A Diver´s Paradise: Utila, Bay Islands

17/10/09-25/10/09

After the long hours spent travelling the day before, it was such a relief to finally arrive in Utila, part of an island group known as the Bay Islands, situated off the north coast of Honduras. Utila is famed for being one of the best (and cheapest) places in the world to learn to dive and this was our main reason for going there. Since the start of our trip, I had been hoping that I would have the chance to get my diver's license, and although Vic had always maintained that he would not be joining me, by the time we arrived in Utila, he too had come around to the idea, and so we wasted no time in finding out what options were open to us as complete beginners!! As soon as you get off the ferry, you are bombarded by people from the various dive schools, all desperate for customers, especially because it is currently low season :) We politely accepted leaflets and listened to what they had to say, but we already knew where we were heading too...Parrots Dive School. When we arrived, Vic and I were introduced to Annie, a lovely girl from England, who would be our instructor should we decide to go ahead with the course. Although there are several diving organisations throughout the world, the courses on offer at Parrots were PADI courses, with PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) being the biggest and one of the best-known organisations in the world. As novices, we would start with the PADI Open Water Diver course, which in theory would take four days to complete (it ended up taking us six days due to adverse weather conditions at the start of the course). Completing this course allows you to dive anywhere in the world to a maximum depth of 18m. We decided to take the plunge and agreed to start the following Monday, giving us a couple of days to relax, explore the island, and of course, get started on the theory. In advance of starting the course we were each given a text book with more than 200 pages of theory, mini-quizzes and chapter reviews. I thought I would never get through it all in just a few days and was already worrying about the tests we would have to complete in order to pass the course :)

Our accommodation was very basic and the bathrooms could certainly have done with a proper clean, but it was so cheap (just $4 each a day) and so close to everything that it was no real hardship, and it's surprising what you can get used to after a couple of nights! I had an unfortunate encounter with a tarantula-sized spider in the bathroom one night, but it had disappeared by the morning and thankfully did not reappear. We tried to get a head-start on the diving theory, but it was difficult to get into study mode, and the bits that we did read started to put us off doing the course altogether. The first chapter talks about pressure changes, discomfort in your air spaces (primarily your ears) and the need to equalise (expand the air space) at every metre while descending. As you descend below sea level, the ambient air pressure increases and the volume of the air inside your air spaces (ears, sinuses and mask) decreases, causing discomfort. The most common way of equalising your ears and sinuses is to pinch your nose and breathe out gently, until you feel a slight pop (similar to the sensation experienced when flying). To equalise the air space within your mask you simply have to breathe out via your nose, which is why masks are designed to cover your nose as well as your eyes. Ascending is a different matter, as the volume inside your air spaces is now increasing rather than decreasing. This does not usually create too much of a problem as the extra air tends to escape of its own accord. The only serious problem you could experience would only arise if you held your breath. The air inside your lungs would increase in volume, forcing your lungs to expand, much like a balloon, which could lead to over-inflation or even lung rupture. This is the most serious injury a diver can suffer from, but one that can be easily avoided by never holding your breath....hence the golden rule of scuba diving is: Keep breathing :) Also important during your ascent is to maintain a steady pace...you should never ascend at a speed faster than 18m per minute. Ascending quicker than this, especially from a great depth, can lead to nitrogen narcosis. While you are underwater, nitrogen forms in your blood, with more nitrogen being produced the deeper you go and the longer you remain under water. With our theory books we were given a table, which allows you to calculate how much nitrogen you will have in your blood after diving for a certain amount of time at a certain depth. It is very important, especially when doing multiple dives, to work out how much time you can spend at one depth and how much time you need to wait in between dives, to ensure that you remain within the decompression limits. If at any time, you exceed the limits, you are required to make saftey stops of between 5 to 8 minutes at a depth of 5m before surfacing....In the worst case scenario, if you do suffer from nitrogen narcosis once you are out of the water you have to go to a decompression chamber, which subjects you to the same conditions as a dive, but over a period of several hours!!! As you can probably imagine, we were starting to panic a bit, as the book makes it all sound so dramatic, but once you get into the water, all those worries disappear and everything comes quite naturally.

There were just three of us doing the course: Vic, myself and another guy from Israel called Omri, who was nice, although a bit of a problem for Annie at times, in that he wasn't always prepared for class, he would often take his time when Annie called us in to the classroom and he often arrived late for dives (one morning he arrived more than 50 minutes after the scheduled meeting time). Due to very bad weather around the time our course was starting, we ended up spending the first couple of days doing nothing but theory. The text book was split into five chapters and it was up to us to work through the book in our own time and prepare the chapter reviews for each class. In class we would watch the video corresponding to each chapter, Annie would summarise the main points and together we would go through the chapter reviews. Finally we would complete a multiple-choice test before moving on to the next chapter. By the end of the second day we had already completed three chapters, leaving us with two more to go and, of course, the final exam. Over the next couple of days, in between doing our enclosed-water dives, we completed the two remaining chapters and sat our final exam. As Annie had promised, we all passed the first time and the theoretical part was over :)

The practical side of the course involved two enclosed-water dives and four open-water dives. During the enclosed-water dives we were kneeling on the sea bed at a maximum depth of between 5m-8m, with Annie and two assistants, meaning that we had one experienced diver for each beginner, which helped to put us all at ease. The purpose of these first 'dives' are to learn and practise the skills necessary to be able to progress to open water. There were 21 skills in total and included things such as (1) taking your regulator out of your mouth and replacing it (if the regulator is submerged in water, water gets inside so when you put it back into your mouth you have to expel the water before you can breathe normally again), (2) filling your mask up with water and displacing the water by breathing out through your nose, (3) removing your mask completely and replacing it while underwater, (4) swimming without your mask, (5) telling your buddy that you're low on air or out of air, using the appropriate hand signals, and using their alternate air source to go to the surface. Every diver carries two air sources: the primary and the alternate, which a diver's buddy might require should they run out of air during a dive. Like the name suggests, a 'buddy' is the partner you dive with. You ALWAYS dive with a buddy and it is each diver's responsibility to keep his or her buddy in sight at all times. There are certain hand signals you have to learn in order to be able to communicate with your buddy underwater. There are signs for: 'I'm out of air', 'I'm low on air', 'I need to share your air', 'I'm cold', 'Shall we go up?', 'Something's wrong!', and 'How much air do you have?' This one is particularly important, as it is essential to regularly check how much air you have left, to avoid running out before reaching the surface. As well as it being bad for you if you run out of air, it is also detrimental to the tank if you drain it completely. The air in the tank is measured in either bar or PSI (pounds per sqaure inch), which we were using. A full tank is between 2700 and 3500 PSI and I think it is normal to start your ascent when you reach 1000 PSI so that you have at least 700 PSI remaining once you hit the surface. There are different hand signals to show how many thousands and how many hundreds of PSI you have remaining.There are many other signals too, and before every dive, it is important to go over these signals with your buddy.

Next it was on to the open-water dives, during which we would reach depths between 12m and 18m. Buoyancy is essential when scuba diving and being too light or too heavy will affect your ability to stay at the same depth in the water. More often than not you need to wear a weight belt and there is a test you can do at the surface to make sure you are weighted correctly. Once underwater, your buoyancy is controlled by your breathing more than anything. As you breathe in you rise slightly and you descend again as you breathe out. You can also use your BCD (buoyancy control device), a jacket similiar to a life vest, to help control your buoyancy. This is connected to your air tank, and you can add small bursts of air to it during your dive. You do not want to add too much though, as this will cause you to ascend too quickly, which is dangerous. When you are ascending, it is essential to let the expanding air out of your BCD constantly! During these open-water dives, we continued to practise the skills we had learnt in the enclosed-water dives, to ensure that we could do them at depth while suspended in mid-water. The rest of the time was spent swimming behind Annie, trying to stay next to our buddies and of course, admiring our surroundings. At first, I think I was too preoccupied with the actual swimming to take much notice of anything around me, and it also felt awkward to move my head from side to side, but once I had relaxed a bit, I soon got the hang of it and really started to enjoy it! We saw lots of beautiful fish, at times we were in the middle of huge schools and there seemed to be fish everywhere....it was truly amazing. After each dive we made a record in our log books, and Annie would point out the fish we had seen in a big and tell us the names. Some of my favourites include: Queen Angelfish, Fairy Basslets and Rainbow Parrot fish. There are several others that I love but I can't remember all of the names :)

Also included in the package, were two free fun-dives for when we had completed the course itself, and we had the honour of having Dave as our dive master. A dive master is someone who can take other qualified divers out on dives, but is not yet qualified to instruct. At Parrots, there were several dive master trainees, with Jared, Alan and Ingrid being the ones who often accompanied us on our course dives. On our fun dives, I buddied up with Ingrid, who was brilliant at spotting things and we saw so many fish. When we filled in our log books after the dive, I didn't even have enough space to write down everything we had seen! The first fun dive was best of all and proved to me that I do love scuba diving, and I really hope I will have the chance to do a lot more dives in the future. I would have loved to have gone on to do the Advanced Open Water Diver course, as the dives sound really cool (you can choose from wreck diving, underwater photography, night diving, navigational diving and several others). Unfortunately, we didn't have more time or money to spare, but hopefully one day. For anyone that has ever considered learning to dive, I assure you, you will absolutely love it! I did and I can't wait for the next time!! Just one more diving fact before I finish...does anyone know what scuba stands for???.......self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. Who would have guessed? :)