surviving reef quest

On Tuesday morning, I started my 5-day PADI certification class at Deep Sea Divers Den, one of the largest diving companies in Cairns. The first 2 days of the class consisted of classroom work, i.e., watching a DVD and taking multiple-choice quizzes, and practicing various breathing and survival skills in the pool. On day 1, I met my fellow scuba newbies, Clare, originally from the UK, but living in Melbourne for the past 11 years, and John and Justin, friends from London. I knew that I was in good company after learning that everyone in my class had recently quit their respective jobs and were devoting the next year to traveling around the world. Here's a photo of our motley crew with our instructor, Sven. You can pretty much figure out who's who without a caption, right?


I enjoyed every minute of the first two days, including squeezing into a wet suit for the first time (it's especially fun when you try on one that's too small in front of all of your classmates and your instructor, who looks like this), feeling what it's like to run out of air underwater, and repeatedly being told that the result of most scuba errors is death. However, I had no idea what I was in for on the third day.

I was super excited about finishing (and passing) the first two days of my class, which meant that I would be reuniting with Rob and spending three days with him on the live-aboard portion of the trip. That excitement quickly died soon after we boarded Reef Quest, the vessel that would be taking us out to the reef. The first problem was that the boat, which was fairly large in size, was packed with people. The second issue was that Rob and I were, by far, the oldest people on the boat; our fellow passengers were mostly college students from the states who were on a 7-day drinking binge, i.e., spring break. The third, and most challenging, issue was that the seas were choppy. Really choppy. As in at least 25 teenagers who stayed up drinking 'til 3 am the previous night (as I heard over and over) barfing continuously throughout the almost 2-hour ride to the reef. Some of you may know that I suffer from a condition that I call barfphobia (fear of vomit). Given my unfortunate condition, you can imagine how excruciating this experience was for me. Here's a photo of my torture chamber.


Needless to say, I survived the ordeal. I later learned that the reason that the boat was so crowded was because Divers Den charters out Reef Quest to a company that sells packages of extreme adventures, e.g., bungee jumping, skydiving, and scuba, to spring-breakers. All I have to say is that I'm proud to be old! (And, for the record, I was never like that when I was younger.) More importantly, I took my first two open-water dives. Two more and I'm officially certified!