On diving...
Turks and Caicos was a beautiful place to visit and just as promising as the pictures... gorgeous white sand that melted under your feet, that Caribbean blue water, the drinky poos by the pool, the lovely weather and music. I enjoyed the all-inclusive resort experience, it was a Beaches resort so family friendly, but I didn't find the kids as claustraphobic an experience as the floating dorm / Carnivale cruise. I think occupancy was relatively low and parents especially concerned about their kids being well behaved which makes for a pleasant vacation for everyone. The resort tries to be mindful of everyone and provides adult and kid friendly areas.. it's the little things that help go a long way. The staff was incredibly nice and like Disneyland, you have to wonder how much 150% effort has to happen behind the scenes for the place to run so friendly up front. LOL. The inclusive part was great in the quantity and worry free part... nice to just order a drink at the beach and grab it and go. The quality part was the ehhh... food just tended to be okay for the most part, but I wasn't complaining... for one thing, I suspect the produce came from the 'States because my tummy didn't act up at all. Meat dishes tended to be salty, but load up with rice and fresh fruit and veggies and an amazing variety of deserts... Yum!
The PADI certification turned out to be the challenging and rewarding part of the vacation... it was a major time commitment which was both a good and bad thing... good in that it gave me something to focus on and to do while my Mom was in classes, but bad in that we had to miss out on basically any boat tours. We arrived on a Saturday and after a relaxing morning, I spent Sunday afternoon studying the manual and watching the DVDs. Monday morning bright and *gasp* 8am early was the first session in the pool with my instructor Sarah. I liked Sarah... she's a cheerful Brit with a chipper attitude topside and a very Zen bliss attitude underwater. I was fortunate to get her one-on-one, but the pool did crowd a bit with some other students, which brought me face to face with my first challenge... SCUBA DIVING IS A MENTAL OBSTACLE TO OVERCOME, FIRST AND FOREMOST.
The changed visibility threw me off and Sarah seemed to be looming largely in my face and since I couldn't quite settle on the bottom, she kept reaching out to tug and fiddle with me, which only distracted me further, lol. It is really something else to turn off instinct and get that you're breathing underwater and that it's really okay.
Lightning speed of resort course is also a challenge.. you don't have time to get comfortable on the bottom, because the instructor is already moving on to the next skill you need to do. Instinctively I'd feel after each completed skill as if I wanted to come up topside, but we'd be charging through three skills per trip down. All you can basically do is tamp down the terrified "I can't breathe underwater! I can't remember the next skill!" side of yourself and just DO IT. I am not a "JUST DO IT" kind of person and thus felt that the pace of the course took my breath away, no pun intended. For instance, one of the skills is taking off the BCD and tank underwater, then putting them back on. Sarah demonstrated the skill, it looked easy, then I looked down to start and a) couldn't remember how to start! and b) couldn't see a thing! So much of the safety skills are sensory memory, so it took a bit of fumbling to find the right clasps and buckles. Mask clearing sucks and you end up with red watery eyes as you're a) reminding yourself to breathe and b) trying to remember the next skill. Hee hee.
I remember my Christopher Pike really well and thought that all the "removing regulator" skills would be terrifying, but it's actually way easier than it sounds. Even the bit about remembering to exhale when the regulator is out of your mouth. For the skill where you throw the regulator back over your shoulder to simulate a reg knocked out of your mouth, I did it nice and slowly and she complimented me on my calm and slow movement. Removing the reg to manually inflate the BCD to do a fin pivot seemed totally pointless, but whatever. Check that skill off too! Quizzes, review, and assembling / reassembling gear til you know it frontwards backwards. This served *VERY* well and got me quickly to the point where I was comfortable with the gear, very comfortable by the end of the week.
So Monday afternoon I was hitting the book again at the beach; it felt nice to grasp a manual and to pretend as if I knew what the hell I was doing. It wasn't nearly enough time, because Tuesday morning was more rounds of quizzes, the 50 test exam and another pool session. A tiring 12 lap swim, and more skills... skills that were more mentally challenging than physical. The one that sounded the hardest was going to the bottom of the pool and having the instructor turn off your tank of air to simulate being completely out of air, first with you watching the gauge, then without you watching. I also had to let go of a lot of potential anxiety for the "in the dark swim" where you take off your mask, allow your instructor to swim you underwater around the pool with eyes shut, then return to the bottom and put on your mask and do a mask clear. Yeah! Tough! Way harder than the "completely out of air!" scenario. A few reg swaps, and the strangest skill of all... breathing from a free flowing regulator. That's a reg that's broken and just spitting a constant stream of bubbles at you.. you can actually sip from it and breathe from it! It's the strangest thing to learn about and actually experience.
I was pretty overwhelmed by the nonstop scuba and was a bit relieved that the afternoon dive got cancelled and I had a chance to relax and get dive table problems and air volumes off the brain. I got scheduled for a Wednesday morning dive but found out at the last minute that Sarah wasn't going to go with me. I was a little discombobulated by this but reasoned that I couldn't always go out in ideal conditions with the ideal people and that I'd have to get used to diving with different people and trust MYSELF rather than attaching confidence to the instructor. Imagine how I felt when Sarah said she wasn't going out on the boat that day, then I turn around to see her behind me in line with three other students, set to go out on the NICER boat. I got dumped by my dive instructor. She pretended I wasn't there.
It was a tough day... my new instructor was a chirpy 18 yr old who mostly ignored me and flirted with the boat crew. I got off to a rough start... the boat captain had me doing a step entry with my hands switched from their usual position, a small detail that completely set me off feeling comfortable because it wasn't how I had learned. I did a poor entry and cramped up my thigh and the instructor was already off on her talking spiel and the captain had to call to her and bring her attention to me. She was *completely* oblivious and skipped checking us for proper weighting, so I was also underweighted (more on this later). We went down the guide rope and had a nice lovely dive... then Christina decided for kicks she wanted to do some somersaults and get us to try it. I had problems clearing my mask and watery eyes were bothering me and making it hard to focus.. I was floating off into the ethers why everyone else was doing nice neat somersaults, and I ended up swallowing a bit of extra seawater. This was fine, til we got to the surface... whereupon on an empty stomach (I thought it best to go empty to try to avoid possible seasickness, but *BIG MISTAKE*) the seawater did not sit pretty and I felt immediately queasy and nauseous. Christina said "Oh you can just throw up into the regulator" and I thought she was joking... if I'd known she was serious, maybe I would have worried less about the possibility of ruining the next dive for everyone by blowing chunks 50 ft under, panicking and making for the surface... but I thought she was joking, and nausea was rolling over me hardcore and making it hard to concentrate on the skills, so I opted out of the second dive. Everyone seemed to think I was seasick, but honestly I rarely get seasick.. it was swallowing the seawater that did me in. Want to throw up? Swallow salt water! Everyone knows that!
I drank water and ate some fruit, and we got back just in time for me to feel better and seriously regret skipping the second dive, as it threw chaos into my dive schedule... I'd have to somehow do three sets of dive skills on Thursday, again with no Sarah, since as I found out later it was impossible for me to dive on Friday. They wouldn't even let me do a single dive within 24 hrs of flying, though the PADI timetable is 18 hrs. So when we got back, I asked at the dive shop if I could do three skills in one afternoon dive trip and the staff member there asked Christina if she'd be able to do 2,3 and 4 with me on the next dive. She nodded a distracted yes and I asked her if that would be okay with her, she said it would be fine. Well turns out Mom thought I'd try to dive on Friday with Sarah, so she scheduled a tour.. we came back to see if I could dive a different day. I asked the supervisor about it and he said it wasn't impossible, and that I'd just have to do 2-4 on Thursday. I need to do four dive's worth of skills to get Open Water certed so that I can dive without an instructor so I really wanted to get it done and double checked that it was possible to do three in a "two dive" excursion. He said it was.
Thursday morning dive with Christina? She's talking to another dive staffer and he tells her via his clipboard that she'll be doing 3-5 with one of her students. Not 3-5... 2-4, I say. Christina turns to me and says "No, we'll do 2 and 3 today." I'm instantly furious at the situation and exclaim "That is NOT what Elvis said!" I'm not about to remind her that IN FRONT of me she had agreed to do exactly that! The other staffer smoothly convinces her that the skills for 2 and 3 can be done in one trip down and what can she do? Disagree with me about something her supervisor said? She caves to the social pressure and I tip the staffer a wink as I pass by him and mouth a thank you. I get that she doesn't like me and considers me a problem student who's cutting into her valuable sun tanning time, but I'm also a fucking client who paid $400 for the privilege of hanging out with her. I make her my personal challenge for the day and chat her up as if she were my best friend... I'm determined to turn this day around. I find out that she's got a bad mojo cloud following her around... by 18 she's already lost a boyfriend and a twin. OMG. The dude had a heart attack at twenty three while DIVING and she had to haul his body to the surface. I also apologize profusely to the other student present for cutting into his dive time... Turns out the skills for the second dive take all of 5 minutes to complete and I do so flawlessly, proving to Christina and to myself that I'm a perfectly capable student. Three and four are similarly flawless and I like to think that both Christina and I lighten up... I repeatedly thank her for letting me do the three dive skills in two trips even though I'm inwardly grumbling that she was a pain about it. And the diving? Once the irritating skills are out of the way? (A 30 feet ascent on one exhale)(More mask clearing)(More stupid pin fivots!)Heavenly... the white sand so pristine, the reefs busy with reef sharks, sun fish and even a jellyfish floating out in the open blue like a large UFO. My day goes better from the amended breakfast to an improved step entry and I even get to do the "good student" moment when Christina underwater motions us to stop and my dive buddy goes floating off into the distance missing her cue entirely, missing her spoon tap for attention, and I get through half a set of instructor directed pinfivots! before he returns. UnderSarah is Zen bliss, but UnderChristina is playful and distracted.. she misses when i lose a fin (I recover it and redon it) and misses my jellyfish spotting (point! point! point!) I heartily but inwardly claim my A student moment when my dive buddy struggles mightily with his surface gear exchange skill, while I whip the tank off and whip it back on. He's not the only guy to struggle with this... I'm thinking it's just easier with our weight distribution for women to do this, because a guy diver I met prefers to exchange gear at the BOTTOM than at the surface, while his wife prefers the surface. I can't somersault worth a crap, but I can ride a tank like no one's business! I also learned to really trust the regulator... not only can you theoretically throw up into it (things you always want to know), but you can comfortably spit and cough into it. Lungs full of seawater? No problem. Cough cough cough, it's gone. Scrabbling for the surface should be an instinct you can banish.
Now with PADI card in hand, I can float off into the paradise with the honey. This is the most rewarding aspect of getting dive certed and the main reason, natch. I can't wait to go diving with him, now that the class is out of the way. It was also somewhat of a relief to hear from others that most standard PADI courses are more spaced out over time because I found it to be a lot of information packed into a short amount of time. It was also a relief to find out that the kind of rec diving that we're doing will be the kind you can do and break for the surface safely, no matter what happens. The course is very well constructed to get you familiar with diving, and diving SAFELY. It's practically drilled into you.
Other vacation highlights were getting our pictures taken on the beach, hanging out in the steam room and seeing the brides floating around the resort. Also the people... people *everywhere* were friendly, talkative and a delight to be around. Whether they were staffers or fellow vacationers, everyone was happy to be there and great to meet. I met an AP on "Third Rock" then met a couple a few days later who had also met him.
T&C is beautiful and we hardly even scratched the surface of things you can do there... I highly recommend it as a resort and dive destination. *nod nod*
The PADI certification turned out to be the challenging and rewarding part of the vacation... it was a major time commitment which was both a good and bad thing... good in that it gave me something to focus on and to do while my Mom was in classes, but bad in that we had to miss out on basically any boat tours. We arrived on a Saturday and after a relaxing morning, I spent Sunday afternoon studying the manual and watching the DVDs. Monday morning bright and *gasp* 8am early was the first session in the pool with my instructor Sarah. I liked Sarah... she's a cheerful Brit with a chipper attitude topside and a very Zen bliss attitude underwater. I was fortunate to get her one-on-one, but the pool did crowd a bit with some other students, which brought me face to face with my first challenge... SCUBA DIVING IS A MENTAL OBSTACLE TO OVERCOME, FIRST AND FOREMOST.
The changed visibility threw me off and Sarah seemed to be looming largely in my face and since I couldn't quite settle on the bottom, she kept reaching out to tug and fiddle with me, which only distracted me further, lol. It is really something else to turn off instinct and get that you're breathing underwater and that it's really okay.
Lightning speed of resort course is also a challenge.. you don't have time to get comfortable on the bottom, because the instructor is already moving on to the next skill you need to do. Instinctively I'd feel after each completed skill as if I wanted to come up topside, but we'd be charging through three skills per trip down. All you can basically do is tamp down the terrified "I can't breathe underwater! I can't remember the next skill!" side of yourself and just DO IT. I am not a "JUST DO IT" kind of person and thus felt that the pace of the course took my breath away, no pun intended. For instance, one of the skills is taking off the BCD and tank underwater, then putting them back on. Sarah demonstrated the skill, it looked easy, then I looked down to start and a) couldn't remember how to start! and b) couldn't see a thing! So much of the safety skills are sensory memory, so it took a bit of fumbling to find the right clasps and buckles. Mask clearing sucks and you end up with red watery eyes as you're a) reminding yourself to breathe and b) trying to remember the next skill. Hee hee.
I remember my Christopher Pike really well and thought that all the "removing regulator" skills would be terrifying, but it's actually way easier than it sounds. Even the bit about remembering to exhale when the regulator is out of your mouth. For the skill where you throw the regulator back over your shoulder to simulate a reg knocked out of your mouth, I did it nice and slowly and she complimented me on my calm and slow movement. Removing the reg to manually inflate the BCD to do a fin pivot seemed totally pointless, but whatever. Check that skill off too! Quizzes, review, and assembling / reassembling gear til you know it frontwards backwards. This served *VERY* well and got me quickly to the point where I was comfortable with the gear, very comfortable by the end of the week.
So Monday afternoon I was hitting the book again at the beach; it felt nice to grasp a manual and to pretend as if I knew what the hell I was doing. It wasn't nearly enough time, because Tuesday morning was more rounds of quizzes, the 50 test exam and another pool session. A tiring 12 lap swim, and more skills... skills that were more mentally challenging than physical. The one that sounded the hardest was going to the bottom of the pool and having the instructor turn off your tank of air to simulate being completely out of air, first with you watching the gauge, then without you watching. I also had to let go of a lot of potential anxiety for the "in the dark swim" where you take off your mask, allow your instructor to swim you underwater around the pool with eyes shut, then return to the bottom and put on your mask and do a mask clear. Yeah! Tough! Way harder than the "completely out of air!" scenario. A few reg swaps, and the strangest skill of all... breathing from a free flowing regulator. That's a reg that's broken and just spitting a constant stream of bubbles at you.. you can actually sip from it and breathe from it! It's the strangest thing to learn about and actually experience.
I was pretty overwhelmed by the nonstop scuba and was a bit relieved that the afternoon dive got cancelled and I had a chance to relax and get dive table problems and air volumes off the brain. I got scheduled for a Wednesday morning dive but found out at the last minute that Sarah wasn't going to go with me. I was a little discombobulated by this but reasoned that I couldn't always go out in ideal conditions with the ideal people and that I'd have to get used to diving with different people and trust MYSELF rather than attaching confidence to the instructor. Imagine how I felt when Sarah said she wasn't going out on the boat that day, then I turn around to see her behind me in line with three other students, set to go out on the NICER boat. I got dumped by my dive instructor. She pretended I wasn't there.
It was a tough day... my new instructor was a chirpy 18 yr old who mostly ignored me and flirted with the boat crew. I got off to a rough start... the boat captain had me doing a step entry with my hands switched from their usual position, a small detail that completely set me off feeling comfortable because it wasn't how I had learned. I did a poor entry and cramped up my thigh and the instructor was already off on her talking spiel and the captain had to call to her and bring her attention to me. She was *completely* oblivious and skipped checking us for proper weighting, so I was also underweighted (more on this later). We went down the guide rope and had a nice lovely dive... then Christina decided for kicks she wanted to do some somersaults and get us to try it. I had problems clearing my mask and watery eyes were bothering me and making it hard to focus.. I was floating off into the ethers why everyone else was doing nice neat somersaults, and I ended up swallowing a bit of extra seawater. This was fine, til we got to the surface... whereupon on an empty stomach (I thought it best to go empty to try to avoid possible seasickness, but *BIG MISTAKE*) the seawater did not sit pretty and I felt immediately queasy and nauseous. Christina said "Oh you can just throw up into the regulator" and I thought she was joking... if I'd known she was serious, maybe I would have worried less about the possibility of ruining the next dive for everyone by blowing chunks 50 ft under, panicking and making for the surface... but I thought she was joking, and nausea was rolling over me hardcore and making it hard to concentrate on the skills, so I opted out of the second dive. Everyone seemed to think I was seasick, but honestly I rarely get seasick.. it was swallowing the seawater that did me in. Want to throw up? Swallow salt water! Everyone knows that!
I drank water and ate some fruit, and we got back just in time for me to feel better and seriously regret skipping the second dive, as it threw chaos into my dive schedule... I'd have to somehow do three sets of dive skills on Thursday, again with no Sarah, since as I found out later it was impossible for me to dive on Friday. They wouldn't even let me do a single dive within 24 hrs of flying, though the PADI timetable is 18 hrs. So when we got back, I asked at the dive shop if I could do three skills in one afternoon dive trip and the staff member there asked Christina if she'd be able to do 2,3 and 4 with me on the next dive. She nodded a distracted yes and I asked her if that would be okay with her, she said it would be fine. Well turns out Mom thought I'd try to dive on Friday with Sarah, so she scheduled a tour.. we came back to see if I could dive a different day. I asked the supervisor about it and he said it wasn't impossible, and that I'd just have to do 2-4 on Thursday. I need to do four dive's worth of skills to get Open Water certed so that I can dive without an instructor so I really wanted to get it done and double checked that it was possible to do three in a "two dive" excursion. He said it was.
Thursday morning dive with Christina? She's talking to another dive staffer and he tells her via his clipboard that she'll be doing 3-5 with one of her students. Not 3-5... 2-4, I say. Christina turns to me and says "No, we'll do 2 and 3 today." I'm instantly furious at the situation and exclaim "That is NOT what Elvis said!" I'm not about to remind her that IN FRONT of me she had agreed to do exactly that! The other staffer smoothly convinces her that the skills for 2 and 3 can be done in one trip down and what can she do? Disagree with me about something her supervisor said? She caves to the social pressure and I tip the staffer a wink as I pass by him and mouth a thank you. I get that she doesn't like me and considers me a problem student who's cutting into her valuable sun tanning time, but I'm also a fucking client who paid $400 for the privilege of hanging out with her. I make her my personal challenge for the day and chat her up as if she were my best friend... I'm determined to turn this day around. I find out that she's got a bad mojo cloud following her around... by 18 she's already lost a boyfriend and a twin. OMG. The dude had a heart attack at twenty three while DIVING and she had to haul his body to the surface. I also apologize profusely to the other student present for cutting into his dive time... Turns out the skills for the second dive take all of 5 minutes to complete and I do so flawlessly, proving to Christina and to myself that I'm a perfectly capable student. Three and four are similarly flawless and I like to think that both Christina and I lighten up... I repeatedly thank her for letting me do the three dive skills in two trips even though I'm inwardly grumbling that she was a pain about it. And the diving? Once the irritating skills are out of the way? (A 30 feet ascent on one exhale)(More mask clearing)(More stupid pin fivots!)Heavenly... the white sand so pristine, the reefs busy with reef sharks, sun fish and even a jellyfish floating out in the open blue like a large UFO. My day goes better from the amended breakfast to an improved step entry and I even get to do the "good student" moment when Christina underwater motions us to stop and my dive buddy goes floating off into the distance missing her cue entirely, missing her spoon tap for attention, and I get through half a set of instructor directed pinfivots! before he returns. UnderSarah is Zen bliss, but UnderChristina is playful and distracted.. she misses when i lose a fin (I recover it and redon it) and misses my jellyfish spotting (point! point! point!) I heartily but inwardly claim my A student moment when my dive buddy struggles mightily with his surface gear exchange skill, while I whip the tank off and whip it back on. He's not the only guy to struggle with this... I'm thinking it's just easier with our weight distribution for women to do this, because a guy diver I met prefers to exchange gear at the BOTTOM than at the surface, while his wife prefers the surface. I can't somersault worth a crap, but I can ride a tank like no one's business! I also learned to really trust the regulator... not only can you theoretically throw up into it (things you always want to know), but you can comfortably spit and cough into it. Lungs full of seawater? No problem. Cough cough cough, it's gone. Scrabbling for the surface should be an instinct you can banish.
Now with PADI card in hand, I can float off into the paradise with the honey. This is the most rewarding aspect of getting dive certed and the main reason, natch. I can't wait to go diving with him, now that the class is out of the way. It was also somewhat of a relief to hear from others that most standard PADI courses are more spaced out over time because I found it to be a lot of information packed into a short amount of time. It was also a relief to find out that the kind of rec diving that we're doing will be the kind you can do and break for the surface safely, no matter what happens. The course is very well constructed to get you familiar with diving, and diving SAFELY. It's practically drilled into you.
Other vacation highlights were getting our pictures taken on the beach, hanging out in the steam room and seeing the brides floating around the resort. Also the people... people *everywhere* were friendly, talkative and a delight to be around. Whether they were staffers or fellow vacationers, everyone was happy to be there and great to meet. I met an AP on "Third Rock" then met a couple a few days later who had also met him.
T&C is beautiful and we hardly even scratched the surface of things you can do there... I highly recommend it as a resort and dive destination. *nod nod*