I’m Not a SCUBA Diver

I’m a bit sad to type that, but I think it’s the truth.  I really wanted to be a scuba diver & was so excited to get certified 2 years ago.  Hubby grew up diving in the Florida Keys & I wanted to be able to dive with him on all of our exciting adventures.  I had a wonderful time diving in Cozumel on my first set of dives, but haven’t had much luck since then.  There were about a million things wrong with our dive in Mauritius & I realize that some of those things were somewhat in my control (getting seasick & losing my mask falling into the water) and some where somewhat out of my control (again getting seasick, losing my mask, choking on water, awful dive conditions).  I chalked that up to bad luck, took a refresher course a few weeks ago & was super excited to dive again in Belize & see the famous Blue Hole.

Thursday morning just started out stressful.  We’d misread the pickup time on excursion sheet & they were waiting out on our dock for us about 30 minutes before we’d planned on being ready.  We grabbed all our stuff & ran out to the dock late & apologizing profusely to the others on the boat.  In the mad dash, H had forgot to grab his dive card that he’d taken out of the bag for his trip to Hawaii & of course, we had to go back to get it.  I hit my head on a rail getting out of the boat at the dive shop & then tripped on the pier.  I was trying to calm down & get ready for the fun. We got our boat (and paperwork) organized & then headed out to our dive site- a placed called Tacklebox, where I expected to see lots of fish with a name like that.  The ride out there was gorgeous & I was going through my “Get Ready” list in my head.   On the short boat ride out there, I got on my wetsuit & had a bag of water (forget bottles here- they are green in Belize & have bagged water!).

Out past the reef, which was only about 3/4 mile off shore, the swells were big- probably 4 feet!   All the other guys on the boat were super-experienced divers & I was getting all the help I could to get my tank on & get my mask defogged while the boat was rocking & rolling on the waves.  I made it in the water fine & everybody started descending down a rope line to the bottom, but I wasn’t going down.  I was convinced I didn’t have enough weight to counterbalance my buoyant wetsuit, so I had to have the dive-master come over & release some additional air out of my BC & then he instructed me to turn upside down & swim down.  I made it to the bottom, about 80 feet down, where hubby & the other 3 guys on our trip were waiting for us.  (I can’t take photos that deep, so I found a picture similar to what we saw down there- not super clear water, not many fish, dark & kinda boring coral reefs).

All was going fine as we explored some reefs & swam through narrow passages exploring the amazing formations that the coral had made underwater.  I was honestly a bit disappointed because I was expecting a “fish dive” to see fun & beautiful fish.  I wasn’t expecting  “reef dive” where you see mostly interesting reefs and go through crevasses and under little bridges.  There was some neat stuff down there, but nothing as exciting as diving in Cozumel.  We’d completed most of our dive & came into a larger open area where we swam along the reef in a generally upward direction to get to a lower depth.  In this more open area, the surge of the water was making all the plants & corals sway back and forth just like you see them dancing in all the underwater Disney  movies.

While hanging out in this larger area, I started to get a little nauseous.  Nothing too bad or alarming, just a bit annoying. We kept swimming around- checking out the coral, watching a few more fish at this shallower level & killing a few invasive lion fish.  When it was time to go up, I was hanging out near the dive master & we slowly started ascending.  The more we went up, the more nauseous I became.  We did a short little safety stop a few feet below the surface & I was starting to feel more than nauseous & signaled to the dive-master that I wanted to go all the way up & motioned that I was feeling sick.  We surfaced, unfortunately to the same 4 foot swells that were there before, and within just a few seconds I started throwing up the water I’d taken before our dive.  Talk about miserable!  They wanted me to get in the boat, but I preferred to be tossed around in the water while being sick instead of being on a boat that was being tossed around.  I threw up for a few minute & finally felt well enough to take off my gear & climb back aboard the boat.

So, with that, I reached the sad conclusion that I’m not a SCUBA diver.  I will probably do it again, but it’s not something that comes easily to me or that I enjoy immensely.   Perhaps if I’d had a few more easier dives early on to build my confidence or I wasn’t so prone to motion sickness, both on the boat and underwater, I might have a stronger affinity for the sport. To me, it’s expensive, stressful, and time-consuming activity to do on a vacation that should be fun and relaxing, and I will lump into the same category as snow-skiing.  I will probably still partake in diving if we go somewhere really memorable- like the French Polynesia, but certainly won’t got out of my way planning trips around diving. The thought of spending 5 hours on a boat the next day headed out to the Blue Hole just sounded like pure torture & we changed our trip to a snorkeling trip on a catamaran with a stop in Caye Caulker.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: Even though I’m not a diver, I discovered the joys of amazing snorkeling the next day.