Scuba Diving

We're certified to scuba dive!

We were a little concerned about Cam being able to get his certification due to asthma because in order to do your certification you need to get a medical in Australia. On Friday, the day before we started our in water class, we went to a dr. across the street from our hostel. They didn't have any appointments that day but were able to fit us in at 12:15pm. When we started looking over the stuff they were going to fill out Cam started getting really nervous because he had never been able to pass the breathing tests before. We figured worrying about it wasn't going to help so we went to the hostel drank some tea and he had his first cup of coffee ever (supposedly caffeine helps open the airways to the lungs). Then he went in the bathroom and turned on the hot water to steam up the bathroom. We weren't going to pay $80 for him to fail the test, plus the money we'd lose if he wasn't able to take the course we'd already paid for... no pressure... He passed which was such a relief!

After the appointment we decided to check out Sydney since there wasn't going to be much time for that. We walked through the botanical gardens to the Opera House which is so beautiful, ate our lunch on the steps, then we took a ferry to Darling harbor and walked back to the hostel. Since the ferry was a form of public transportation it was only $5 each instead of a tour which would have been around $20-$30 each.

Our scuba diving class started on Saturday morning at 8am. We woke up at 6:15 to get our stuff together and make it to the 7:00am train. We did our classes with Abyss Diving Center and they picked us up at the station. It took about an hour to get our paperwork together and take our review test (both of us got 100% by the way), then we were off to the pool to learn how to use all the equipment. We were in the pool from 10:30am-2:30pm learning how to do everything from different entries into the water whether your entering from the shore or a boat, to scenarios such as running out of air or how to get water out of your mask when your under water. Then we had lunch and drove to the ocean for 1 ocean dive. It was pretty rough but we got to feel what it was like to be in the ocean.

The next day we were at the ocean the whole day for 3 dives. The first dive was showing our instructor most of the skills we learned in the pool and a little exploring, whereas the 2nd and 3rd dives were very little skills and mostly exploring. On our 2nd dive we saw a Blue Groper (not a grouper) which was about 3 feet long and reminded me of a puppy dog. They follow you everywhere and are so interested in what you're doing. When our instructor would point things out like starfish or moray eels, the blue groper would put it's nose right where her finger was to see what she was pointing at. On our 3rd dive we saw a shark (a small non-aggressive type), a bull ray (it was HUGE), a moray eel, some nudibranch, a huge starfish, and a bunch of smaller fish. It was AWESOME! After that we were certified. Now we're planning on going up north to find a 3 day diving trip on the Great Barrier Reef.

We leave tomorrow for Townsville. Our flight leaves at 7:10am on Jetstar. We will drive up to Carins and rent a camper van to drive around for 5 or 6 days.

Off to the beach today!