent most of my time doing this afraid my head would pop at any second.
oh god, no one wants to dive around that. how selfish of me.
rule three, you have to sloooowly make your way to the surface. your body needs time to adjust to the pressure under water, and if you come up too fast, you get too much air in your blood... it moves more quicky through your blood, stops in your head, and kaboom again.
i couldnt imagine. but i guess i wouldnt be the one to notice.
how people die is that they often panic. maybe they get claustrophobic, or they are asthmatic and feel like they can't breathe... stop breathing underwater, swim to the surface for air, and by now, you know the rest.
i'm sure my eyes were wide with terror the entire class.
we went through hand signals as well, showing us how to signal that we were okay, that we had a problem, problem with my ears, my head...which just happened to be the same as i feel drunk...
we kid.
you can't drink and dive.
:)
after our land lesson, we went to get our equipment. he fitted us for flippers, wetsuits, vests, and masks. we got in the longboat along with four other trainers and a few other divers, made our way out to the larger boat, and got ready to dive. we paid for one dive, but the boat was going to be out for two dives. we went to the initial dive spot and put on our gear. first, we put on the wetsuits. it's kind of like the dance you do to get into jeans that are too tight. the masks were next, which we wore around our necks. then we put on the vest and tank... which was heaaavy. the vest is an inflation device to keep you afloat when you're not under, has the tank attached to it, and also the regulator, which is what you breathe into.
we put on our flippers, walked to the edge of the boat, and jumped in.
as we were told, when you get in the water, appearently you're supposed to put the regulator in the water face down to get some water in it so it doesnt waste air. i didnt understand the accent au francais, so i put mine in face up. water started bubbling to the surface of the ocean, splashing everywhere, loud as can be.
"ahhhhhh, nemo, make it stop, make it stooop!!"
"pooout itt uhhh, howa douuu you sayh... uhhh..."
"dammit, whaaaat the hell, make it stop!!"
he motions for me to put it face down. it stops.
sorry.
..
we swim closer to the beach where we were going to dive for some practice. on our knees in the sand, we'd have the comfort of air right above us but show that we could handle the dive without dying.
hopefully.
the skills we had to do included purging the regulator in case water got into it, being able to get the regulator back two ways if it came out of our mouths (while still breathing out, because you can't stop breathing), and being able to clear our masks if we got water in them. the first two skills were cake. clearing the mask, however, proved challening. i was first to try. after two unsuccessful attempts, alex, who did much better than i, mumbles "please let us dive anyway..."
pretty please?
after about fifteen more minutes of only half-assed success, i hear "hokah, we go!"
on y va? finalement.
..
i can't even explain to you the feeling of being underwater. the tank weighs next to nothing. you control your placement with your breathing and your fins. you wear weights to keep you under water. we began at about three meters, seeing mostly brown coral and fish. the deeper we went, the more life we saw and the more colorful it became. i equalized myself probably every ten seconds. we moved ever so slowly, soaking it all in, as the experience was amazing. nemo checked our pressure on our vests every few minutes, and hand signaled to ask if we were okay every few seconds. but we weren't okay.
we were fantastic.
..
after thirty minutes, we finished the dive and came back up. weeks had already finished his refresher course and took some awesome pictures for us. we weren't allowed to take a camera because we had to be fully focused on what we were doing. this also made us feel better about who we chose to dive with. after getting the heaavy tank out of the water and back onto the boat, we took off our gear and let it all soak in.
the boat took off to the other side of the island for dive site two, and despite my slight headache by now, alex and i agreed to go through with it again.
we're ready, nemo.
..
this site was much better. we got to do twice the depth, but once we got down there, i was starting to feel uncomfortable. i equalized constantly, and i was still feeling lightheaded. though you can't move fast underwater anyway, you really can't move your head from side to side at all. when i did, i found myself getting very dizzy and lightheaded. i just kept thinking about my safety and questioning whether i was equalizing correctly or not. it almost got in the way of my good time.
almost.
this dive was much better. the coral was brighter, and the fish more active. when we got to the bottom, the first thing we did was swim through a school of silver and blue fish, with a school of black ones that came up behind us and surrounded us. alex and i stuck our hands out in front, our eyes both wide. we wanted to touch them, but though they seemed so close, our hands were so short and we couldn't reach them.
probably better that we, we'd touch something poisonous with our luck.
we continued on with the dive, seeing everything from clownfish to angelfish to parrotfish. we even saw a huge boxfish, one of four in the area, which our trainer hadn't seen in three months. we got the priviledge of seeing a stingray and even two eels. we played with coral, making it retract as we waved our hands over it to scare it away. we watched sea cucumbers chew their dinners and florescent fish reflect the sunlight 40 feet above our heads.
forty-five minutes later, we slowly made our way back to the surface. we got to the boat, and heard weeks.
"was it fun?"
how could it not be?
..
we unzipped the top of our wetsuits and crashed. we were exhausted. the air in the tanks is so dry, and though i was never physically out of breath, my body was tired from the work. just as we thought we were ready to be done, weeks gave his camera to alex. "take a picture of this for me." he climbed to the top of the boat and counted. one...two...
he jumped.
"you guys are next!"
ah hell. when in rome.
alex took the leap first, then i. i gotta say, it was a little painful hitting that water, but well worth every second to get the picture.
twice. :)
..
we were so hungry when we got back, but we had to try to accomplish goal two for the day: finding a coconut, opening it, and trying the milk. when we finally found one that wasn't going to be rotten, i took it back to the bungalow. after about two seconds, alex says, "knock yourself out, i'm going inside to shower..."
but less than a minute later, she was outside helping.
hitting the coconut against the railing was fruitless (haha. i full of jokes, asia rachel = funnnny), so we tried the stairs. then we tried the corner of the stairs. after about fifteen minutes, we pried back the outter shell and took a sip.
bitter and disgusting.
well dammit. that sucks.
what a waste. we'll leave it to the stores to pick the good coconuts
..
Y rae. racho. d.
