SCUBA Julie, Part Two

Some of you will remember that I completed part one of my open water SCUBA certification back in February as part of an effort to start checking things off of my bucket list.  After six weeks of lessons , we still needed to actually go driving in something a bit bigger than a high school pool.  We're required to complete these four open water dives before we can get our certification cards.  For that reason alone, I found myself shivering on the shore of Lake George in the rain on the first weekend of July.  At 7am, fifteen of us were milling around trying to remember how to set up our gear, find a safe dry spot to stash some sweats, and dreading the initial shock of getting into the water.

Hearthstone Campground, Lake George

I had forgotten my weight belt.  I remembered every one of my lead weights but forgot the thick strip of nylon that allowed me to sink below surface and had to ask my instructor for a spare. At that point, I was really wondering if the whole SCUBA certification was worth it.  A couple hours later we took advantage of a break and the rain to suit up and start our first dive.  SCUBA gear is deceptively heavy. The weightlessness of neutral buoyancy is awesome but hauling everything necessary to maintain neutral buoyancy in the water column and live to tell the tell takes work.  After the waddle to the shoreline and balancing act to secure mask and fins, I was anxious to get on with the dive and feel less like an overweight penguin.  What I wasn’t ready for was the chill of 55°F water.  Instant chill.

Prepping for a dive

I was pleased that all of my required skills came back to me fairly quickly.  Every movement would let new cold water flow into my wetsuit so I didn’t want to move anymore than I had too.  There were a few interesting things about our two dives that day.  We saw the body of an airplane with the wings removed which had been sunk specifically for the divers.  There were a handful of fish and the thrill of staying underwater.  By the end of the second dive I was so chilled that I was mistaking fish eggs on water weeds for ice crystal coatings.

One of the hardest things about that day was waiting the necessary amount of time before I could take a hot shower.  Exposing yourself to hot water too quickly after diving can cause the residual nitrogen in your blood to be released too quickly causing the bends.  We were told that we could take “warm” showers but I didn’t trust myself to have that kind of control when I was that cold.  I bided my time by eating piping hot soup and watch shows about tropical coral reefs for several hours. Finally I was able to drain the hot water tank and raise my core temperature back to normal.

Duckies!

 Sunday morning came far too early and dreary.  As I made my way north to Lake George, my ears blocked due to some minute change in altitude.  When I arrived at our dive site they were still blocked.  Not good.  Until my ears cleared I couldn’t dive for fear of rupturing my eardrum or worse.  There were five other students who were nursing discomfort from the previous day too.  Three other students plus me were out of the water for at least the third dive,  I settled in to watch at least the first dive from land and quickly became bored.  There was a family of ducks that could keep my attention for a few minutes at a time.  Most of my time was spent watching everyone else’s bubbles raise to the surface.  Have I ever mentioned that patience isn’t my strong suite? I immediately went to work at getting my ear cleared.   

Navigating back to shore

 By the time my group came out of their open water dive three, I was pushing to try getting in the water and completing the course that day.  The top layer of water was slightly warmer thanks to the lack of rain that day.  My dive three was a quicker one to get me caught up with the rest of the group.  This time I wasn’t immediately frozen and found that I had an easier time controlling my buoyancy, making the dives much more enjoyable.  The fourth and final dive was trouble from the get-go.  As soon as we descended enough silt had been kicked up that it was impossible to see two inches in front of your face.  I couldn’t see my dive buddy and only saw the instructor when he suddenly appeared directly in front of my mask to test my mask removal skills.  I was so happy to move away from the cloud and then we started going deeper.  Deeper water always means colder temperatures.  It was interesting gliding along the bottom of a lake but the cold was getting to me.  At one point I realized that I was pulling my upper lip up to try to protect it from the cold and causing my mask to leak.  Not fun.  However, the knowledge that we were on our last dive made the frigid cold slightly more bearable. When we finally surfaced I was so relieved.  I had finished my PADI open water certification! Yes, stubbornness and impatience when it came to watch everyone else finish played a large role in it, but it was done!  I was also never so happy to be wearing sweatpants in June.

Certified Open Water Diver - only partially frozen

I think I’ll focus on warm water diving next.

BioBay Kayaking Adventure: Fajardo

There was one activity in Puerto Rico that I knew I wanted to do long before I knew when I would go to the island - kayaking on a bio-luminescent lagoon.  One of my friends went on such an adventure four years ago when she was visiting family in PR.  After hearing about her experience I decided that whenever I made it to Puerto Rico, I was going to go on one of these trips.  Laguna Grande in Fajardo is one of three bioluminescent areas in Puerto Rico.  It's a little over an hour from San Juan and if there's six or more people leaving from your area you can arrange for a shuttle to pick you up (for an additional fee).  After some research and price scouting, we booked a tour with transport with Kayaking Puerto Rico.  Our shuttle was scheduled to pick us up shortly after 4pm which meant we had the whole day to do things before we had to be at our pickup point.

Just to recap, that's 6 college girls with dozens of shops and a beach who need to show up at the same time and a specific spot. 

I was a little concerned.

Somehow we managed to get everyone there, early and with a good meal in them. At 4:30pm on the dot we were on our way from San Juan to Fajardo to check out the BioBay.  Who says things don't happen on time when you're on Latin Time?  The 90 minute drive was fairly uneventful save one crazy motorcyclist.  The shuttle drove past the outskirts of El Yunque, a cloud forest with amazing waterfalls.  Unfortunately, you really need at least half a day to do the forest any kind of justice and we didn't have time to fit it in this trip.  One last stop at McDonald's for a last chance at a clean bathroom before reaching the lagoon.

About to get in the kayaks

The tours start from a small harbor so the first half of the kayaking trip was across the harbor and through a channel in the mangroves.  They forgot to mention that the harbor is littered with sandbars.  Everybody ran aground right before entering the mangrove channel.  I think they planned it that way so they could do a head count before heading into the darkness.

Do not want to kayak into the mangrove roots, brings new meaning to the term 'treehugger'

 If you want to simulate moving through a mangrove forest after dark, activate a green glowstick and try to navigate through a dark garage filled with piles of stuff.  Except the floor is flooded with three feet of water and you're in a tandem kayak with a chance of a startled iguana landing in your boat.  Tandem kayaking takes a special kind of team work.  As one of the guides quipped, "if you can survive kayaking with your partner, you add five years to your relationship."  Every once in a while there was a break in the branched canopy revealing a pocket of bright stars.  Paddling out to the lagoon, we thought that debris from the mangroves was causing the water to be very foamy as the paddle-blades disturbed the water.  A few minutes out from the lagoon we realized the "foam" was was angry Pyrodinium Bahamense, the bioluminescent plankton we were in search of.

Improbable Image - http://kayakingpuertorico.com/images/excursions/bio_bay/foto-con-brillo.jpg

The channel opened into Laguna Grande, where we listened to a quick biology lesson and learned such valuable lessons as 'if you have an irrational fear of fish, you shouldn't go on a kayaking trip that warns you that krill will jump in your boat,' and the part of the tax on Puerto Rican rum goes to conservation leading to the phrase "drink rum, save a tree."  After some free time to paddle around and try unsuccessfully to capture photos or videos of the luminescent display before heading back through the mangrove channel.  To be honest, I liked the going through the mangroves better than the actual lagoon.  We took the earlier tour so it wasn't totally dark by the time we reached the lagoon causing some light pollution.  The mangroves were pitch-dark, especially on the way back, so the luminescence was bright blue in the channel compared to a dull glow in the lagoon.

On the way back we learned another valuable lesson, 'when you get stuck on a sandbar and your kayaking partner gets out to push, do not paddle away and leave them on the sandbar because everyone will laugh.'  That happened to one boat on our tour and we all giggled as the runaway got towed back to her partner by one of the guides.

We survived!

If you have the chance I definitely recommend taking one a biobay tour.  Kayaking Puerto Rico staff was friendly and professional with a great sense of humor.  They had the best price and reviews I could find.  I was worried about taking tour transport but our driver stayed with the vehicle during the tour and the bonus of not having to drive back in the dark on unfamiliar roads was well worth the extra $20 to me.

Tips for Surviving BioBay kayaking:

• Eat a good meal before you leave, two hours of kayaking on an empty stomach is not fun
• Pick your partner carefully 
• Wear dark, quick-drying clothes over your swimsuit (the dark colors reveal any sparkling plankton that get splashed on you)
• Beware of on-coming kayakers, they can be more dangerous than the mangroves (we were rammed multiple times)
• Unless you have Jedi powers, you will not get awesome pictures of glowing plankton

SCUBA Julie, Part One

I'm going to put it out there. Like many of the swimmers I've met, I'm terrified of drowning.  We're talking recurring-nightmare-where-you-almost-die terrified. (Have psych people ever figured out why people have those?) I have no idea why so many people who are, in fact, GOOD swimmers are so scared of drowning but there you go.  Perhaps it is this underlying fear that made me so excited to learn SCUBA, literally breathing underwater.

SCUBA Julie

Through a series of very generous gifts from my family, I was able to sign up for a PADI Open Water course and tackle my first item on my adventure bucket list.  After completing this class I can dive anywhere in the world at a depth of up to 60ft as long as I have another certified diver with me.  I took my class with Seguin's SCUBA Center over six intense weeks.  5 hours of class, including 3 hours in the pool, after a full day's work is especially tiring.  That being said, I had a blast doing it.

Personal Gear

The class is made up of a combination of classroom and practical lessons.  Classroom lessons came with 60+ pages of reading a week and homework.  Each week there was a quiz at the end of class and a final exam at the end of the course.  There are a lot of warnings and 'what to do if this goes wrong' lessons but given that you're an airbreather underwater you're thankful to know it.  I will warn you that some of the explanations offered for changing pressure and how a compass works will make you cringe a little bit if you are familiar with these phenomena but it's not worth trying to correct anyone.  The part that I found most interesting was calculating how long you can safely stay at a give depth.

Class Photo

In the pool, every time we went under, I had to tell myself to keep breathing.  It's easier to breathe through a regulator underwater than above water which made it a little bit easier.  Surprisingly the most difficult part was the actual swimming in SCUBA gear.  You're caring a hefty amount of weight between the weight belt and the gear, and you want to be somewhere in the water column instead of the top or bottom.  The first week we were allowed in the deep end, I was either on the bottom of the pool or on the surface.  By the last week, I could show off a little bit more.

 

 All of my instructors and divemasters were knowledgeable with great sense of humor.  We learned every single skill in that book and practiced until we could do it right.  We had joked with each other and learned extra skills such as blowing bubble donuts.  We're not done yet though.  In June we complete part two by doing a weekend of open-water dives at Lake George.

The Adventure Bucket List

The next chapter of my life is quickly approaching.  To most people, a year and a half sounds like a while but anyone who's worked in scientific research knows that it's quicker than you think. I'm a list person so I'd count this as an attempt to put some order to things I can control. This is the first version, of many I'm sure, in no particular order:

• Learn to SCUBA dive
• Learn to shoot good photos with manual settings
• Visit NYC during the Christmas season
• Visit the Grand Canyon
• Visit the pyramids and Petra
• Visit Manchu Pichu
• Speak Spanish Fluently (Pass DELE Certification)
• Visit the Far East
• Learn at least one other language to proficiency
• See the Big 5 on an African Safari
• SCUBA dive in Australia, SE Asia, and Central America
• Volunteer overseas
• Visit all 50 US states
• Live Overseas
• Visit EVERY continent

My full bucket list is a computer file with over 200 items but I would consider these the heavy hitters; at least for now.