Yesterday, Mike and I were sitting in the back of a pickup truck, jostling over the ridged, potholed, and unpaved dirt roads of Koh Phangan. The sun was hot, and we were both sunburned. The truck passed a motorbike and I realized that its driver was about 12 years old. The other two on the bike were also twelve. I was exhausted, eating a domestically produced snack bar made of peanuts, sesame seeds, coconut, and sugarcane, and drinking a Singha. "You almost killed me today, again," Mike said. He was only half kidding.
Nevermind that riding in the back of a pickup truck over the roads in Koh Phangan is, in and of itself, extremely life threatening. Nevermind that many of the funny adventures and relatively dangerous activities we have embarked upon were, in fact, his ideas (Ladders? Scooters?). Nope. Mike was referring to our most recent extreme adventure: Scuba diving.
Scuba diving! We've been lucky enough to snowboard and ski in out of bounds areas with avalanche control radio beacons in Argentina, climb huge ladders in the Peruvian jungle, ride scooters all over the Sacred Valley, ride in extremely questionable water taxis in the middle of the night between beaches on the Thai islands, hire ridiculous tuktuks for over-capacity late-night city rides in Bangkok, and embark upon various other minor and unblogworthy adventures, but now we're going to get really extreme.
It all started at about 6PM the day before when we found a Brit who was manning a desk at the dive company at our beach. He informed us, much to our surprise, that if we wanted to we could go scuba diving the very next day (less than 12 hours from then), even if we had never gone diving before. It seemed like a pretty good idea, so we jumped on it.
Waking up to get back to the desk by 7:30 in the morning was a bit difficult due to the schedule I have been keeping for the last couple of months, and because we had spent a great deal of the previous night literally hanging out at our favorite bar at the end of the beach with some new friends in a tree swing the size of a queen-sized bed, but we made it. When we arrived, our guide was loading up a pickup truck, our transport for the day to and from the dock. He told us there were some forms we needed to sign. Ha. Forms again. The forms were standardized, because the dive company was affiliated with PADI, which is the worldwide organization of professional instruction. One box we had to check, the "I have not had any alcohol in the last 8 hours" box, was merely a formality, our guide quickly explained before we jumped in the back of the pickup. Hold on tight!
Up and over hills on the same bumpy, unpaved roads. The ride to the pier where our boat waited for us took about 40 minutes. During the ride I wished that I could have been truthfull when I checked the "no alcohol consumption" box. We eventually made it, and the ride gave us a good miniature tour of parts of the island we had not yet seen. When we got to the pier, the Thai men who run the boat and the scuba instructors were loading it and preparing to shove off. Mike and I were a little anxious, considering that the instructors had yet to instruct. "We'll explain it all on the boat," Lee assured us. Good enough for us!
The boat ride was also marvelous. Clear skies, moderate temperature, and the complete escape from the bugs was a refreshing combination. After a light breakfast of tea, a boiled egg, and bread smeared with jam, I was still battling to keep my attention focused while an instructor described the science of under water air pressure and the three essential scuba hand signals to the five of us who would be doing the "discovery" scuba adventure. Meanwhile the boat is rushing over slightly choppy waters towards the place where we would have to put our knew knowledge to the ultimate test. This was surreal to say the least.
An hour or so later, we were there. The gravity of the situation finally sunk in as I watched people strapping on their equipment. Wait a second. I'm about to strap equipment on, including a belt that is covered with wieghts, that will make me sink under water intentionally? And I'm supposed to trust this strange tank and hose contraption that gives me the ability to breath while I'm down there? No way. Here's to hoping I can remember all the stuff they told me while the boat was speeding toward the dive destination. The spot where we were to scuba was beautiful, though: a large rock surrounded by reef in a remote part of the Gulf of Thailand.
It seems crazy in retrospect, but the sequence of signing up for the dive, showing up the next morning, riding to the pier, and sailing to this rock all happened without any consideration that perhaps the entire idea was a bad one. Now it is time to jump off the boat with all this relatively unfamiliar, life-essential equipment on and flipper over to where Lee waits to show us some preliminary skills, and still I did not think of backing out. I went under water for the first time with this same natural feeling that had accompanied the rest of the progression. I was under water for 22 minutes during that first dive. That is a long time, if you think about it, but it really flew by.
Now let me write a little about why Mike thinks I endangered his life. That first dive went well, but Mike had a little more of a problem accepting the new method of breathing. This is a normal reaction that most people have when they first try to scuba, but the upshot was that our guide decided that he would hold on to Mike as we swam around underwater after we had learned the preliminary skills. "Stay close to us and we will have a nice look around," he said. His instructions turned out to be a little difficult for me to execute. I went down with them, and I followed them, but for some reason I kept sinking down further. I thought they were right behind me, but when I looked they were nowhere to be seen.
Now it is time to freak out. No, don't freak out. That will just make it worse. Try not to think about the fact that you have no idea what you are doing, that you have a superficial understanding of the science of diving and the equipment that maintains your hope of life, that you cannot see your guide, that you are sinking and sinking and it is not clear how to stop. Stop. Breath. Look for them. Look up. There they are. Wow. The whole episode probably lasted about 2 minutes, but it seemed like an eternity.
Turns out that 12 meters is the depth limit that "discovery" scuba divers should go. We had doubled that, plus one meter. I also really enjoyed scaba-ing, other than the first slight deviation from the planned dive. We had a second dive that lasted just over 40 minutes, and I was amazed at how much I could see down there. I love to snorkel, because it gives you a view of a world you never get to see. This is just like that, except with depth you get closer and get to life that is inaccessible when snorkeling; you also get to look and move in any direction. Afterwards, I was completely spent:
Quite an experience. I'll be back underwater at some point.
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1 comment:
Look at all the hair in that photo!
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