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Published: October 16th 2008
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We woke up bright and early ready for Matt to head to the dive shop. I didn’t feel good and before we’d even got dressed I’d been sick. Thinking the worst was over we went down to breakfast.
Matt headed off to watch more videos and I went to the beach with my book thinking that it would do me good to just lay and read for a while until I felt better. A few minuets later Matt walked out of the dive shop in a wetsuit ready to take his first dive - at least he didn’t have to watch more videos after all.
I later found out that he was asked to get out of the boat and swim 200m without fins in the lagoon. He’d been expecting and dreading this part because as you know swimming isn’t one of his strengths. He claimed it almost killed him but he just made it. Then the dive master, Manie, told him to float for ten minutes. Again, if you know Matt you know he can’t float. He can’t even tread water for more than a couple of minutes as he has ‘heavy legs’. Luckily he was doing the
course in the salty lagoon as here anyone can float and he managed it without any problems. Next came some skills tests like flooding and unflooding his mask and clearing his regulator to make sure he could handle any difficulties. This was followed by him getting the gear together and doing a final check before getting in again for his first dive. Unfortunately Matt refuses to write this himself so I’ll have to put it into my own words. He said he saw more fish than he’d ever seen before, so much better than snorkelling. He saw an amazing lion fish, lots of clown fish, moorish idols, massive sea slugs..lots and lots. He was gutted that he couldn’t take the underwater camera down with him but that can only go to 10m.
While all of this was going on I started feeling worse and worse and by mid morning I felt that it was time to go and lay down in our room. When I arrived all the way up the hill to our tree top bure the room hadn’t been serviced so I found the maid a couple of doors down and asked her not to bother with our room. She misunderstood and promised she’d come and do it after lunch instead. I gave up trying to explain as I felt too poorly.
What I’d thought was just a bit of sickness ended up being a full on 24 hour flu bug with lots of being sick, a high fever and aching bones. I crawled into bed and stayed there until Matt came back for his lunch break full of the excitement at having done his first dive.
As I knew the maid was going to be on her way I asked Matt to help me down the hill to sit on the swing chairs there so that I could wait for her to finish. He left me there while he went and had some lunch before heading back to his afternoon cuorse. After an hour of so of wanting to collapse I decided I had to try to clamber my way up the steep endless steps. I was so pleased to see she’d made up our bed, and I jumped in and flopped down where I stayed for the next two hours.
In a freezing cold fit of fever I decided to get up and shut all of the slatted windows and put on some jumpers, but it was all too much for me and within minutes I was laid on the bathroom floor being sick again. Luckily Matt came back at the right time to help me up otherwise I think I’d have passed out in there. He helped me back to bed and I stayed there for the rest of the day and night.
Matt went and got some dinner and brought me back some dry toast and a banana but I couldn’t even face that. He insited I kept a cold flannel on my head all night as I was burning up. It felt like the worst flu I’d ever had, but one good thing was that I was ill here at Nanuya where it is clean, friendly and more importantly where we had booked for seven nights as I didn’t have to worry about moving on when I felt terrible.
Matt had been diving again in the afternoon and had done more skills like taking off his weight belt and scuba gear in deep water and had practised various resucues. He’d had to take off his mask underwater and then put it back on. He also had to lay flat in the deep water and balance on his fin tips to show that he could control his depth with his breath. Then he and Manie swam around and saw lots more fish, including the resident sea horses that live just outside the resort. He sounded like he really started gaining in confidence this time and started doing flips in the water and moving around with much more ease.
He told me all about it as I lay in bed not even well enough to read. Being ill away from home isn’t very nice; being really ill stuck in a tiny bure at the top of a very steep hill is even more annoying. It meant that Matt couldn’t even carry soup or anything up to me as it would all have ended up all over the place.
By 8pm I was sound asleep, and by 11.30pm I was wide awake counting down the minutes until the sun came up.
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