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Published: October 5th 2015
(nearly) Naked diver week!
Monday - F*cking flappy hands
This morning I realised just how tall I actually am. I jumped in my shower and realised the shower head is very low. It shoots the water directly on my chest. I had the same probrem when I went to Thailand last year. The Thai people were all much smaller than me so the shower head was naturally in a lower position in every hotel/ hostel that I visited. But nevermind.
This was a hell of a day. I did two dives with the Finnish group and we went to the Rainbow Reef and Cedar Pride. We mixed it up a bit and went on a deep dive first to around 24 metres. We saw a ray! I’m not sure what type of ray but it was really cool. Jarno was videoing with his GoPro so I think I’ll try and get the video off him when he goes through all of his thousands of photos and videos in Finland.
On the second dive we went again to Cedar Pride but this time we went underneath the wreck! I don’t think I
#nomakeupselfie
I have a very clean chesthad the red filter on my GoPro when I took the photo underneath the wreck but it still looks cool! Just after emerging from the wreck we turned left to head to the back of the ship and saw 2 scorpion fish. One was much bigger than the other but still both very well camouflaged, see if you can spot them in the photo.
Straight after the dive with the Finn’s I went on a shallow dive with Bilal. I didn’t have a great surface interval between the dives so we only went to about 5 or 6 metres. He hasn’t dived in a while and has been in the shop for most of the time these past few days. We practiced the hover skill and to be honest he did it brilliantly. He’s a natural at diving I think as we were only in 2-3 metres of water and he only had his first dive maybe a couple of weeks ago.
After the 3 dives we all headed back to the shop. I prepared the gear with Bilal for the 5 male DSD’s (Discover Scuba Diving) we had in the afternoon. I made sure that
we had everything we needed plus spares. I had my GoPro, fully charged with the memory card inside as I didn’t want a repeat of the other day. Nothing could go wrong… right?
We got to the water and Mohamed was speaking to them all as they were all Arabic. I pretended to listen intently but again I didn’t have a Scooby what he was saying. But from the tone of his voice and what the Arabic guys were doing I could tell that they were difficult to manage. We had to split them up in the end because they would have been impossible to take out as one big group. I nodded at Mohamed and 3 was the number for the first dive. It was hard because the dad of the group can’t swim and so he kept on rolling over and he was a very big guy. I had to keep him steady for the whole dive and even when I was grabbing the tank valve and adjusting the buoyancy it was a challenge to keep him off the bottom.
On the second dive there was just the two guys to take out. One
was the kid of the group who was around 14ish, so quite young. The other was a man in late 20’s. We were swimming and everything was fine. Then all of a sudden they were swimming quite close to one another, the Arabic boy and man I mean. With DSD’s they are like children and you really have to give 100% attention to them at all times because scuba diving is dangerous. DSD’s also generally don’t think when doing things and so they flap their arms about to move around in the water because they’re not used to using their fins. This can be bad because you can easily knock out the regulator of someone else’s mouth. This unfortunately did happen on this dive even though we told them not to flap your hands about many times, even underwater. The Arabic man knocked out the regulator of the Arabic boy. As soon as I saw it happen my heart sank and it was the scariest moment I’ve experienced in Scuba Diving. Even more so than the giant clam that nearly ‘clamped’ down on my fingers in the video on my Facebook. Mohamed was straight over to him without a second
to lose. Mohamed grabbed the regulator to put it back in, but the Arabic man was obviously closer to the boy than Mohamed so he managed to grab the regulator first and put it back in. But the Arabic man was putting it in upside down and so you can’t breathe the air when it is like that. By this point Mohamed was already bringing the boy to the surface as we were quite shallow, in maybe 5 or 6 metres of water. We got there and the boy took a deep breath. The four of us were at the surface and we were checking on the lad. He was ok and even making jokes (in Arabic of course but Mohamed told me). We finished the dive with no more dramas so everything went well after that and there were no more god damn flappy hands.
We got back to the Dive Centre and one of the Arabic men of the group invited me out for some chicken with the rest of his friends. How could I refuse? He said that we should meet at 9 because they wanted to go and get showered and have a nap
as it was around 18:30 by this point. So I accepted and said that I will wait for them. Even though that means I will be waiting in the dive shop for over an hour by myself as the Aqaba International Dive Centre crew leave at 8pm everyday because it is the time the Dive Centre closes.
It was around 9:05pm and they still hadn’t arrived and I like things to be on time so I thought it was only expected to text them and see where they were. I didn’t get a response. I waited and waited for another 30 minutes and they still hadn’t returned to the Dive Centre or even text me back. I had been stood up. Bastards. I was really pissed off. I hadn’t eaten since the morning and I was starving.
I jumped in a cab and went home. To console myself I made a pretty huge burger. I had no burger buns so I had to use normal bread but I toasted one side of it to ensure no burger grease or sauce to break through the soft bread. I bought some tomatoes on my way home to be
healthy and solidify my poos more (tomatoes help that, right?). It was really tasty and I ate it all. It was way better than the chicken I would have eaten with them anyway. Plus I can’t sit in my underwear eating on my bed in a restaurant anyway so it was a better experience in my casa.
.
Tuesday – I dove with a Kiwi!
Mohamed went diving today with the Finn’s plus Angela in the morning today and myself and Bilal waited in the shop for his return. We were preparing for their arrival by getting the hangers for the BCD’s to hang up (otherwise they would have to PUT THE BCD DOWN ON THE GROUND) and we were trying to fill the bath tub outside (that the camels drink out of) with water so that we can wash the gear when they come back. But when I turned on the tap nothing was happening. We had no water! I knew it was something simple to fix and I said to Bilal that when Mohamed returns I bet you that he will just press a single button
or something and it will work. Of course when Mohamed did return he turned the tap a peculiar way and magically out came the water. He’s a magician.
But I did dive in the afternoon, specifically 2 dives with 2 lovely ladies. I dove with a nice woman from New Zealand (Kiwi) to the Cedar Pride wreck as she was a certified diver. Mohamed was with a lovely woman called Natalie from Switzerland and was going to meet up with us at the halfway point of Cedar Pride because Mo and Natalie were swimming to Cedar from the other side. The Kiwi girl hadn’t dived in a while so we had some issues with the mask and weights etc. but nothing that Divemaster Scanlon can’t handle. We fixed the issues and continued to Cedar Pride and reunited together. Upon arriving at Cedar we found Mo and Natalie and we got some photos together! After looking around the wreck we proceeded back to shore with no issues at all! Natalie is a new diver and isn’t certified but she was excellent underwater, I was impressed. She would make a very good diver but she’s a doctor and therefore I
don’t think going from a doctor to a Divemaster is a wise career move. For the second dive we went to Rainbow Reef to find some cool fish. Of course we did find an array of eels, boxfish, clown fish (my new favourite) etc which was all great to ‘sea’!
When we were back at the Dive Centre the Kiwi girl had to leave as she was crossing the border. But before she left she gave me a 20 JD (£20) tip! That is the largest tip I have ever received in my life and I was very grateful to her. Mohamed saw her do that even though she tried to do it on the sly. So like the good guy Mohamed is he drove her to the border, so she could save money from a taxi. This left Bilal, Natalie and myself at the Dive Centre. We chatted for ages about lots of things and Natalie told me about Popcorn Time which is something that Ryan (the guy who is the Nursery Manager at the Royal Botanic Garden) told me about but he said you have to pay to watch movies and stuff. But you don’t! Natalie
told me and walked me through how to install it. I am so made up! I now love her. It is the best gift I have received. I have been running out of stuff to watch on rainierland.com so Popcorn Time is a lifeline for me. I wanted to celebrate the fact that I have discovered Popcorn Time so the three of us went to the ‘Irish Bar’ that I went to with Ryan after the ‘Clean up the World’ event but isn’t really an Irish Bar.
We stayed there talking for hours and I even got a private little Arabic lesson from the both of them! Bilal is obviously Arabic but Natalie is just really quite clever and knows a lot of things. One of those things is writing and speaking Arabic. Check out the photo’s I uploaded of my book. I even learned how to write my name! I was surprised at how difficult the language is to write. To look at it is confusing as the alphabet is completely different to any other European alphabet. The night ended with me covering the bill as it was the first night out for me and Bilal together,
and on my first night out with Mohamed he covered my bill. I paid for Natalie too when she went to the toilet. Sneaky Leslie.
Wednesday – Naked Diver
Today I did one dive but what a dive it was! It was my 100
th dive and so that means that you must dive naked. I was originally committed to diving nude but I thought it was best to use a sock (I managed to find some bigger socks as the ‘invisible’ socks would have been way too small) to cover Little Leslie just to save some dignity and also my job. I made a new dive signal too which is you put one hand on the other hand and do an opening motion. This was to signal to the Finn’s and Angela that I was about to strip off. I of course walked in the water with my trunks on as there was many people at the dive site (and it was cold).
We swam for around 5 minutes then after I looked around and it was just our diving crew as far as the visibility permitted. I did the signal and everyone
turned away. Linda however did not for two reasons, the first one was to make sure that I was ok as if after a few minutes they all turned back, seeing a naked dead diver isn’t a great thing to write about in your diving log book. But the other reason I’m sure was to get a sneaky peek. Cheeky! But of course safety comes first so I’m happy she was looking as she got some great photos too.
I took off my fins in order to actually take my swimming shorts off. I stuffed the shorts between my back and my BCD. I then rummaged in my BCD for the socks which I pre packed. I found the sock and put it over Little Leslie (who was quite littler than normal by this point as the water was a bit chilly!). I turned around and everyone was looking at me by this point. I struck a few poses for photos and I then took off my diving mask and replaced it with a much more practical mask which was a burlesque mask bought for me by the lovely Finnish people Olga and Linda.
Just before
we descended to start the dive I remember seeing the yellow boat which has the submarine glass dome beneath it so all the while during the naked dive I was thinking what if the yellow boat submarine thing comes past with children inside and they look out expecting to see the great abundance of life but instead they see a lanky naked Brit posing for photos in a burlesque mask for a bunch of Finnish photographers, like they all have some weird sick fetish for Scuba diving and Burlesque masks. The photos of me, to say the least are Facebook profile pictures for an indefinite amount of time.
After the photos we continued swimming looking out for cool fish. It was very freeing and I enjoyed the part of the dive were I swam with just the sock on. It is something which I would definitely recommend to anyone going for their 100
th Dive. You only ever have one 100
th dive in your life. Make it count!
The rest of the day was much less eventful, as to be expected compared to what just happened. I waited at shore after the naked dive while the Finnish
plus Angela went past Cedar Pride to go deeper and hopefully find something cool. We only had enough tanks for just the Finn’s and Angela for two more dives each and they wanted to go on two more dives because today was their last diving day! I told them though if they saw a Whale Shark or anything spectacular like that then I will not be happy and they would be sleeping with the fishes…
Around 30 minutes after they began their dive, a group of Snorkelers showed up who came from our shop. I gave them a safety brief, where to find the good reef spots and sent them off into the water. After their first initial dive they came back to shore and asked me when the transportation was picking them up and I said that I will ask Mohamed as I could see him in the water. Mohamed took out 2 Arabian women for DSD and whilst one was under the water I had to again babysit the other one. It was a little awkward as I was supposed to be asking Mohamed about the transportation. I could see the snorkeler group looking at me
from shore out of the corner of my eye. But there was nothing I could do! I waited for Mo to come back up and I asked him, relayed the message to the Snorkelers and everything was sorted and they were happy! Other than that not much else happened! Besides sweating like a pig on a hot stove in the scorching heat waiting for all the divers to come back.
At the end of the day myself, the Finn’s including Mama & Papa and of course Angela all went to Rover Return pub for some bevvies! It was when I uploaded my blog late and I uploaded it just before everybody arrived so as soon as everyone sat down they all sat there reading my blog in front of me… It was quite intimidating having a live audience there in front of me! Something else which happened was that Jarno brought his laptop with him with the photos taken by Olga and Linda, so in Rovers we all had a slideshow of my bare bottom nakedness.
Thursday – I am not a tree hugger
Today there was no diving. It was the Finnish
peoples last day today as they were flying 4am Friday morning. They all went to Petra for a bit of sightseeing! I don’t know why but the day the Finnish people leave nobody wants to dive and yet when they are here Mohamed gets lots of calls wanting to dive.
So now that they have left I can finally write what I think about them!... Nah I don’t have anything bad to say about them they were all good people… Not forgetting about you either Angela! You are a strong independent woman!
As I wasn’t diving today I was wondering about lots of things. One of them being the trees in Aqaba (and many other foreign countries’ trees I have seen) compared to the trees in the UK. The trees in the UK are very nice without a doubt, big, green and leafy which is everything a tree should be. But the trees in Aqaba are different, yes some are big, green and leafy but the vast majority of them provide more than just oxygen. Most of them provide olives, fruit and other things which people can use in everyday life. Which got me thinking why
Everyone reading my blog in Rovers
from left to right:
Linda, Angela, Olga we don’t have something similar in the UK.
There are only 3 conclusions I can come to and they are number one if people don’t pick the fruit from their tree outside their house then it would fall on the ground ‘leafing’ food for animals such as foxes and rats etc which can be not a great thing. The second reason I can think of is that I can say confidently that some, not all but some people wouldn’t either bother to pick the fruit due to laziness or because they think supermarket fruit is better and healthier for you. But this is a behavioural issue and can be changed with time. The last conclusion I came to which is the one that I hope is not true is that if we plant apple trees instead of oak trees or pear trees instead of pine trees in the UK then big food companies and supermarkets would not make as much money as people will ‘live of the fatta the lan’ (I knew reading Mice and Men at GCSE would help me at some point). I hope the last point isn’t the reason. But am I wrong? You may
The bare bottom slideshow
A nice way to 'Finnish' our time together! be reading this under an apple tree in the UK thinking what the hell I am on about. It has been a long day for me and I think I am getting withdrawal symptoms from not diving. Hopefully that’ll change tomorrow!
Friday - I am the red watermelon
You know when you just feel something went good? That’s how I felt after the two dives this morning. I met a Dutch couple in Maccies (McDonald’s) today. No don’t worry I wasn’t eating there I was merely just taking them to our shop. They emailed in advance so that they could reserve there place. I directed them to our Dive Centre which is only across the road. They were a really nice couple who live in Dubai at the moment and were in Jordan for just a short week but they want to see everything. Fair play. I took them to Cedar Pride and Japanese Garden as they are the easiest and best diving spots in Aqaba.
Before we took them to the dive site we asked them for their diving certification cards and they were really happy that we asked them. They told
I got a very handsome tip from the Finnish and Angela in Rovers!
Don't let my resting bitch face fool you... It was a lot of money! It even beat my 20 JD record! us that the last few dive centres that they have been too didn’t even ask for their cards. Very bad practice. But of course in the Aqaba International Dive Center we know how things are done properly.
After the dive had finished we packed all the gear in the van and got inside. Immediately they started to speak to Mohamed after Mohamed asked them how the dive went. The man of the couple (Peter) said ‘The dives went great! You have a very good Divemaster here, Mohamed’. I couldn’t stop smiling. Mohamed then replied ‘Yes, with a Divemaster they are like melons… you crack it open and it’s either white, or it is red’. The white means that it is bad (they mustn’t like the white melons here) and the red means that it’s good and considering that I am from Liverpool and I worked at LFC I would conclude that I am indeed the red watermelon. I was so chuffed.
In the afternoon we had 5 beautiful women from Amman down for a spot of intro diving. They were a really nice group of girls and we got on well, one of them even spoke
Spanish so we practiced a little bit! Small talk. They were only here for the day and had to leave at 7pm to catch the bus back to Amman so I couldn’t go out with them to town! Which would have been nice! Me with 5 lovely ladies. Another time perhaps.
Saturday – Dutch people are so friendly
Our Dive Centre were awaiting the arrival of two divers who were a married couple, one was English and the other was Chinese who didn’t speak English. They said they would arrive at 12:00 pm but they didn’t show up. We waited until 1:55 and then they came in to our centre. We spoke to them and asked them if they could wait until 14:30 to leave because we have 2 more divers coming in. A reasonable request you might say? As by the time we got all their gear together and briefed them about the dive sites it would be approaching the 14:30 mark. But the man wasn’t happy as he expected to arrive to the Dive Centre and leave straight away. He was very angry but he said on an email to us that he
was arriving in to Aqaba at 12:00pm. In the end we had to organise a friend of Mohamed’s who is an instructor to come and take them away because he was so livid. He was saying other rude things too but I won’t mention them. I’ve never experienced a customer like that before in my life. Even when I was working for LFC as a tour guide I dealt with some challenging customers but nothing on this scale. I just didn’t understand why he couldn’t wait less than half an hour after getting their equipment together. Some people are just hard to please I guess.
But it wasn’t all doom and gloom as we had the 2 divers who came in at 14:30. Again they were another lovely couple from Holland! They said that the last time they dived was half way through September last month in the Maldives. That is the place where you want to see Whale Sharks but they said that they were there for 3 days and didn’t see a single one. They also told me that there was a guy there who had been staying in a hotel (which is super expensive, as
It's a big news story!...
... I didn't hang round long enough to see if they had one about Cameron and a pig... they are all expensive in the Maldives) for over a week just to see Whale Sharks. He was doing 3 dives a day at the same diving spot to try and catch a glimpse of one. But he had no luck.
This was music to my ears. If I saw a Whale Shark on this dive with them then I would have complied with GoPro’s motto of ‘Be a Hero’. I would have been a hero for them. Of course though it didn’t happen. There were no Whale Sharks to be seen. But the dive sites here are still very good and they both really enjoyed them, which is all I want to see at the end of the day.
Sunday
I didn’t dive today because we weren’t that busy ok? I’m not lazy. Mohamed dove with 4 kids from his sons football team in the morning. When I was preparing the equipment I was saying ‘Yalla yalla yo halla’. Yalla translated in to English means ‘come on’, ‘let’s go’, ‘hurry’ etc but ‘yo halla’ doesn’t mean anything. I made it up. The kids were loving it though
everytime I was saying it and they were laughing. So I kept on saying it! They went for their dive and returned with big smiles on their faces. A good dive.
We had 4 intro divers who couldn’t swim in the afternoon. I know, why would you go Scuba diving if you can’t swim? It just really doesn’t make sense to me. You can’t swim so not only do you go in the water but you decide it’s a good idea to go under it with complicated Scuba equipment. However a surprisingly huge amount of people go Scuba diving and can’t swim. The way we get around it is to do a tandem dive. Where someone holds their tanks on their back and basically swims for them. I however didn’t go to this dive as they were all Arabic men and I wouldn’t actually be diving anyway I would just be sitting on the beach waiting with 2 of them while the other two were diving and then swapping. So it did make more sense for Belal (turns out I’ve been spelling his name wrong, it’s Belal not Bilal) to go instead.
Today rolled a double
three times in a row which meant I went directly to jail. Only joking! But I did go and visit the Police Station as my visa had run out for the month and I had to renew it! They even took my fingerprints so now I can’t murder anyone without getting caught…
Something which really wrapped up this week quite nicely was when I saw a status of Linda Laaksonen. I saw the post on Sunday evening but I didn’t reply until Monday morning as I was super tired by the time I read it on Sunday. If you can’t see the image or are too lazy to click on it I will write it here for you:
‘’When you are in bed at 8 pm before your first day back at work after a 2,5 week vacation... you've had a damn exhausting vacation. ? Well that's what 19 dives, 35-39 degrees celsius every day and a lot of excellent food will do to you - exhaust you. Oh by the way I also unofficially adopted a younger brother, his name is Adam and I love him to bits. Such a great young man with enough humour to survive our crazy group.’’
Comments:
Andreas David Forsberg: Brothers are good to have! (Especially if you love him as much as you say you do)
Linda Laaksonen: Yes, I always wanted a brother and now I've found one. I totally believe we form our own families. Family is not only blood relatives but people you feel comfortable with, connect with and feel you want to protect. I liked Adam right away and I usually like animals more than people so it's a big deal for me.
Thank you Linda Linda Linda Linda (it’s from a song)! And I won’t forget the phrase you taught me! Veila vy tailer! I know that you definitely don’t spell it like that but I’m learning!
Until next time! Hasta luego caimans!
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