Getting my diving certificate - Join me on my journey to go restore coral reefs.

Diving is not just putting on your underwater gear, jumping in the water, float around and breathe. Nope, diving can be a risky sport and you have to know what to do in case something goes wrong, for example when your oxigen supplier breaks down....

But yes, diving is amazing. There is something about this underwater world, the way things wave back and forth with the current, the shiny air bubbles from your diver friends, the silence though it is not still, not being able to talk (and not being able to remember what your diving instructor is signaling to you). My dive instructor Felipe from Haliotis Sesimbra was extremely patient with my inability to remember signs and with my mistakes!

The first class of the Padi Open Water Diver course is done in a pool and starts with selecting the right gear and setting it up correctly. This was already a challenge since I have an extremely slim head and I had to try at least 5 masks before finding one that would not fill up with water once I jumped into the pool.
One of the things you then have to learn is how to empty your mask of water, underwater, how to put it back on your head if by any change you would lose it and also you have to get to know how it feels to run out of air. I was very nervous for this last excercise, but when Filipe closed my air bottle, it wasn't scary at all. It's not like you almost choke, pass out and die. Not at all, it just becomes difficult to breathe. Then you signal that you are out of air and air is brought back to you. Of course in a real dive air does not magically come back and you have to opt for another solution, like your buddies reserve air supplier.

What I found most difficult was to find and maintain proper buoyance. Your buoyance is influenced by the amount of air in your body, the density of the water, the presssure (how deep you are) and the amount of air in all that you wear (and maybe more, but this is what I know/remember). I spent quite some time on the bottom of the pool breating in and out noticing my body rise and fall, then adding tiny bits of air to my vest till I managed to float. And then suddenly 4 hours had past by. This is the strangest thing about diving, your notion of time. When it seems you have been 10 minutes in the water, almost an hour has passed by....

I still have a lot to learn before being able to head out on the adventure I started this course for: coral reef restoration. But luckily the journey is already adventurous enough!

Thanks for checking out my post! Have a great day!!