Okay, let’s cut right to the important stuff. So last Thursday, I passed my divemaster theory exam, which basically makes me a PADI divemaster. Yay! We also did quite a lotta skill dives, pushing ourselves forward as much as possible. I’m gonna start light. On Wednesday, me and one of my fellow interns had to do one of the most ridiculous skills I’ve ever heard about – underwater kit exchange while hovering. That shit has recently gotten modified from exchange while kneeling down to this hovering thing. Challenging as fuck but we somewhat made it happen. I would pay top dollar to see that chaos from a 3rd person perspective. We also got to do another deep dive in Tabaiba. This time we actually tackled 40 meters. Oh and I got me that new suit. It’s warm, it’s semi-dry, it’s nice, I feel good in it. Both physically and mentally.
The real thing came on Saturday tho. We had some customers, lovely people, joining us for a boat dive. I signed up for the dive again (even though we have to pay for that one) simply because the site is gorgeous. In the morning, I learned that the customers were only Open Water which instantly limited our depth to 18 meters which was bit of a letdown as most of things I enjoyed last time are way deeper. Well, whatever happened further on that day made this first minor turbulence seem totally insignificant. I won’t go into detail here but after a sequence of fails that could have been avoided by better communication of all parties involved, by being a bit more honest about experience and confidence level, after couple of other unnecessary twists and turns, I ended up dealing with a panicked diver 22 meters deep. Diver that was not responding to me, diver that was shaking, spitting out regulator and screaming with horror in her eyes. Now, it’s really hard to explain what goes through your head when shit like that happens. I recall following everything I learned over my rescue course, I was close, I established physical contact, I tried to calm her down, I tried to make her breathe slow... All that repeatedly. The weirdest shit was realizing that whatever I do is gonna stick with me forever. I knew exactly how deep I was and that shooting up to the surface is a stupid fucking idea but I also saw that we’re racing to some serious shit and we're running out of time real fast. That “it’s all on you, man” shit was one of the most intense feelings I’ve had in my entire life. And yeah, I knew that ascending slowly and making all the safety stops would be the best but I also felt that this won’t probably work as she was basically drowning on me already. So I was like fuck it, pumped up my BCD and got as to the surface ASAP. I calmed her down, we got her back to the boat and luckily, seems no decompression sickness resulted from any of that. But again, being in that situation, knowing it’s all about making a choice and that there’s a chance that that choice might lead to some serious damage (or might resolve that shit) is a crazy feeling. Well, hope I’ll get to dive without anything like that for a bit...
My dad made it to the island too. Over the week, we met up for a Guinness around the corner from my building with some of his friend with whom he’s staying about 30km from Adeje. They also picked me up after me saving (or maybe just not destroying) that girl’s life and we spent a great Saturday together. Beers, barbecue (for which I found some dope ass local spinach patties), all the good stuff. I spent a night at their place too. Sunday morning, they dropped me by my place, I changed real quick and ran out to meet some of my guys to go to Teide. It was me and three of my French divers (one girl and two guys). We made it to the cable car, got us 21 EUR one way tickets, went up and after additional 20 minutes hike, we made it to the top of the world. I’m pretty sure I haven’t been that high (geographically, you know what I mean) yet. Over 3700 meters and we literally started at the sea level. The view was breathtaking and it was back up by sulfur just evaporating out of ground all around. With all the heat and smell you would expect. We decided to hike the way down which went well till we decided to go for a shortcut by the end of it. The French girl told me that her parents say that if there is a path in the mountains, there is a reason for it. Fucking follow it, don’t do bullshit. Well, we went for bullshit and we barely made it to the car not injured. Climbing over sharp rocks, sliding on tiny ones, falling over here and there. Couple of scratches seem like a small price for all of that. But even during that, the views all around were crazy. Fucking beautiful. Beers by a fireplace in an empty hotel in the area afterwards felt like heaven.
And that’s that. I’m slowly approaching 100 dives over here, I’ve received my IDC materials, diving is going well. I was a bit more social last week, I got shitton of new experiences to digest, I got some more students to teach. Everything is moving. Shout out to everybody reading. One!
Highlights:
- That diving emergency. God damn.
- New Busta.
- Beers with my dad. Never gets old.
No comments:
Post a Comment