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Published: August 24th 2012
Tuesday and Wednesday of last week I had introductory divers. On Tuesday I only dove the first site and in the second site (Two Tone) I had time to snorkel and to go looking for sharks, but without luck. I didn't do much in the evening.
Wednesday was a bit busier and I had 5 intro divers, one of them for the 3 sites. They were all pretty good, so I didn't have to struggle much with them.
In the evening, I had a few drinks with Melina, Anthony, Jessie, Bruce and Giselle. Melina invited them over, because she was really happy about 3 job oportunities that opened up for her (in a boat and 2 restaurants), after having had quit her job recently and she wanted to celebrate (a few days later she took two of them).
Thursday I had the day off. I had done lots of things in my previous days off, so I didn't do anything on this one. I only watched movies, talked to my mom on skype and updtated my blog on Chile's "Carretera Austral" (a trip I did more than 2 years ago).
Friday morning, back
in the boat I had intro dives again, but not much to tell there. That day, there was a Chilean family on board (Ossa - Aninat). It was a guy about my age (Alfredo), who's doing a "Work and Holiday" year in Australia with his wife and his family came to Australia to visit. It turned out that Alfredo and his wife both know a classmate I had in the Naval Academy (José M. Pinto) who's also living in Australia with his wife, Andrea. That day, I ended up doing introductory dives for both of his sisters, Cristina and Manuela.
On the way back to Port Douglas, I ended up chatting to his mother, Cristina. She asked me for my mother's phone number, because she wanted to give her a call when she got back to Chile. She said "You've been so helpful today and the girls were really grateful with the dive class and all, that I, as a mother, would love it if someone else randomly called me and told me that thay met my son and that he was such a nice person, so I'll give your mom a call when I get back". I don't
know if she's actually going to do it, but it was a very nice gesture from her, so of course I gave her the number.
Back at home I started watching a documentary about an American who travelled to Patagonia, inspired on a trip done by two people in the 60's. It shows a lot of places in Chile, most of them I've already been in. It's called "180 degrees South" and I really enjoyed it.
At around 7:30pm, Jessie invited people over (Renee, Giselle, Bruce and 2 more friends of hers) and she cooked a very Mexican meal: nachos with a spicy salsa and tacos. Wine and beer to go with it and a very nice strawberry dessert; she totally nailed it. There was no reason in particular for this reunion and we took this time to say farewell to Bruce and Giselle who were flying home to NZ for about 2 weeks.
Saturday, I was back in the boat and again I did intro dives. That day I had 9 people, the day ran pretty smoothly and I didn't have much complications. The weather was really good, with almost no wind, calm seas
and it was very sunny. Besides that, nothing extraordinary.
In the evening I went with Renee to watch "The Bourne Legacy" (the 4th movie of the Bourne series), to the moonlight cinema. The movie was good, but I think I was expecting a bit more. Anyway, it was entertaining enough.
Sunday I only had 2 introductory divers, a German guy and an American girl. The day was pretty easy work-wise, but the visibility on the 3 sites was really bad (for what we usually have at the Barrier Reef).
That day, I met a Chilean couple, Juan Ignacio and Mildred, both about my age and in the evening they asked me to join them for beers. We met at the Courthouse Hotel and we had dinner and some beers. I really enjoyed their company and it was good to meet people my same age from home and just talk in "Chilean".
The next day, I had the day off and Juan Igancio and Mildred invited me to go with them to the Daintree rainforest. We met at their hotel at around 9:30am and then we went to the main street in Port
Douglas (Macrossan St.) to have breakfast. After a good bacon and egg hamburger and black coffee, we took the rental car and went to the Daintree. We did the river ferry-crossing and headed towards Cape Tribulation.
Along the way we stopped briefly in the Daintree Village, but there wasn't much to see or do there. That day, it rained for the most part of it, so Juan and Mildred were a bit disappointed. We stopped in a few beaches to take some photos and did a walk in a boardwalk through the forest. We bought disposable rain ponchos which came in handy. In Cape Tribulation I also stopped briefly in "Whet" restaurant to say hello to a few acquaintaces I had there.
Before heading back to Port Douglas we stopped in a local, home made ice cream factory. Going back to Port Douglas back we decided to do a barbeque that night in a public barbeque area in 4 Mile Beach, about 5 minutes walking distance from where I live. we bought everything we needed and then I went home and they went back to their hotel.
We met in my house at around 8pm. I had
invited Renee, Jessie, Anthony, Melina, Kane and Alex, but because of the weather, most declined and only Jessie showed up besides us 3. We went to the bottle shop and then went to 4 Mile Beach. It was raining very mildly and the barbeque had a roof, so the rain was no impediment whatsoever. We had a really good dinner with T-Bone steak, sausages, pork ribs and chops, all with rice, potatos and beer. After we were done eating, we cleaned up and went back to the house for a few last beers before going to bed.
Tuesday was an average day at work, I did intro dives again and didn't really like the group I was stuck with, but besides that, it was OK. In the afternoon, back at the house, I had dinner and a chat with Jessie, mainly about life experiences and travels.
Wednesday was a really good day at work. I got to take the certified divers and that day there was only one on board, doing all 3 sites. By coincidence, this diver, Stuart, was born only a week before I was (same year). He was in Port Douglas
with his wife and kid, mother and some other people. We had 3 really good dives at the sites "Bashful Bommie", "Split Bommie" and "Blue Buoy" (just in case the word bommie is Australian slang for "lump of coral"). Every dive was very chilled out and we took our time to look for interesting stuff. In the first site we saw a green turtle which didn't swim away, so it hanged around with us for a few minutes and then we saw a white tip shark swimming a few meters away. On the second site se saw a black tip shark (first one I've seen in the reef) and in the last site we saw a giant moray eel (I hadn't seen one of these in a while). A tip about the moray eels: they have a second pair of jaws which they use to bite and swallow their prey, very much like the creatures from the science fiction movies "Alien" (
http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/08/10/moray-eels-attack-with-second-pair-of-alien-style-jaws/).
On the way back to Port Douglas I ended talking with Stuart and his mom (he had lived in Indonesia for 2 years and travelled all over Southeast Asia) and she had lived 5 years in China)
and both gave me lots of good tips about places to visit and things to do in Asia.
I had Thursday and Friday off. Thursday I mainly wrote on the blog and watched movies and Friday, Jessie asked me if I could help her do some of the skills she needed to complete as part of her Divemaster course she's doing. She got Renee, one of the other instructors from Calypso, to teach her the skills and I went to help out in a few of them. I met them at the hostel where Renne is living (Parrotfish Lodge) that has a good swimming pool to do diving skills. Both of them took diving gear and I had my mask and snorkel with me. The first skill that we did was how to recover an unconscious diver from the bottom, take it to the surface and then drag to the boat (or shore) while giving rescue breaths every 5 seconds and removing both the unconscious diver's gear and the rescuer's gear. It sounds like a lot, but with practice it's not as hard as it seems. Still, doing it as a Divemaster, one is expected to perform
all skills as if they are being demonstrated to students, so they have to be flawless and that takes a few times of practice to master. Once Renee and I were satisfied with the results, we moved on to the next skill which was towing a tired diver at the surface for 100mts (it's a timed exercise). That one isn't very difficult to complete and then Renee and Jessie did the last skill which is a bit more difficult. It consists in two divers exchanging all of their gear (scuba gear, masks and fins) under water while they're sharing air from the same regulator (so they have to take turns breathing while doing all of this). To make matters worse, there's a third person messing everything up (taking off masks, fins, unstrapping the scuba gear, purging regulators, etc.), which in thos case was me. They did excellent in that one (it's easy to freak out if you don't coordinate yourself well with your buddy) and we were done for the day. After that, Jessie showed Renee and I breathing techniques to hold breath underwater (Jessie's a very good free diver). Both Renee and I are actually very bad free divers,
so while Jessie went to the gym, we stayed there practicing holding our breaths in the pool, following all of Jessie's instructions. By the end, I got to hold my breath for 2:05 minutes and Renee for 2:18 (we were both actually really surprised with the results). I've got to say that it was a very productive day off.
After that the 3 of us had a Thai take-away lunch that Jessie got us and then I left the hostel, went to the supermarket, rode my bike back home, had a nap and finished updating the blog.
In Port Douglas, we're currently in the "slow tourist season", so work is a bit more scarce now. I've got to weight different options (see if I get a second job for a while or completely change what I'm doing now) and see until when I'll stay here. Most likely I'll leave before the wet season starts, so I still have got a few weeks to plan something.
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Andres
non-member comment
saludos
Hola Daniel. Como siempre muy entretenido tus articulos. Me alegra que siempre estas encontrandote con chilenos u otras personas interesantes. Nosotros muy bien. Fuimos a las termas de Chillas desde el jueves hasta ayer lunes a celebrar el cumpleaños de tu ahijado Pablo. lllegamos el juves y estab nevando en la cabaña que estaba en un bosque con un arroyo al lado. Un paisaje de ensueño. el viernes, sabado y domingo esquiamos. Nos tocaron dias preciosos y el lunes fuimos a las termas. Todos llegamos realemnte contentos. Hoy vuelta a clases y a la pega. un abrazo Andres