Good Diving, hard Diving and saying goodbye to Diving

The big thing for me was last week I got lost when leading a dive, and it felt like my perfect record of performance and effort had been ruined. I did slightly redeem myself by leading the dive later in the week to my usual incredible standard. However, it felt like I still had to prove that I’m still the outstanding young individual that everyone here has come to know and love.

So I decided that to do this I would offer to lead Las Eras, which I’d never lead before, obviously this would be done under Melissa’s supervision. So we jumped in and swam out to the usual point of descent.
What I’m trying to say is that up until minute two of the dive I was fine, just after this everything fell apart. Obviously none of what followed was my fault, we were battling against some of the worst conditions anyone has ever seen at Las Eras, or at least that’s my opinion.
There was an incredibly strong current and visibility must of dropped to at least five meters, then when I went in the wrong direction I didn’t really help the situation, so by around minute five Melissa had taken over. After this the dive went fine, although it was a very short dive due to such extreme conditions.
Ann who was on this dive with us as well as the interns Andreas, Kevin, and Lydia got to see all sorts of exciting fish like a tiny Octopus and fabulously colourful Parrot fish or incredibly long Trumpet fish.

As I’ve undoubtedly mentioned before the second dive at Las Eras is to the Pipeline. We saw Octopus and other interesting fish on this dive such as Blue-finned Damsels. The second dive was much more of a success and we ended it a little early in case we had trouble with a current, on the way back we did get to see a small Common Ray hiding under a rock.

Next up we took the Ann to Poco Naufragio, with the simple intention of playing with the Rays like we had done the week before. This time the big Rays didn’t come out to play for very long, Stumpy appeared briefly, but it was mainly the small Rays that entertained us. Apparently, the Rays took such a liking to us that one of them decided to stay with us for the length of the dive. The three Morays were in their usual space, which is always good to see. Next up on the agenda was Starfish Bay with lots of interesting fish to see like Lightfoot Crabs, two-striped bream and obviously many many starfish.

One hundred dives! The big milestone, or so I think anyway. To celebrate I didn’t do the dive naked, but instead did a night dive, not that I had much option as it was part of my Divemaster requirements. Pete lead the dive and what I did see entertained me, especially the phosphorescence that when you wave your hand it will begin to glow and if you have your torch off it is particularly pretty. There was also lots of particularly interesting fish on this dive such as Atlantic damsels and Ornate wrass and even the odd Pufferfish .

Since I’ve been here I hear a lot of people talk about putting their hand near a cleaner shrimp and letting it clean you, I’d never done this before until we went to Pequene Valle for Ann’s final dive. I was  happy as it really is an experience to let a shrimp clean your hand. Obviously there was lots of fish and crabs on the dive, brightly coloured arrow crabs, plentiful sexy shrimp sitting around one sea anemone, even a slick moving wide-eyed flounder.

The other interns who apparently have been slacking finally got around to doing their rescue course this week. I was given the opportunity to join them and help out, I remember how fun the practical aspects were when I did mine back in England so figured it must be more fun when you’re not shivering or can see more than three meters in front of you.  I especially enjoyed doing the panicked diver skills and trying to pull someone’s mask off.

I am prematurely going home so unfortunately this is my last blog. All of which is kind of depressing as it means I’m heading back to five degree’s being the peak of the day and frost on the windscreen in the morning. It also means I’m leaving behind sun bathing, swimming outdoors and wearing shorts.

I should probably do a brief summary of what I’ve learnt, and it really will be brief, as lets face it I pretty much turned up perfect. However, the main thing I guess is that if something is worth doing it’s worth doing well, and it really applies to everything.

The internship really is what you make it, and if you want to get the most out of it you have to make sure you put everything you can into it.

Hopefully it won’t be long till I’m back here, sort of relaxing again.

For now its Adios.

Sam (Popeye)