The week of the sore ass, the proud daddy and more diving!

Let´s start this week’s blog with a little quiz:
- Is your body starting to look like a female bodybuilder a little more every day??
- Do you find yourself suffering from muscle pains 24/7??
- Do you find yourself almost falling asleep during your 15 min. Float stamina test??
- Do you find it difficult to keep your eyes open after 4pm.??
- Do you find yourself ordering half a pint instead of a ‘big pint’??
- Do you find yourself ordering water instead of half a pint??
- Do you find yourself skipping the after work drinks for some nap-time??
- Do you find yourself on a boat at 9 in the morning, praying to god the day would end soon and you would not puke over or near any customers??

If the answer is yes to all of the above: CONGRATULATIONS, you just survived your second week of the DM-internship!!

Actually, my second week into the internship started pretty awesome: I had my well deserved day-off! After that, again, my life has known its ups and downs.

First day back to work, I decided to see if the stairs leading towards the pool were really that slippery when wet. And yes, I can confirm that now. After slipping down the stairs, the day only got worse. 

For the dives that day, I was scheduled on my first boat duty. With a lot of confidence and excitement, I loaded the gear on the boat, untied the mooring and rushed into my wetsuit….. so far all good. 

Once out of the harbor I started to realize that the waves were just a tiny-little bit bigger than the week before, which actually made the boat-ride out awesome, bumping around on the side of the RIB. 

Once we arrived at Yellow Mountain and all the divers were in the water, my staring contest started, looking at the horizon for 30 minutes, taking deep breaths, fighting the sea-sickness, asking myself out loud why I ever started this internship, swearing silently inside, and praying to god for the day to end, or the boat to sink (when you’re sick on the sea, there are only so little solutions)! 

Tuesday was course-day for myself, doing my fish-ID speciality dives at Alien Rock (Yellow Mountain). On the second dive I was able to take the camera, which is certainly a challenge in the beginning. The fish started to frustrate me by not sitting still, so the sea-urchins (who we normally kill) became my next models/victims, at least they were good for something. In the end I got the hang of it and really started to enjoy the dives and taking pics!

Talking about sea-urchins, I’m proudly to announce I killed my first two sea-urchins in the last week. I was a bit reluctant, but after you killed one, it’s easy as to become a serial killer (gives me actually a good insight in the minds of the boys at the juvenile prison I work at home….strangely we’ve got more in common than I thought!).

For the record, the black-long spined sea urchins are not native to the Tenerife waters and suck the life out of all the rocks and corals. They don’t have any natural enemies and are a threat to the underwater area, so killing them is a necessity for the preservation of these waters and the sea-life!

This week I also finished the first dive of my navigation specialty, which was pretty easy and fun to do, and also the first dive of my SMB-speciality. Thanks to our self claimed very-very-ill (not mentally) instructor Gareth (he can make a sore throat sound like he’s dying), that dive has to be repeated (but I’m not complaining! More diving and more practice sound good to me). 

Assisting Gareth on a couple of other dives and courses has been a very interesting learning experience (not only because we spotted tons of octopus this week). Every customer is different, which makes it a real challenge to provide the assistance they need to an awesome dive experience! It’s not just about the dive-skills, but a lot has to do with ‘reading’ your customers behaviour and actions.

The highlights of the week were the stamina tests that were all done on Tuesday and Wednesday. I’m very proud of myself and the All-Stars for getting awesome results and even getting compliments from the big boss himself, who was ‘very proud of his children’. We all had wobbly legs and trouble walking the stairs the next day, but we all scored fours on the tired-diver tow and the 800 m. snorkel, threes on the 400m. and fives on the float! We rock!!

Second highlight of the week was spotting the Dolphins on a boat ride out of the harbor towards dive sites Poco Naufragio and Pequeno Valle. It makes your day when it’s 8.30 am., your ass is still hurting from the fall down the stairs, your legs can’t carry you because of the tiring stamina tests and you can just sit on the boat, watch the sunrise and spot some Dolphins 3 m. away from you!

Summarizing: It’s been a busy week, with looooong working hours, but I was able to gain a lot of assisting-experience, finished my stamina tests, been to a lot of new (shore) dive sites and only gained 3 beer fines!!

Looking forward to next week!

Suzanne