Ihla Grande day(s) out

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Seems like a while since i did one of these, however here goes...

Ended up heading to an island down south to learn some scuba-skills, which involved (or so we thought) getting on a bus outside our hostel, and everything beign sorted out for us. Not the case when the entirely useless man working in the hostel doens't actually book anything, and keeps telling you it will all be fine. Well, daniel, it won't be. idiot. Turns out that the bus we'd smugly been telling a couple of swedes that we were going to get came and picked them up, but didn't have room for us. Rubbish. Ended up getting a cab to the coach station, and getting tickets (in portuguese) down to Ihla Grande. Myself and Liam this is, althoguh we picked up an american guy called eric en route.

Got the coach down there, and a taxi to the port, where we were overcharged spectacularly to get on a fishing boat that took us all the way to the island. However we had managed to get there before the girls, and before most people that were arriving that day. Good for us. All seemed to be well until we realised that our incompetent hostel man had not only failed to book our transport but also our beds. This lead to some confusion, as there weren't three spare beds in the same room available. This was a problem (not for me as i didn't really care where the others ended up, however we were all going to try and stay in the same hostel, and were being very nice to the mental Brazilian woman who worked there. She solved the problem by selecting a four bed dorm with one free bed, and just kicking the other two out. they were (predictably) a little bit upset, but we'd gone off to book our scuba diving course, so we didn’t care.

Went down to the 'Elite Dive Centre' to see our man, Daniel, who was reputedly very good at scuba diving. He told us to have a day on the beach the next day, and to come and watch the first two of five video sessions in the evening.

Celebrated start of course afterwards with a cheeky few beers in our very nice hostel before getting annoyed with the very drunk 18yr old English people who were determinedly having fun, and doing drinking games. because I’m now the grumpiest man in the world I didn’t want to join in, and went to bed early. they then carried on with their party, completely disrespectful of the fact that i was very tired and in a room about 5m away from the bar. Didn’t sleep so well. Annoyed.

Next morning myself liam and eric (the american) decided to walk over to the 5th most beautiful beach in Brazil, and 14th in the World, Lopez Mendes. It was predictably quite nice, however a bit of a pain in the arse to get to. We’d been told it would take about 3 hours at the most, which we assumed was for slow people. It took us 4 hours (admittedly with a cheeky lunch break for about an hour in the restaurant with the best setting in the world) but was nice to be on a beach for a while. The current in the water however made swimming impossible, which was annoying as the waves were really big. Eric wandered off for most of the afternoon trying to chat up some American girl, who we ended up meeting on the walk back to the boat stop to take us home. She was a bit weird, and fancied me a bit (hence the weirdness) but I didn’t really want to talk to her very much. Anyway, they seemed keen to meet us for dinner, but we lied and said we were having dinner with Daniel because she was weird. When we got back from the beach we ran for showers and headed to Daniels shop. Saw the first two videos (not very interesting) and


Later went for dinner with eric and two american girls who we'd met on the beach. They were a bit weird.

The following day was our first full day of Scubaing. We met Daniel at about half eight, and went out on the boat (along with alan the English person to the first dive site, where we were supposed to do our basic training. We assumed that this would involve getting used to the breathing, trying the equipment and stuff. Normally this session happens in the swimming pool. What actually happened was that Daniel took us out on the boat to a part of the sea that was “quite shallow” and we just got kitted up and jumped off the back of the boat. Unorthodox, however much more fun than the suggested approach. We then watched him do all the exercises (not quite all, the ones that were boring we just didn’t bother with) by watching him then doing. “First I make, then you make”. In Spanish they have the same word for make and do. This was funny.

We got the hang of it quite quickly, and by the end of the first session we could basically do it. Second dive of the day (we had finished doing the training that was supposed to take three sessions) was around the wreck of a helicopter, which was exciting.

After this dive we went back to the hostel and grabbed a shower before heading back to the dive centre for more video fun. Once we’d seen the next two hours of very uninteresting video, we went to meet the American girls at our hostel BBQ, and had a few drink with them, although one of them was a bit grumpy. The one that liked me was really annoying, so I pretended to be really tired and just went to bed.

Up early again the following morning to meet Daniel, who was taking us out again, only “Today we just make two dives, we finish with course. Now, you can make dives”. Again, probably slightly unusual for a course that was supposed to take 4 days, but hey ho. Not a bad start to the morning, again, because it was really sunny.

First dive was a “refresher” dive, which involved diving down to about 18m inside a shipwreck. Again, quite unusual for the second day of a diving course, but we weren’t complaining. Although we were going through really very narrow ship’s corridors- quite ghostly really, saw a few cool fishes and some seahorses. We also saw a puffer fish, which Daniel demonstrated by poking it a lot and generally terrifying it until it puffed up. Very funny though. Did another dive then, although this time in the company of some army divers who were using double canisters and looked quite cool. They seemed to get in the way quite a lot but we weren’t going to argue.

Once we’d finished the second dive the weather was looking distinctly inclement, so we headed back to the hostel to shower and get our heads together for the final instalment of video before we could take our test to become fully certified divers. Daniel forgot about this bit of video, so he just told us to come back with our books and take the tests away with us to do over a pizza next door. With the textbooks. Turns out this is quite straightforward. Following this we were qualified and got our certificates printed out. It was raining by this point so was unlikely to be good enough in the morning to put in another dive. This meant that we went for a few celebratory beers back at the hostel, and ended up getting annoyed by the Americans again and sneaking off to bed.

Next morning was a bit rubbish, and we were due to head back up to Rio that afternoon on the boat and coach. Sat on a hammock, read my book and drank some nice coffee, watched the FA cup final (odd) and made my way with two Swedish girls (the same ones who had nicked my coach spot on the way down) to the boat place along the beach with their bags (which were enormous). Stopped for a few beers along the way, partly because my arms hurt, and partly to avoid what had now become a downpour outside. Eventually made it to the boat and hid downstairs away from the rain for a little nap. Horrible journey, but made it to what seemed to be a car park in the middle of nowhere. Dragged the cases across the muddy slippy carpark in my flip-flops in the dark, but we were offered help by a mad brazillian man who put us on the right bus to get to the coach terminal and eventually we made it back there. Was very cold by now as didn’t have any dry clothes left and had done the manly thing and given the girls my extra layers. Rubbish.

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