Friday, December 3, 2010

SCUBA! SCUBA! SCUBA!

We've finally completed our certification classes for open water scuba diving! Yay!

Here's how the journey started:

On Thursday morning, we all went to the One Ocean Dive Centre and got signed up! It was a long, long, long day filling out a ton of forms, watching videos, reading and taking tests. The whole process took about 9 hours...yup, getting open water scuba certification is a loooong process! :)

For Charlotte who already had scuba certification, she got to go on her own dive adventure while the rest of us had class. Charlotte went with a couple of scuba guides to do a wreck dive! Under the glimmering blue waters, she saw sting rays, a ton of tropical fish (and a few rare ones), sunken ships and porcelain plates scattered all across the ocean floor. Charlotte also got a bit sun-burnt from this experience but it was "amazing!"

That night, after completing the classroom part of scuba certification, many of us got henna art drawn on our skin and had dinner at the seafood night market. The sight of lobster, king fish, crab, shrimp, prawns, clams, octopus, squid, shark, tuna, and a bunch of other tempting delicacies from the sea grilled right in front of us smelled and looked absolutely delicious. IT tasted soo good and we also had some cats purr at us annoyingly to get a bite of our meal. Lol.

The next morning, we took a 10min float and a 200m swim test, tried on scuba equipment and hit the pool to test them out! It was quite an experience getting used to breathing under water and using giant flippers. We were taught some basic skills and signals (since we can't communicate verbally under water) and some of us stayed under water practicing with the dive master for over half an hour.

Charlotte also got to go on another dive, and Karen also went on a dive on the northen part of Zanzibar Island. Yay!

AND TODAY.....with our official open water scuba diving certificates, almost all of us will dive into the crystal blue waters of the Indian Ocean and explore life under the sea discovering the different ship wrecks, coral reefs and marine animals! We are all very excited and it is going to be one unforgettable adventure! Yay!

Stay tuned to hear more soon about our first scuba dive in the ocean!

No comments: