Trials

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I've been in Cairns for a month now, with two weeks onboard the "Mike Ball Dive Expeditions" boat, a few days off in Cairns, a week with friends in Port Douglas and the latest thing I did: a trial in a dive company called "Deep Sea Divers Den", based in Cairns. I contacted the training manager through the dive company in which I did the dive instructor course back in Sydney. During my stay in Cairns, I stayed in a share house and as the ad in internet said "it wasn't fancy, but it was cheap". The good thing is, I had a room of my own with a lock, so didn't need to worry about leaving my things and also, the house was about 200 meters from the dive shop and close to a shopping center. The trial started on a Tuesday and actually consisted in team-teaching an Open Water Diver course (the team-teach has two purposes; for the person applying for a job it's to see how they run the courses and for the dive shop, to see how the applicant is at the job). The Open Water course was run during four days; the first two at the dive shop with theory and pool sessions and the other two days on boats, to do the open water sessions in the ocean.

Well, that Tuesday I was assisting another instructor, Nick and we had a class of only two students; a girl from Taiwan and another girl from Canada. In the morning, it was just theory (watching videos and going through questions and quizzes) and in the afternoon we had a pool session, teaching basic skills in the swimming pool. It all went pretty smooth and we ended up at around 5 o'clock. After that I headed back to the house, went out to the supermarket to buy a few things to have for dinner (instant noodle cups with canned chicken) and something for breakfast. In the evening I stayed talking and having a few beers with a Czech who had been living in the house for 6 months; a jet ski mechanic who used to date a local stripper. You get to know interesting people when you travel. He showed me photos of a photo-shoot he had done with his ex-girlfriend and her friends from the strip club in jet skies as advertisement for the shop he worked in; interesting stuff. Then, a Taiwanese couple who was travelling around Australia joined us as well. I went to bed pretty early to be at the dive shop at 8am the next morning.



The second day of teaching went pretty smooth as well; in the morning we had a pool session and in the afternoon it was theory again (more videos and quizzes). In the morning, for the pool session, other people joined in for a short course called "tune up", which is done for people who are certified divers, but haven't dived in a while. Again, we were done early and in the afternoon I didn't do much. The next day I had to go on a live-aboard to the Great Barrier Reef to continue the course with the open water dives.



Thursday morning I got to the dive shop at 7am and then with Nick, took a van to collect people that were going on the boat that day and then drive to the marina. The way the system works in this company is they take people in a boat that only does day trips (called "Seaquest") and then at 2:30pm that boat pulls alongside another boat which is always in the Great Barrier Reef (the live-aboard called "Taka"). We did one dive from the Seaquest and in the afternoon, after we transferred to "Taka", we did two more dives; with only one more dive to go before the students completed the course.

On board the "Taka", there was a Chilean couple, Lorenzo and Carolina (probably in their 50's) doing the course as well. Carolina had problems in the water (panic attacks) and the fact that her English wasn't good was another problem with the instructor she had. So, they handed her over to me and she joined the course that I was team-teaching. I got her to do dive number 3 without much problems (the fact that I could teach her in Spanish was definitely a plus) and she was really happy progressing in the course.

Friday morning, I had to be up at 5:45am and we did our first dive at 9am. In between, when we weren't diving, we had to help out in the dive deck filling tanks, cleaning up, etc. At 9, we went in the water for the final dive of the course. I did this one by myself (the skills I had to teach were quite simple) and after the students were done, we went for a dive around the site. The reef we were on was "Norman Reef" and the dive sites we went to during those 3 days were "The Playground", "Twin Peaks" and a few other ones I can't really remember the name of. It was nothing like the dive I did on "Mike Ball Dive Expeditions", but still it was pretty good diving. We saw turtles, parrot fish, a few white tip sharks, eels, etc.

One of the students also wanted to do the "Advanced Open Water" course, so Nick and I stayed an extra day for this course which consists of 5 dives and in every dive, the student gets an introduction to "adventures in diving", which are different specialties or courses available, such as deep diving, underwater photographer, peak performance buoyancy, underwater navigation, enriched air diving, wreck diving, night diving, etc. The course is very simple and in each dive the student has to perform a few skills related to that specialty. Friday afternoon we did the peak performance buoyancy dive and in the evening we did the night-dive. Saturday morning, at 6:30am we did the deep dive, at 9 we did underwater navigation and at 11:30, the last dive which was underwater naturalist. This last one consists in that the student has to identify different fish and aquatic plants. Like I said, this course is very simple and much easier than the other one. At 2:30pm we went onboard the "Seaquest" to go back to Cairns.

The job on board "Taka"was pretty chilled out; I had to either dive or help out in the dive deck with some breaks in between and ending the day at around 7:30pm. The people onboard were quite nice as well, so overall, it was a good experience. After we got back, Nick and I took one of the vans to take people back to the places they were staying at and then I went back to the house. I had to leave the house the next morning, which suited me well, because I was going to Port Douglas anyway, to meet James and his girlfriend before they went to work in a farm that's about 4 hours from Sydney.



Sunday morning, I called home (I knew my family had been that day celebrating my grandfather's 94th birthday) and got to talk with my sister and my parents, which really put me in a good mood; I hadn't spoken with them in a while and I think I really needed it.

I left Cairns at around 10am and took a bus to Port Douglas, getting at around 11:30 to Anthony and Melina's house (I had stayed here before for almost a week). The only person in the house when I got there was Vitzka, a Dutch woman that I had met before as well. I stayed in the house waiting for James to get there and in the meantime, I went to buy something for lunch in some shops nearby. James and his girlfriend Sylvie arrived a short time after that and we spent the afternoon chilling by the swimming pool and in the evening we had dinner at the house, along with a few bottles of wine, good music and good conversation.



Monday morning I woke up and called my grandparents (talked with all 4 of them) and all of them were really happy and surprised of the calls and I really enjoyed it as well.

That morning, it was raining pretty hard in Port Douglas, so everyone stayed home until about 1pm. That's when 2 of James' friends from Cape Tribulation, J.P. and Gordon, arrived at the house to meet us for lunch. They were both from Malta and I had met one of them in Cape Trib the previous weekend. The 5 of us (Sylvie, James, J.P., Gordon and I) went to a local club called the "Tin Shed" for lunch. It's a very chilled out place, with a nice view of the marina and a huge terrace. We had seafood and beers, the food was good and we had a great time there. After that, we went to the Marina for a walk and I took the time to go to a boat called "Calypso", because I was doing a trial on that boat the next day (very similar to what I did in Deep Blue Divers Den, but this is boat that only does day trips, so my job (if I got it) would only be introductory dives. I got to talk with a few people of the crew and then I left the boat and got together with the people I was hanging out with for one last beer. After that we went home, J.P. and Gordon left back to Cape Tribulation and James, Sylvie, Vitzka, Anthony, Melina and I, had one last dinner together (we ordered pizza). The next morning I was going to see if I could get a job in Calypso...

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Photos

One last dinner
Sylvie, Vitzka, James and I

Comments

[Andres]

saludos
Hola Dani, que bueno saber de ti nuevamente. Parece que ya va a saltar la liebre con la pega. Por acá todos bien. este fin de semana subimos el cerro lonquen con Margarita, colo, Pablo, Asun y Clemente nos demoramos 3 horas para subir y 2 para bajar. muy agotador pero los niños estaban muy contentos. Ayer fuimos a andar en bicicleta hacia valldivia de Paine casi los mismos pero esta vez se sumo Kiko, trinidad y Sofia y la Asun no fue. Tambien fueron varias horas de andar por lo que hoy me duele todo los musculos. Acá todos bienun abrazo, Andres