Jessica Timlin Hearts Diving

So never did I ever imagine I´d end up doing a diving course in South America, but Taganga is the place to start, one of the cheapest locations to get your Padi Cert, it seemed like a waste not to give it ago, especially when I had some cool amigos to join in with.

Me, Lou, Steph and Bethany started our course with Posidon Diving School, which began with a rather dull and cheesy 3 hour video on the joys, dangers and safety procedures surrounding Diving.

Some little introductory facts about Diving...

1. If you hold your breath while diving, you rupture a lung, so the most important rule for Diving is to NEVER EVER hold your breath.

2. If you ascend to fast, the excessive nitrogen which is now in your blood from the increased pressure of diving, won´t have enough time to work its way out and you can get the bends, or other decompression illnesses, and will have to go into a decompression chamber.

3. No one can dive below 40 m as the oxygen in your tank becomes poisoness.

4. Its important to equalize the pressure in your ear with the altering surrounding pressure as you descend or you risk causing injury to your eardrums.

These were just some of the cheerful facts we were introduced to through the video, but lets be honest, you´d have to be a bit dim if you held your breath, went up to fast, and you´d never go below 40m. Still the effects of pressure and volume of water slightly fascinate me, and the effects it can have on a person.

After the video it was off to a secluded beach to begin our diving exercises. This is right about where my ´freak out´began. I hated it, completely and absolutely for the first 2 hours and was so convinced that I was unable to go below the water, without the consuming fear of not having enough oxygen, that I thought I´d be cancelling the whole thing the next day. We were out with Gurt, our German instructor, and his assistant Juan. My ´freak out´was so ridiculous and illogical, that even when I was standing on the ground I couldn´t put my head underwater, even though I was breathing with the regulator. Fear is a funny thing. Every instinct in my body was telling me that what I was doing was wrong, I was going to drown, to get to the surface immediately. So, Gurt handed me over to Juan while the girls stayed in the company of Gurt who taught them the exercises.

Juan became my hero in those few hours, performing what I can only class as a small miracle. I´m not exactly sure how he did it, but slowly, bit by bit, he taught me to over-ride my instincts with rational thoughts, and to become comfortable and confident with my equipment. My mask wasn´t too big and my regulator was working normally despite my instance. At some point I realised I wasn´t scared anymore, and that I´d been swimming around under (very shallow) water with Juan for 10 minutes.

The girls had completed the exercises for the day, and with my new found confidence I joined Gurt and completed all the exercises first time. They involve tasks such as taking your regulator out and finding it again, flooding your mask underwater and blowing the water out to clear it, breathing from your buddies regulator (you always dive in pairs, your partner is called your buddy), breathing from a free flowing regulator (awful) taking your weight belt on and off, and many more.

The next morning we completed our remaining exercises in the pool, we learned emergency assents, how to find neutral bouyancy, swimming without our mask for a minute with a buddy, swimming while breathing through your buddies octopus, and probably a few more.

That afternoon began our dives. We did one that afternoon of 12m and one the following morning of 12m. Each dive typically began with us having to repreform some of the tricker exercises to Gurts satisfaction. Then began our walk under the sea. And thats when I fell in love with Diving. To anyone that hasn´t dived, its a pretty hard experience to adequtely describe. Its remarkably peaceful, and relaxing, probably due to the slow movement and controlled yoga like breathing. The feeling of weightlessness is pretty unique, I guess its a freeness you could imagine you would achieve if you grew wings and began to fly. And then of course theres the things you see, the fish just act as if your a normal and natural part of their surroundings, they swim relaxed and freely around you, and they´re beautiful. But what can´t be underestimated is the beauty of the corals and plants underwater. Weird would be a good description. At 24 its pretty refreshing to see a world completely new and alien to me. Quarter life crisis solved! The dives always pass remarkably quickly, and I was constantly frustrated to always be the first one running low on air so we´d have to begin to surface.

After the 12m dives, we moved on to 3 18m dives, which, as an open water diver, is as low as I´m qualified to dive. On our last dive Gurt brought the underwater camera with some hilarious results...

It borderlined on ridiculous the saddness I felt when we finished diving. I practically went into moarning and Bethany laughed at me as I sadly tried to recreate the feeling by swimming at the beach, but to no avail. Instead, we constrated on studying our PADI books for our up and coming exam. Needless to say with my obsessive new passion, I passed easily with 92 percent. We all passed infact, and proudly became open water divers. I have a feeling this isn´t the end...

P.S. Top 3 Diving Songs...

1. Grizzly Bear ´Deep Sea Diver´

2. Radiohead ´Pyramid Song´

3. Interpol ´Stella was a Diver´

I´m a nerd...