A diving adventure

It’s the end of an epic diving adventure.  Back in October, Claire and I left the UK to start a year long sabbatical.  Two hundred and thirty four dives later and its time to move on.

Bonaire

We started with six weeks diving in Bonaire, truly the home of diving freedom.  There you can pick up as many tanks as you like, park on the beach almost anywhere and dive as often as you like.  Three hours underwater in  a day wasn’t uncommon for us.  The visibility was always stunning and the water was hot - 29-30 degrees - meaning I could dive in just shorts.

The sea life was wonderful - tarpon, stingrays, eagle rays, turtles, morays and all the Caribbean reef fish like angels, parrots, butterflies, damsels and many more.

It was amazing!

Tobago

Next stop was Chartlotteville, Tobago, for diving as part of a conservation organisation.  Claire worked as the scuba instructor while I took part in surveying and helping to train other volunteers in fish and coral identification.  I gained much experience at diving in poor visibility, underwater navigation, carrying surface marker buoys, leading dives and carrying equipment underwater.  This formed an excellent base for completing my Divemaster course in between surveying.

It was colder than Bonaire - 26-27 degrees, requiring wetsuits for most of us, and the visibility in Charlotteville was often murky.  Speyside, the next village, was the base for surveying off the islands of Little Tobago and Goat Island, where visibility was always very clear.

I found treasure while diving.  The divers here were pretty careless and on various dives I found a mask, a fin, a lead weight and a $5TT note (about 50 pence).

There was a lot of time for swimming and by the end I was swimming ninety minutes without much trouble.  Given I can already knock off marathons for fun, I seriously started to think about an Ironman.  I’d need to put in plenty of cycle training but I reckon with a couple of months of that I could be ready for one, albeit pretty slow.

I also spent two weeks diving for fun, one week with Manta Lodge in Speyside, who I definitely don’t recommend, and one week with Extra Divers in Crown Point.  Extra were good, but the diving in Crown Point is mostly unimpressive compared with Speyside.

Onwards

As I write, I’m about to pack up my dive gear and ship it back to the UK.  My diving has improved beyond recognition over the last five months and I am going to miss being in the water every day.  A sad day indeed, but the dive kit would be too much to carry as we set off backpacking for Buenos Aires on the next leg of our journey.