Another (relatively) calm day and the day of the trial scuba dive lesson for Frankie, James, Maja, Sharon & me. After the usual breakfast, we milled around a bit until it was time to begin the diving. The non-divers took advantage of the relaxed day by lounging in the sun and/or shade as we each took our turns. James kindly lent me his aquapac (waterproof camera bag) so I could have a go at fitting my digital camera in. It was a tight squeeze (and I subsequently found on the Aquapac website that they say that my camera (Fuji S602) categorically does not fit in that bag!) but it did fit and, after a quick test in the sink in our bathroom for leaks, I was ready to go. It was hard to see the viewfinder due to some graphics on the bag getting in the way, but I could just about manage if I pulled the bag down as far as it would go at the back. The pictures I took turned out ok, but the plastic of the bag does some strange things with the camera’s autofocus and also makes some strange distortions towards the edge of the shot!

The day started badly for Sharon. Having plucked up courage the night before to have a go at the diving (and having persuaded James to do the same) she had woken up with a similar complaint to mine and James’ earlier in the week and was not really feeling up to her diving lesson. Mahmoud (“Poppa Dive”) told us that as he could only take one of us at a time for the trial lesson, the order would be Frankie, James, Sharon, Maja then me (to give them a chance to find a BCD (Buoyancy Control Device – a complicated sort of inflatable waistcoat that divers wear) big enough to fit me!).

Having taken all of us as a group through the basic procedures, Mahmoud helped Frankie get kitted up and took her out into the shallow water of the bay. I thought it would be a shame not to have some pictures of this all going on, so decided to try and snorkel around the others as they had their dive lessons and get what pictures I could using my camera wedged into James’ Aquapac. I didn’t get out into the water until Frankie was returning, but got some good pictures of her with my camera (and hopefully hers, which Phil threw to me whilst I was out there!). Frankie, of course, was a natural at Scuba diving and seemed perfectly happy under the water.

Next up was James, who looked a bit apprehensive at first, but soon took to it. I followed him out for a while as he gradually dropped out of camera range and got some good (if slightly bleary-looking) pictures of him and his astonishingly white-looking legs! Sharon, after initially saying she wasn’t well enough to try the dive, decided that she was up to it after all and was next in the water. Finding that the weight of all the gear (in her defence, I will admit that it was damn heavy!) was causing her difficulties, Mahmoud got her to turn around and lie on her back in the water so he could drag her out to sea instead – most undignified for her, but hilarious to watch! Most of the pictures I got of Sharon show her holding on to her mask as she was having a few leakage problems. (With her mask, not anywhere else, may I hasten to add in light of the title of this section of the story!)

Maja was due to be the next diver, but unfortunately couldn’t manage to “pop” her ears to equalise the pressure as she’d need to when diving down to 10 metres. In fact she actually managed to hurt her ears quite badly for the rest of the day by trying too hard, unfortunately. This meant that I was next up, so I left the water and headed for the dive gear shade.

First up was the BCD – which was a bit snug, but fitted ok. After a quick check that the inflate/deflate mechanism was working, it was time for the weight belt and then the air tank itself. I began to sympathise with Sharon a bit… it was blooming heavy! The first thing that struck me was the bewildering variety of tubes and paraphernalia dangling around me… I don’t know how divers remember which bits to use! I waded into the water, attached my fins and joined Mahmoud in about 4ft of water. With the others, I’d seen him checking that they could equalise their ears before setting off, but he had obviously noticed me diving down to photograph the others and had seen me already doing this (either that or he forgot!) so he skipped this bit and just asked me to put the breathing bit in my mouth (is it called a regulator, or is that something else?) and just hang in the water to see if he needed to add more weight. I’ve a friend who had struggled to breathe underwater and, whilst I didn’t expect to have any problems, I was still a bit apprehensive about the first few breaths.

In the event, it was dead easy. You actually have to make more effort to breathe out, whereas breathing in seems to happen automatically if you just sort of relax your lungs. Seeing I was ok, Mahmoud just gestured for me to follow him out and we were on our way. Mahmoud was controlling the BCD so all I had to do was swim along and take in the underwater scenery. You seem to see more fish (and more variety) when you go a few metres down, past the normal snorkel limits. Maybe you’re accepted as being just some sort of weird big fish! As we went deeper, I had to equalise my ears a few times to stop the pressure build up becoming too painful, but I was fine apart from that. Mahmoud pointed out the big Moray eel that he’d been showing the others at one point – it was huge! On the way back in, I saw a large flat-ish kind of fish off in the bay to the left – Mahmoud later told me it was a batfish. We then came across our resident shoal of barracuda and, by swimming slowly and gently through them, managed to get totally surrounded without panicking them… it’s an absolutely mesmerising sight to be surrounded by such a vast shoal of fish – I can thoroughly recommend it! We got back to the beach to find that Maja had been kindly swimming around and above me, taking pictures and video footage of my dive so I had a permanent reminder too – thanks Maja!

Lunch was surprisingly delicious, to be honest! We actually had fish for the first time that week along with some coated wedge-chips. (There was also eggplant, but this wasn’t to everyone’s taste… a bit slimy in my opinion!). Apparently the whole area is a nature reserve so fishing isn’t actually allowed. Having said that, it didn’t seem to put the locals off that much, as I saw several of them fishing throughout the week.

After lunch, Val decided to tear herself away from her book and come and do some snorkelling around the house reef. I showed her the barracuda shoal and we saw a few small lionfish around a patch of seagrass as well. Plenty of jellyfish & plastic bags too – it looked like the strong winds from the previous week had blown them all onshore! Nothing much left to do for the afternoon apart from some serious slobbing around… Most of us were pretty good at this, but Sharon would be Olympic champion, without doubt.

That night saw the usual fare at dinner, followed by a convivial sit down around the café shade. As we were going back home the next day, I decided I’d better get the duty free finished off. Fortunately there were some willing helpers in the vicinity and the half bottles of gin and whisky didn’t take long to polish off at all. Everyone apart from me, Ruth, Maja & Julian had long gone to bed by the time the last dregs of booze were being drained from the bottles and the amount of alcohol consumed led to some distinctly ropey belly dancing being done! Best left to the locals, methinks…

I clambered into bed at about midnight and was woken up not long after that by Val telling me there was a flood in the bathroom. It seems that the water fill-up tanker had been and the extra water pressure was proving to be a bit much for the plumbing, leading to a completely drenched bathroom. I applied masculine logic to the situation – turn off the water feed into the cistern and, voila! Bob’s your uncle… Although I didn’t hear it, apparently the pipes were also wailing and screaming like banshees at around the same time. I believe that Linda took Mahmoud at his word and got him out of bed in the early hours to sort everything out!

Read on: Day eight - One more snorkelling session, crab chasing and home again
Go Back: Day six - More dolphins and less wind (at last!)

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