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| My wetsuit was a bit short... |
I finally took the plunge (hah) and got my Scuba certification! We went down to Eilat for a week for me to complete the course. In Israel, diving regulations are pretty strict - they require you to complete 6 open water dives as opposed to the 4 required almost everywhere else. This means that I got to do 6 real dives, with 2 of them purely fun dives (the other 4 had some tests in them). I found the most amazing scuba club - run by a woman out of her home that she has converted to a dive school. If you are ever in Eilat and want to go diving, look up Shulamit's Eilat Diving Adventures. She was so friendly and made the whole experience amazing. There were only 3 of us at first, and after 3 days (out of 5) one of the people left (they were doing a short intro course). So the course felt like a private one. This also let us spend a lot more time diving because during the dives you have to practice the skills that you learn. This can take quite a while if you are part of a large group, and for our tank sizes and depth we only have about 45 minutes to dive before the air runs out.
The Red Sea is the perfect place to learn to dive. The water is super calm and not too cold (since it is winter here it was about 22C but the air temp was about 30C so it was nice). In the summer the water gets much warmer. The visibility was ok (spring means algae) but usually it is ridiculously good. Also, the area is a coral reserve and protected so there are tons of fish and coral, and the fish are used to divers so you can swim right with them. These pictures were taken by Shulamit (our dive master) on our last day:
A Moray Eel!
Lion Fish - these guys were all over the place. They poison/sting you if you touch their fins.
Zach swimming with a little fish friend
Finished our last dive - we are certified! (I'm on the right)
OCTOPUS! This guy was big enough that he didn't feel the need to camouflage into the coral.
So fun, and those pictures are awesome! The water looks nice and blue too.
ReplyDeletewow, awesome pics! altho I have trouble breathing just looking at you swimming underwater!
ReplyDeleteThat looks so fun!! I want to do that!!
ReplyDeleteThis looks amazing!!! What am I doing with my life? Sister Anne, want to move somewhere warm and set up a diving/surfing school with me?
ReplyDeleteThis is awesome. Question... Were you able to hear each other under water? Do they have some kind of swimming safe ear phones? OR do you just look when the guy points at stuff?
ReplyDeleteYou can't hear anything so you just have to watch for the divemaster to point (and for hand signals that mean different kinds of animals and things) and she had an awesome board that you could write on underwater for things that we didn't have a sign for (kind of like a whiteboard). It was hard for me to not be able to talk and laugh, haha. I kept trying to signal cool things to Zach and smile, but he said I always just looked expressionless, haha. I guess the mask and regulator take away any ability to make facial expressions :)
DeleteStill very cool! The whiteboard thing sounds interesting. I really need to do this one day!
DeleteI'm really impressed - I don't know if I could do that! Great photos. :)
ReplyDelete