Self Contained Underwater Breathing Aparatus – ing!

(oops, thought this was up last night - sorry!)

It’s ear popping fun!  Today I went diving.  It was why I came to this city outside Sousse, and has been a goal of mine for a long time. 

So I got to the place at about 920 and asked about being certified, and sure enough, enough time and everything !  Yes !  I’m thinking ill do reading, training, whatever, maybe for the whole morning and part of the afternoon.  I’m thinking it will be nice to get into the water today but not essential.  Then they had me a wetsuit and tell me to get ready.  OK.  So I suit up, they have gear ready for me – it’s me and three others, two guides.  We suit up and he gives me some basics – pressure gauge, mouthpiece, inflate and deflate suit, and then we’re at the dive site, about 300 meters from shore and we’re putting on tanks and jumping into the water !  There’s a video of me doing that.  Yikes.  So we hit the water and down we go !

There’s not much to it really – pretty straightforward, just breathe through the mouthpiece and don’t go up or down very fast.  The bottom was very cool – wavy plants, lots of fish, some of which was quite colorful.  We even saw an octopus !  I didn’t expect that, one of the guides suddenly had this little guy on his hand, all suction cups and ink clouds – it was a little bigger than my hand, very cool to see.  After touching a number of things, I realized that generally when you step on something slimy, it is pretty to look at underwater.  Not much consolation for those of us with our heads above water, but oh well. 

It was also kind of tiring – I went through much more air than the others, and I am pretty tired now.  It was kind of tough to breath calmly for me – there’s a fair amount of pressure – we went down about 10m (that’s 2 bars of pressure, double atmospheric for the uninitiated).  It’s pretty disorienting to be up and down underwater and I needed a moment or two on land to regain my balance.  On the second dive I was able to relax a bit more, ease through the water more manetee-like.  It was fun, though my head feels a little soggy after so much ear popping underwater.  I am going down twice tomorrow, twice Wednesday, then I will be ready for straight away diving in the Red Sea in Egypt !  This, as much as anything else I’ve seen or done, feels like I am living someone else’s life.  It’s quite a ride. 

I moved out of the retirement community I was in in favor of a slightly more budget option, but not before making excellent use of the fancy hotel’s steam room.  It was the first time since I left Stockholm that I really, really relaxed.  I thought I would tack that on after my less than cheerful post earlier – it is not all bad (.

Sharp!

When it has been dry, the hat has been on! 

The Gear