Scuba time
I’m sitting at departures in Indira Gandhi airport as a write this, reminiscing about last weekend which seems so agonizingly far away right now. Getting my scuba license has been on the agenda for a long time and finally last weekend the plunge was taken. As usual it was G and I who first confirmed, with up to 6 others tentatively expressing interest. We had decided upon either Hikkaduwa or Unawatuna as the best bets. Unawatuna was naturally preferable since it’s infinitely more palatable to stay there. Unfortunately the chaps at the Unawatuna dive centre asked for something like 45 grand (down for 50) for the course so we settled on the Hikkaduwa International Dive centre who initially said 35 but a friend of ours knows Somay so he brought it down to 32, if we could muster up 5 fellows - manageable. We recruited 3 others in due course - A and two of G’s workmates. The course would take something like 4-5 days so we needed to set aside 2 weekends - and the independence long weekend would be the perfect start. We had to be at the dive station for 9.30am, which meant leaving colombo by latest 7 after a late night of BBQ and cocktails at a friend’s.
We got there by 9, nervous energy building as we watched the divers preparing for a morning dive. There was so much equipment around and everything looked really complicated, I had no idea if i’d manage to figure everything out. Bad news as one of G’s workmates gave a rope last minute. Luckily M, who along with 3 other friends of ours had tagged along for the ride, decided on a whim to take the course as well. Brilliant. After what seemed like an eternity the boat took the divers away for their morning dive and we were introduced to our instructor. Somay runs the place but the classes are handled by an Austrian couple - Raina and Manuela. Raina was handling our bunch so we were first led to the pool to see basic swimming skills. The course consists of 2 confined water dives and 5 open water dives along with 5 theory sessions and one final exam. We started with the first theory lesson and it was pretty easy - basic physics and common sense gets you through the concepts of depth and its effects on water/air pressure, bouyancy - followed by a video on equipment management. The video and theory discussion was followed by a 10 question quiz - it felt like school all over again.
After lunch we had our first confined water session. This is usually done in a pool but we were to have ours in the shallow sea within the reef. The first challenge was kitting up. We were shown how to connect up the BCD to the oxygen tank and the latter to the regulator. It was a bit of a daze bc there seemed like so much stuff to remember. Eventually the gear was in order and tested. Next was getting into the wetsuit, fitting on weights, masks, fins and figuring out how to walk in them. But by far the toughest part was walking the 50m of hot sand from the dive centre to the sea weighed down by a ton of equipment in a boiling suit. Once we got into the water it felt much better - though wading in fins wasn’t much fun. Finally the moment came (on hindsight its hardly a moment) where we deflated the BCDs and sank to the bottom. Even though it was just about 5 feet deep it felt completely different to be breathing underwater and seeing clearly everything around you. At first you have to concentrate hard to breathe properly but soon the cool feeling of oxygen in your mouth is reassuring and I relaxed and began to enjoy myself. We did a few exercises underwater - testing breathing, basic buoyancy skills and a couple of underwater simulations. It was great fun and after a few minutes I felt completely at home underwater - breathing through my mouth, learning not to hold my breath, ever. One of the nicest parts is the sign language. Obviously voice communication is impossible underwater so all communication is through sign language - there’s a sign for everything, including “there’s a fucking shark behind me.” I was in Delhi yesterday for a meeting and several times I caught myself using diving signs, specially the ok sign, instead of normal communication.
Raina is a fantastic instructor - everything he does underwater is so methodical and measured, it has an automatically calming influence. I didn’t even feel the hour we spent underwater. Even though we didn’t do any diving as such, besides a bit of underwater swimming to check buoyancy, the whole experience was surreal for me - a few fish swam by creating thrills that would pale into insignificance compared to what lay ahead on day 2. I came out of the water feeling exhilarated and thrilled to have embarked on this course. After cleaning equipment and clearing stuff away we called it a day at about 5. It was time to head to Unawatuna (we decided to stay there and avoid the Colombo invasion for the long weekend to Hikkaduwa). The Zimmer was full again so we stayed this time at Shangri-la, a quite fabulous old house all to ourselves for 6k a night. A pretty good deal since we had about 9 chaps in total. I like the places slightly inland in Unawatuna like the Czech House and Shangri-la since they feel like up-country or wildlife bungalows rather than beachside rooms - and yet they are just a couple of steps from the beach via appropriate short cuts. I really liked the look of Shangri-la - old, potentially creepy with lots of old photos and weird stuffed toys and of course a very sketchy attic. Unfortunately that night we were all pretty exhausted so we crashed pretty early after dinner at Rockview and a couple of Js - we’d need plenty of energy for day 2.
