22nd July

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I said goodbye to Richard on Thursday even though we found out just a few minutes before leaving for the dive centre that his flight was on Friday morning as to that morning. It was too late to cancel going on my 2 day trip to Tulamben so hopefully he enjoyed his extra day in Sanur anyway. The reason for the overnight trip was that one of the girls here is short on logged dives to get her divemaster before she leaves so we had to do as many dives as we could. I thought this would involve lots of short dives - I was definitely wrong. We spent an hour underwater followed by an hour surface interval and repeated until we had 5 dives each day. The dives started to last as long as our air did which was 75 minutes for the last dive of the day. I really enjoyed diving with my instructor and the other divemaster internees. We set on a mission to try and find really rare and hard to find sea life. We were looking for a certain, unusual kind shrimp which are smaller than your little finger nail so not the easier of things to find. This meant that whilst there were lots of other divers looking at the rich coral and various fish near the coral, we were looking amoungst the silt and stones for the smallest things. It might sound boring but it’s really good when you found something. We didn’t find any of the shrimp that we were looking for but we did find some cleaning shrimp which were so small and delicate. I wasn’t the one to find them and it took me ages to see what people were looking at. You could put your hand out and they would hop on and pick at your skin. We did a night dive which was a little disappointing, we didn’t see a huge amount and there were lots of other dives about too. We were definitely alone in the morning though as we were in the water by 7am. We took a short journey in one of the local fishing boats to another dive site where our instructor had previously seen reef shark, hammerhead shark and molar molar. We didn’t see anything but it was my deepest dive yet at 38 metres. The water was very clear but I couldn’t see the surface even though it didn’t seem very deep when you were down there. Apparently the deeper you go, the more likely you are to see hammerhead sharks but 40 metres is the maximum depth you dive recreational. Recreational diving means being able to go straight to the surface at any point of the dive so it’s much simpler than having to take lots of complicated kit with you.

I just wish doing so much diving wasn’t so tiring. After so much diving my dive computer told me that it would take 30 hours to get rid of all the nitrogen in my blood. After a normal day of diving would expect it to be about 15 hours. I just went to get some food and then a massage and I had to go straight to bed. This was followed by another busy day at the dive centre assisting with a beginner in the swimming pool but I have now finished all my assisting for my certification.

I have uploaded some photos that were taken on this trip. A friend who is also doing their divemaster at the moment borrowed a camera from a friend but the instructor very quickly told him that he was doing it wrong because he hasn't done the photography speciality which he teaches, so he took the camera. At least some of the photos are good though!

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Comments

[penny]

loveley to hear from you
Katherine Thank you so much for sight of the wonderful photos and details of your trip so far. I am thoroughly enjoying them and have finally decided(this was a promise i made for my 40th birthday but failed to act on) to enrole on a diving course.My aunt is still diving to 30 metres and she is in her seventies! The other promise(learning to ride a motorbike) will have to wait. Glad you are also finding time for some fun.Take care. lots of love penny