It's been a little over three and a half weeks since the first day of my divemaster training. It's been a lot of hard work, but it's been a great learning experience.
I'm currently living in a little town called Casitas, about 5 minutes walk from Mahajual. There are 6 fellow divemaster trainees all from Punta Gruesa as well. The dive shop we work at, Dreamtime Dive Resort, is full of great staff that are full of great knowledge and a lot of staff who are actually ex-GVI's.
Most of the customers that come to Dreamtime are all cruiseship goers. We are given about four hours to bring the divers to the shop, get them out on their 2 dives (if they are certifed divers), and then take them back to the cruiseship. When they are at the dive shop, things are crazy for about 15 minutes until they go out to the boat. Other than certified divers, the other cruiseship customers choose to do a DIscover Scuba Diving experience. This isn't a certification for the divers, it's basically just a chance for people who've never dove before to try it out! It's definitely interesting watching first time divers... dive for the first time. We only go to about 15 ft or so, so they aren't that far down. When we assist the instructors, we help the divers with their buoyancy, since they are either really positively buoyant (on the surface) or negatively buoyant (touching the seafloor). Soon we'll start actually showing the divers some of the skills that they have to perform. I havent been on a DSD where the divers have really freaked out, but my friends have been on some where people are just hysteric.
Other than certifed divers and DSDs, I've also gone on an Open Water course with our main instructor David. It was a lot of fun watching someone who was in my position three months ago. It was a girl from the states, who was visiting Mahajual with her boyfriend, who was already certifed. One crazy thing that happened was the girls weights dropped about 40 feet down. David was in the front, then the two divers, and then me. I saw this long skinny thing suddenly go down into the reef and I thought it was an eel going back into its hole. I looked up at the girl and she was frantic, ascending to the surface really fast. I quickly swam to her, grabbed her and deflated my BCD all the way so we would sink. David quickly came and we sorted out her weight belt and everything was okay again, but boy, was the a scary experience.
This is just a little glimmer of the life I'm living. I can't believe there is currently a snowstorm back at home and I'm sitting out in front of my house with my friends in shorts and a tanktop. I also can't believe that I've been here for almost four months! Wow has time really gone fast. We should be certifed Divemasters in about 4 weeks. I might have another update before then, or maybe I'll update after I'm certifed. Either way, heres what I'm up to!
