Under the Sea

It has been a week since we arrived home from Honduras, and I've got to get the diving pics on here. I'm at my folks' house for Easter weekend, and updated everyone on our trip, especially the diving! Questions included:

So how do you breathe underwater - through your nose? (No - you breathe through your mouth, with the regulator - once I got used to it, it wasn't an issue for me at all)

Were you scared at all? (Yes, of course, a little, but it was so cool! One of the scariest things for me was getting into the water - flipping over backwards over the edge of the boat, with all the scuba gear on...)

Did anything bad happen? (Nope, but there is a lot of training "in case of" over the five weeks of pool classes and then the two days of open water training - what to do if your mask comes off, you run low on air, etc. Those things rarely happen, though, with proper preparation and equipment)

How deep did you go? (Most of our dives were 40-50 feet, but one dive we went to 80 feet)

How long was the dive? (An average of 45-60 minutes)

Did you get cold? (The water was 80 degrees, but I did get cold by the end of each dive, even with a 3mm full wet suit. I think I will go to a 5mm for our next trip, and buy/bring my own)

Our open water training consisted of four dives over a two day time frame; one shore dive, where we waded into the water and started our dive from that point. The other three dives were boat dives, all within 15 minutes of the resort. We had to do some "skills" on the surface of the water, (direction finding with a compass and a couple other things - sometimes the water was so choppy, it was much harder to be on the surface in our gear than it was to go underwater- we were ready to go DOWN!) and then some skills on the ocean floor - removing our masks and then putting them back on, clearing the water out. That was one of the most stressful things for me at the start of my diving lessons back in February, but by April I was much more comfortable. Here we are on the ocean floor, our last class (Dave and Ric went with us on dive four, and Dave was the photographer):

When we were officially done with all of our skills, Dave took our picture before we all headed off on the remainder of the dive:

(Jaycee, me, and Lisa with our instructor, Tyler, in front)

And then we were off - our first three dives with Tyler were great - but this fourth one, knowing we were DONE with training, felt GREAT!

Dave and Ric did ten dives over the weeks' time; after I finished my four dives for certification, I did another four during our remainder of the time there - eight dives, in my first diving trip! Each time was a little more comfortable for me - working on my bouyancy, breathing in and out to raise and lower. Dave was the photographer, and had lots of fun taking pictures of the fish, turtles, eels and all the other strange and beautiful things in the underwater world.



















It is exciting to have something that Dave and I can enjoy together - we are already talking about our next diving trip - probably not next year, but hopefully the year after.






Ok, gotta go and get ready for church with my family, it is Easter Sunday. They surprised me last night with a fabulous 40th birthday party, a great photo album and much more - will have to write about it soon!