Saturday, December 29, 2007

diving

yesterday i finished my PADI open water certification, i'm now legal to rent scuba gear and plan my own dives up to 18m. apparently i've got a streak of beginners luck going, as i saw a hawksbill sea turtle on my second dive, and sharks on my third. i'm hoping to see a whale for my advanced course, aim high eh?

if you're ever in koh tao and want to learn to dive, or if you already know how and just want to go out with a good shop, i very much endorse newwaydiving, they're not a party dive shop but instead a diving dive shop. many of the diving operations here are more about the drinking before and after the dive, but if you're anal retentive like me and like to learn things the right way then newway is a good bet.

today i start my advanced course, i'm taking a disposable underwater camera, and tomorrow i'm going to rent a decent digital underwater camera, so hopefully i'll have some pictures to describe what i'm not finding the words for right now.

for the fellow divers in the readership, apparently i have good air consumption (spent 40 minutes under on my 3rd dive) and decent buoyancy control. for my advanced course i'm doing a deep dive, a navigation dive, a buoyancy control dive, a photography dive, and i can't remember what the last one is going to be.

3 comments:

Cara said...

Congrats on the certification.

Do you know what kind of shark you saw?

Anonymous said...

You saw a shark in Koh Tao? That's pretty rare. And I only heard of one person who saw a whale shark. Keep holding your breath on that one.


Do a night dive. It's fun in a freaky sort of way.

Darren's Travelling Account said...

@cara: thanks! it was a grey reef shark

@matty: we were out at the chumpon pinnacle, far away from shore and apparently quite common to see sharks there, both grey and blacktip reef sharks. about 1.3 meters long

no whale sharks though, seems to be a lottery when they come.