First Dive Lesson

Okay, so I decided to go ahead and take diving lessons. Man, am I glad for that decision. I mean, the experience was amazing!

This past Sunday morning, I walked the 25 min to the dive shop, Dive Grenada (they specialize in wreck diving), located on the Grand Anse Beach and arrived around 8:30am. After liberally lathering myself up with suntan lotion, SPF 50, our party of 8 girls from the MPH program gather in a corner of the dive shop and watched a 35 min DVD that reviewed the first three modules in the PADI dive book we were to have read before coming for the lesson (I skimmed through most of it, but for all basic purposes, I read the whole thing :)

After the video we split into two groups. 4 girls with the dive shop owner, Phil, an older British man who's had hip replacement surgery. He's a very experienced diver, though of his experience I know little. The other group of 4, went with another dive instructor whose name escapes me presently since I wasn't in that group (oh yeah, his name's Mick). Along to help, since we were such a large group, was a Divemaster from Germany. She assisted the instructors with our learning.

My group was the first chosen to do the practical learning session first, while the other group did the academic/book work. We were first sized for our BDU dive jackets, weight belts, and fins. I ended up with an XXS jacket, size 8 weight belt, and size 3/4 fins. Not that I think that means anything to most of you who actually read this *grins* but I may as well draw this out as much as I can. We then learned how to attach the air tank to our jackets, fit the respirator apparatus to the tank, and choose proper fitting masks. Next we hiked the 100 ft to the pool located on the Flamboyant Hotel property. In the pool (wow, it was nice to get in and relieve the weight of the equipment!) we learned how to use the respirator to breathe underwater (the first time was so cool!), clear water from our goggles, retrieve a lost respirator, hand signals for communicating underwater, assisting another diver who's run out of air with the alternate air supply we all carry, swim underwater with our fins (I keep wanting to say flippers :p ), and adjust our buoyancy underwater (a tricky business, I tell you).

After we successfully learned how to do all the above mentioned and demonstrated proficiency in these tasks, it was our turn to do the academic/book work while the other group did their pool work. For the book work, we reviewed the 3 modules we had read, took quizzes on each module (easy quizzes). We ate lunch during this time and then after a short break the group of us (8) got our wetsuits (not altogether uncomfortable, surprisingly) and suited up for our first open water dive. The general feel from the other girls was one of both excitement and nervousness. I was just excited.. not really nervous, didn't see any reason for it, but that's just me ^_^

We rode on one of their 32 ft boats to Flamingo Bay, one of the top 3 dive sites in Grenada. "It offers the dive wall with the most prolific fish life. Shoals of Creaole wrasse, yellow chromis, grunts, and jack fish lead down the wall to 90 feet where grouper, jacks and rays can be seen." We learned how to do a backward roll of the boat and once in the water we followed a rope to the bottom. It was a decently shallow reef, we went down to a depth of about 40 ft and visibility was great, about 50 ft I was told. The aquatic life was amazing. I felt like I was swimming in a teeming aquarium. We swam around and over the reef. Seeing sea fans, angel fish, sea anemone, eels , flounder, and much much more. It was an amazing experience. I can't wait to do it again! I found myself time and time again wishing I had an underwater camera. Maybe a consideration for an underwater case for my digital... though there's a level of concern, more like paranoia, with that as well. Or maybe just get a relatively inexpensive digital for underwater use. Eh, to be determined.

Anyway, I'm greatly anticipating my next dive. I was told the subsequent dives with this dive shop will only be $5! That's incredible. Makes the whole thing much more worth while and is a definite incentive for going on more dives. Yay! I'm excited!