You’ll never know ’til you go!
Jan and Erik visit Playa every year for months at a time. They had listened to the tales of local divers all too much. Finally, they decided to take the plunge and try scuba diving with a Discover Scuba Diving course with me. Upon arriving at the beach at 8:30, we got their equipment together then sat down at a table on the beach to go over some physics of diving as well as some skills that would be need to complete their open water dive. Before I got started “lecturing” about diving I asked them had they tried snorkelling or diving. They had tried snorkelling and had even dove down 15+ feet. “Great”, I said! This meant that they had equalized their ears to be able to get down to the bottom when they were snorkelling. So I got to teaching them the PADI flip chart.
They took to the theory just fine so off we went to the confined water. Now…Erik originally had alot of reservations and Jan was gung-ho about…but in the water with all the equipment on, it was a different story. After about 1 hour in the water practicing skills, we loaded up the boat and off we went. In the confined water, Jan had displayed less then enthusiastic feeling about continuing to dive. Although she confessed she had never felt claustrophobia, she had today. And didn’t like one bit.
We decided to dive the Jardines reef which was about 5 minutes away. Once there, we got moored up and ready to go. Erik was putting on his weight belt and fins, getting ready to put on the scuba unit, when I noticed Jan just sitting there. I sat down beside her and asked if whe was alright. She wasn’t. And she wasn’t going to dive either..I could see that. She said she just wanted to snorkel above us while we dove. Well…if there’s anything I have learned about women and diving…give them what they want. So I suited up, and me and Jan rolled into the water.
We drifted slowly down to about 20 feet and started drifting with the current. Amazingly enough, Erik was so perfectly weighted he hardly had to add air to his BCD jacket. We crept up next to the ledge that the reef sits on and started to explore. I found an octopus straight away tucked into a hole. We continued on to find a small golden ray buried under the sand not meters away. The dive itself lasted about 40 minutes, which for a beginner is quite long. And boy did we find the critters! Lobsters, crabs, morays everwhere, huge schools of horse-eyed jacks, porkfish, grunts and snappers. After the safety stop, we surfaced right at the boat.
Erik was a natural straight away. He knew and his smile didn’t lie. He had the most anxiety in the beginning and at the end of the day turned out to enjoy it immensely. Jan on the other hand may be sticking to snorkelling only in the future. It just goes to show…you just never know if your going to like being under the sea until you do it!
