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This is where we booked on to Bubbles Below PADI open water dive course run by Onu (Quite a cool, very well travelled, islander, bit of a joker, really good lad), ably assisted by Bevan (a Kiwi on his OE ‘Overseas Experience’, can’t think of many better places to have it). The course consisted of theory lessons (Sunday and Monday nights) - one question Kat asked was ‘will we see sharks?’ (I knew exactly where she was going with this!) to which the very enthusiastic answer was ‘Yes, loads’. ‘Wrong answer’ I quipped, but maybe it was Kats worried looking face that made him back track his answer to ‘not many, and they are small and will stay away from us if they can help it’.
The closed water introduction lesion was in the lagoon, about 1 – 1.5 meters of water. It was a glorious day, very hot, and the wetsuits we had put on seemed rather excessive, but the water was surprisingly cool. We practiced all the things we would be tested on when we got down to the bottom of the ocean.
All the open water dives were done outside the reef in 10 to 18 meters of open water, at one point we could see the edge of the shelf where the floor of the pacific ocean drops away to over 4000 meters (don’t fall), the feeling was a strange one, floating above a depth that you cant see, freaked Kat out a bit :-) again..
We were both a little apprehensive about throwing ourselves backward out of a boat into the Pacific with lead weights and a very heavy tank strapped to our back, one of us more so than the other, but after a count of three we both tipped backwards and in. Thankfully our buoyancy control vests were filled and we popped back to the surface. Once in, that’s where the fun began.
Each time we went down we would practice different things, (removing masks, simulating out of air, buoyancy control, emergency ascents etc.) each time a little deeper and a bit more of a challenge. With every dive we felt more confident and took in some spectacular sights. I really enjoyed going down the trenches, going down a vertical rock face which has all sorts of fish, coral, plants, all clinging to the solid wall plonked in the middle of the pacific. Just slowly descending down past it all, then looking up almost 20 meters and seeing the bottom of the boat, just, a long way above, amazing feeling.
We saw loads of marine life down there, just as colourful as in the lagoons, but generally bigger. We saw a very large and graceful turtle swimming by, a giant moray eel in its cave and some napoleon wrasse swimming down deep, going deeper than we could go.
Strangely the final test we did was the swimming test, where we had to swim across the harbour, 200 meters swim. In theory we could have been out in the middle of the ocean 20m down without being able to swim.
We both found the experience excellent, and after passing the final theory tests we cracked open some beers with Onu and Bevan, and spent a couple of hours getting quite a bit tipsy.
If ever you get the opportunity to go diving in crystal clear water, off the shelf of a small island, with beautiful coral reef around, I would highly recommend it.
The final days in Aitutaki were spent snorkling in what can only be described through pictures.
Basically an island paradise.
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