Summer Vacation Part V: Certification

Once we left the dive center we still had to find a place to set up camp for the night.  We went to a campground a little further out of town from the football field and explained our situation. They agreed to let us set up for $50.  They had really nice showers facilities and the toilets were clean, they also had a pool, game room, camp kitchen and a ton of other amenities that the football field couldn't offer.  We chose a spot under a couple of small frangipani (plumeria) trees.  It was picturesque almost.  It surely was nicer than the football field.

After setting up we spent the rest of the afternoon walking up and down the beach. Byron Bay has gorgeous beaches.

Neither of us slept very well that night.  The campground was much more crowded and noisy and since there was only a little rain people seemed to party a little more than they had all week.  We got up pretty early even though we didn't have to be at the dive center until ten.  When we did get up we discovered that the ants were back with a vengeance.  This time they had started to chew holes in my tent.  I've never had food in it, and I haven't got a clue what they were after but my rain fly has a bunch of tiny little ant holes now that weren't there before.  I was annoyed.

We packed up the camp and loaded the car and headed to the dive center.  We grabbed a coffee and got to the center a little early.  We took the opportunity to talk to Mick about other places around Australia and the world to go diving.  He loaded us up with ideas.

Again we got our gear and loaded it on the boat.  This time we were to be joined by the UK girl who had done our second pool session with us.  She needed to do dives three and four to get her certification.  Also, surprisingly the husband came back from the sea sickness episode, this time he took some meds.  We were happy to have him back.

This time we were all more comfortable with the ride out to the rocks, except the UK girl.  She was complaining about feeling sick right away despite having taken sea sickness pills.  The wind had shifted around from the north and this made the rain move out but the seas get higher. Thursday the swell was about two meters.  Choppy for sure.

This time I felt way more comfortable and didn't have a lick of the nerves I had the day before.  Gearing up was a breeze.  It probably took half the time to get ready as it had Wednesday.  When we entered the water we all grouped together on the mooring line again and started our descent.  This time UK girl wigged out.  She couldn't even make the dive and had to be taken back to the beach.  That's four for the scorekeepers.

We had a great dive for number three.  We made just about 16 meters deep and demonstrated our skills.  This time we had to take our mask off completely and put it back on.  That should be avoided if possible.  About scuba masks, you have to spit in the lenses and rinse them out before you dive or your mask will fog up.  I must have waited too long between rinsing and putting my mask on because on the third dive my mask kept getting fogged.  Having your mask fogged is not fun.  The visibility was only about 3-5 meters and with a fogged mask I started to get a little claustrophobic.  I had to keep letting water in my mast to clear it and sea water in your nose is not a pleasant sensation.

This dive lasted 35 minutes.  By the time we came up Leah was pretty cold and the mother was shivering uncontrollably.  Leah and I were the last two to get back in the boat and by the time we did, mother was out of her wet suit and bundled in the skipper's coat shivering away.  That's a fiver good buddy.  She got on the other boat and headed to shore.

So for our fourth and final dive there were only four of us plus Mick and Jen (our Dive master).  We finally felt at ease on a dive.  We saw a huge bull ray and a black and white spotted eagle ray.  We saw more wobbegong sharks and a ton of fish.  We were swimming between two huge corals and the husband got his air hose caught on an outcropping, even this didn't faze us.  Leah and I were right behind and I made my way over to help, by the time I got there he had managed to free himself.  And then we had some excitement.

Leah started to swim above where the husband was caught to avoid getting in the way.  And we learned a valuable lesson about buoyancy. When you go down the pressure gets greater it takes more air in your vest to make you float, as you rise the pressure decreases and it takes less air to make you buoyant.  In order to keep from bobbing to the surface like a cork you have to continually let air out as you go up.  Just the little movement she made to avoid the stuck diver was enough to cause a chain reaction that sent her rocketing towards the surface. I noticed her moving up and reached out to grab her.  I let all the air out of my vest but it wasn't enough,  The Jen grabbed my leg and Mick grabbed hers.  We made a chain of people to try and keep Leah down but it wasn't enough, she slipped out of my hand shot to the surface.  It was dramatic, like in the movies.  I yelled NOOOOOOOOO under water.  It was kinda scary.

Leah's head pops out in top of the water and looks around and there is another dive boat who signal her the "are you ok?" She signaled back and looked below the surface to see Mick signaling her to let the air out of her BC.  She did and a few seconds later she was back at 15 meters with the rest of us.  She initially was scared that she was going to fail the certification, but really it wasn't a big deal and Mick was sort of glad it happened so we could go over the scenario anyway.

After about 30 minutes we surfaced and Mick told us we were now officially certified open water divers.  Pretty awesome.  Back at the dive center we put our gear away and Mick printed us up some temporary cards to use while we wait for our permanent cards to come in the mail.

Three of us got our certs that day. Leah and I and the Son.  The husband still needs to do a dive and so does the mother.  I doubt very much that UK girl and UK guy (no relation) will get it done.  Both seemed pretty freaked out by the experience.   The mother might make it and I'm sure the Husband will.  After he took his sea sickness pills he was a rock on the second day.  He confessed to us that he had only agreed to try scuba because his wife wanted to do it.  He had always considered water to be his biggest fear.  Good on 'im.

I know it may be disappointing to some of you that we haven't included any pictures on or under the water.  We thought briefly about taking our camera out with us and decided against it.  Since we've been home I've done some research about waterproof cases for our camera and have found one for about $2000US.  If anyone would like to make a contribution to the fund I'll send you all the pictures you could ever want.  Otherwise, sorry you'll have to make due with your imaginations.

Tomorrow:  New Year New You

Second day of work today and I feel pretty good about it.  Leah had her second full day of class.  She'll be in class from 9-5 four days a week for the next six weeks.  The last two days we've only seen each other for a couple hours a day. We're both pretty excited about our new situations.

How We Spent Our Summer Vacation, Part II

Rebuffed by rain at Mt. Warning we headed down to Byron Bay on Sunday morning.  The ride down was a piece of cake.  It's only about 60k further south from the mountain.  When we arrived the sun was shining and the town was packed.  Byron Bay is a small town built on the bay from which it takes it's name.  James Cook (Yep, Captain Cook) named it such on his expedition to map the east coast of Australia.  Cape Byron is actually the eastern most tip of Australia.  On top of the hill on the cape is a gorgeous white light house.  It really makes an idyllic setting.

We got into town about 10:00 and set about finding a campsite for the night.  This turned out to be a real pain.  Every campground in town was packed with people.  We had been told that everyone was on vacation this week, but we didn't think they literally meant EVERYONE. The town was over run with people on holiday.  We actually had to sit in traffic for thirty minutes or so just to get into town.  We quickly found out that the prices for camping during the week were out of control.  Most places wanted to charge us $35 per person per night.  That's $70 a night to sleep in our own tent.  We weren't going to have that so we decided to drive a bit and check our options.

We checked at least five different campgrounds or "caravan parks" as they're called here, in Byron and then started going to other towns. Most of the other towns were just as packed and not nearly as nice as Byron was. We drove all over the place with no luck. So we spent most of the day driving and after nearly 200k we wound up back in Byron and camping on the high school football field for $40.  We felt defeated.  The woman hosting at the football field told us that they had just raised their rates to sort of keep up with the rest of the town, but she felt that the prices people were charging were "just ridiculous".
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We had been sitting in the car all day so we decided to check out the beach.  It was the best decision we made all day.  We had done very little (read: none) research about Byron before we went there and were surprised constantly by the beauty of the place.  We first drove up the hill to the light house and found the parking lot full.  We snapped a few quick pics and drove back down the hill.

At the bottom of the hill we found a trail head that climbed back up and around the point.  The hike did us a world of good.  We both felt a lot better after streching our legs a little and working up a sweat.  Plus we got a bunch of great pictures.

Here's one of Leah at the eastern most point of Australia

                                  

 and here she is after we climbed the hill, you can just see where we were in the last picture down below.  I was a wee bit sweaty by the time we made it up.

After the climb we went back down and walked on the beach for an hour or so.  By the time we were ready to head to the campsite the skies were looking a little dark.  Here's a picture of me doing one of my favorite things, sitting on a rock by the sea.

Tuckered we grabbed a sandwich at Subway (Seven, Seven, Seven dollar foot longs!) and ate a quick dinner before it started to rain.  Once it did start to rain in earnest we fell asleep pretty quickly.  Despite the camping frustration we were feeling pretty excited to try scuba in the morning.

It rained most of the night and it actually helped us sleep.  We woke up about 6:00 and headed into town to get some coffee.  We're both getting used to drinking one cup of super strong espresso instead of the normal pot of joe.  I have noticed that people look at us a little funny when we drink a "long black" without sugar.

Our class was scheduled for 8:00 and we took our time having coffee and actually ate a nice brekkie.  A luxury we don't allow ourselves too often these days.  Full and rested we headed up the street and into my new obsession.

Tomorrow: Discover Scuba!