SPONSORED BY: Nettinho e Keite, Biriba e Dre, Maracy e Aparicio, Claire and Andrew Foreman, Alf and Sarah and my Nan!
Today was the big day – the last two dives of our course to complete the PADI training and become PADI certified Open Water Divers. We started the morning at the dive centre before getting in a taxi and going to the dive site which was about a ten minute drive further along the coast. It was a stunning location, we left our bags in the restaurant by the shore, got into our gear and got stuck into the water. Five minutes into the dive Matt spotted a big green sea turtle, it was huge! He was resting on the bottom of the sea bed, 20m down eating sea grass, it was mesmerising and so exciting, we hovered (practising our super amazing hovering skills) for a good five minutes just watching him eat, he didn't seem the least bit perturbed at his four rapt spectators. I would've have been happy even if we'd had to finish our dive there and then, a massive green sea turtle, we were so lucky to see one, but our dive didn't finish and we carried on around Moray Garden. We didn't see any eels but the plant and fish life was amazing.
Forty-two minutes later we got out of the water, still disbelieving that we'd seen a turtle, at this point my burning desire to see a Napelonfish was completely forgotten. We sat down, ordered lunch and got stuck into our final exam. We all passed, although I was a bit worried that I wouldn't get enough right answers and celebrated with our fourth and final dive in Golden Blocks, which was right next to the first site, Moray Garden. It was a beautiful swim, the coral was stunning, as always and we saw some honeycombed pufferfish, I made sure to keep my distance while getting a good look. We were back out of the water in forty-five minutes, drying off and packing away our equipment for the short drive back to Planet dive where the final paperwork awaited us. It took a good long while to sort everything out but turtle talk got us through the tedium. Finally we were presented with our temporary certificates, our cards ordered and details logged.
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| From 10 Dahab |
We walked back along the front sharing a beer, elated from completing our course and began talking about our next step. We loved it so much that we decided to do the advanced course that evening. It was on the proviso that we take it slowly, I felt that I had already overcome or at least partially overcome my fear of the deep blue sea and things racing out from the deep to eat me or my toes and the thought of more of the unknown so soon did make me feel a bit overwhelmed.
We got back to Matt's place and spent a while talking to Kiki (Matt's flatmate) and then Linda and Matt showed up and we talked to them chatting about different things, enjoying having passed our course. We headed back into town after de-salting to meet Amy for a beer and some food to further celebrate our course. We met in Funny Mummy and bumped into Clare and Lil the divers and spent a lovely time drinking beer, talking, chasing away cats from our food and wolfing down hamburgers and chips – very welcome after five days of relatively light food. The excitement and the (single) beer proved a bit too much and I was falling asleep embarrassingly early so we headed back to Matt's house for some kip. A flipping lovely day.
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