Writings By Date| SCUBA Diving in Belize, Part 2 |
SAN PEDRO, BELIZE — Well, it's been a full week since we began our open water training dives for our certification. The weather went to hell in a hand basket - a.k.a Hurricane Michelle. Not to mention, Keith became violently ill with E. Coli.
Today, under not-so-ideal circumstances we finished our training dives. The water was pretty choppy, heavy currents and swells. We even got hit by a huge wave on the way to the dive spot. The wave was probably only 6 feet high, but it looks 3 times that when it's coming toward you and you're in a little boat! When we drove straight into it, we were airborne for a full second and a half before we came crashing down. lorne said he'd never seen a wave that big inside the reef.
Our third and fourth dives were an exercise in currents. We were diving in shallower water becuase of the big waves out near the edge of the reef. It is really hard to control where you are in shallow water, plus I didn't have enough weight in my weight belt so I kept floating up. Anyway, I did get to see a shark! I wasn't as freaked out as I thought I'd be but that's probably becuase it disappeared as soon as I turned around to try and get Keith's attention to show him. Oh well....
Overall, it was very challenging diving. The visibility was poor and the currents were tricky. But, we passed! Yeah, we are offical SCUBA divers now. Lorne and Jolene were really a lot of fun to dive with and I'm glad we used them for our certification. It was a very personal experience.
Hopefully, we will get to dive again soon. I hoping to dive down near the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica. Diving on the Pacific side should be a very different experience.
- Erin
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