Taganga

It was nice to be back in Divanga Hostel, air conditioned room and a choice for dinner. I signed up to start my scuba diving the next day, Wednesday. A 7.30 start, but still no idea what the plan was. I missed breakfast as the kitchen doesn't open till 7.30. Got collected on a motorbike to go scuba diving. I got there and was told I was going to have to watch 3ish hours of DVDs before I start, so I grabbed some croissants, bananas and a big cartoon of juice. If there wasn't wifi I think I'd have gone insane. I was to come back in the afternoon to do my first dive in a swimming pool, to get used to the equipment and make sure I knew what I was doing. Just being in the pool was really cool, breathing underwater was strange but awesome. Back at the dive shop thinking I was done I was surprised with 2 more hours of DVDs. I got back to the hostel and everyone was headed to a restaurant called Babaganoosh, 3 courses for 30,000 pesos. The food was savage and it was happy hour so we had a few passion fruit cocktails, before heading to Mirador the big club in Taganga with a swimming pool and an amazing view of the sea and whole town. 

Thursday morning after a heavyish night out I got to finally go underwater and see some fishes. Myself and Sean, a guy also doing the course, had to redo the tasks from the pool. That was being able to communicate underwater, give someone air in an emergency, swim without air, or a mask and a few other things. We then were headed to a beach for a snack before our second dive. To our surprise we had to be able to swim 200meters to pass the course. So off the boat we jumped and swam to shore. Clever Mark had already decided the wetsuit wasn't for him, so had to swim without the advantage of a buoyant wetsuit. After our snack we were greeted with another task, this time we had to be able to float in the water for 10 minutes, that wetsuit would have been handy. We headed for our second dive and I was no longer talking to my wetsuit so I went without. We practised navigating around underwater and got to see all the cool coral and tons of fish. Thursday was another trip to Babaganoosh for dinner. Friday we did two more dives and then had to take an exam, exam was fine passed 84%.

 I hadn't had my fill of diving so I signed up for the advanced water dive PADI, it had 5 more dives including a night dive. I asked for Sunday morning off as I knew Saturday was going to be a big night, it was we were back in Mirador and had a great night. I did the night Dive Sunday and it was amazing totally different, you could only see where your torch was shining everything else was pitch black so you could see the plankton glowing when you splashed the water. The advanced was a lot more fun I got to lead a dive, do more advanced navigation and just generally enjoyed it even more. I'd completed 9 dives and was told I could do rescue diving course and then dive master. That it would take just over a month. I really wanted to do it but decided I'd take a break go explore Minca and maybe do it when I get back.