SCUBA

Well, last weekend I spent 4 days in Anilao to get my SCUBA Open Water Diver certification. It was GREAT. SCUBA is something I've been wanting to do for a long time, but was too chicken to try. Seriously, I was paranoid that I wouldn't be able to use all the gear properly and drown underwater, or get the bends or something. I toyed with the idea of getting certified back when I was in Belize my junior year, but again, chickened out. The snorkeling was pretty good there anyways :) But then every time I heard of someone I knew going diving, or I saw pictures of divers, I got really jealous.

So I finally put my metaphorical foot down. This was my one goal for this trip (other than getting to know my family/relatives) - do SCUBA. It was kind of frustrating the first month or so I was here, because the entire country was caught up in holiday activities (including me) and I wasn't able to find any instructors/arrange any lessons. But we finally got a hold of someone.

The weekend before last, the instructor came by our house to deliver some snorkeling equipment and discuss what to expect. First off - this is one thing that has surpised me about the Philippines. People are EXTREMELY accomodating. And we were trying to arrange a pool session before we went to Aniloa for the open water check out dive (the way certification works is that you learn from a book, practice in a confined water area - like a pool - and then do a checkout dive) and I wasn't sure I would have a way to get there, and he also offered to pick me up.

Anyways, while the instructor was here giving me the down-low, my Dad randomly decided he wanted to get certified as well. So the Tuesday before we left, we went to a pool in Makati (one of the districts of metro Manila) and learned how to breathe underwater. It was MUCH easier than I expected it to be. Its all fairly intuitive.

We drove to Anilao on Thursday morning, and got a dive in that afternoon. Again, I was nervous about going deeper (since the pool was about 12 ft deep, and our dives were 40-60 ft), mostly because I don't find equalizing the pressure in my ears the easiest thing to do, but (not surprisingly) practice makes, if not perfection, than improvement. Another thing that was a little difficult was figuring out how to swim while neutrally boyant. That surprised me, that swimming underwater is harder than swimming on the surface, but you have to get used to the physics of weightlessness.

As for the sights themselves, I can't even begin to describe what I saw! I've seen pictures of reefs, I've been snorkeling, but...it was better than I could have imagined. You could stare at one little outcrop and see 15 different species of fish and coral all interacting. It was like watching this microcosm of a city, people (fish) hustling and bustling everywhere. I saw mating behaviors, territorial behaviors...coral of SO many shapes and colors. The only thing I didn't like was that you had to get out of the water after 40-45 minutes because you start to get low on air.

My dive instructor had an underwater camera, and took some pretty cool shots of my dad and I, but he hasn't emailed them to me yet. The camera I have can be submerged to 10 ft, so I have some pictures I took snorkeling. I'll have to post the dive pictures when I get them.

In about 10 minutes I'm off on a plane to a southern province. There is a festival there this weekend, and my dad got invited by the mayor. Looking at that website, I think its going to be quite a sight to see, but also hot. Outside in the street, lots of people. Woohoo for sweating.