Underwater in the Arabian Sea.
Tyler looks at me and crosses his hand over his throat -- the universal diving sign for "out of air." He reaches for my alternate regulator and replaces the fluorescent yellow reg for his, as we slowly ascend and reach the surface of the sea.
Not to worry though -- this is only a drill (unlike the time I really ran out of oxygen diving in the Galapagos Islands -- a story for another time!) We work through dozens more underwater drills like this, such as recovering a lost regulator, filling our masks with water and subsequently clearing it, underwater navigation, and probably my favorite -- the controlled emergency ascent, where you raise your arm like Superman while swimming to the surface, singing "AHHH" along the way.
We are in Goa to become certified open water scuba divers, and it's an absolute blast. Our teacher is Ajey Patel, who has logged over 1100 dives and owns and runs Dive Goa (which I'd wholeheartedly recommend to anyone!!) He's incredibly competent, confident, intellectually curious and smart...we feel safe under his care and have fun the whole way.
After drills in the controlled safety of a pool (conveniently in the same resort/B&B we stay at), we quickly move onto diving in the open sea. We do four dives over the course of two days, all from a small dive boat that picks us up from a nearby beach and takes us to dive sites named things like Bounty Bay and The Jetty.
After putting together our diving equipment on the boat, we receive a brief of the dive site and learn one of the most fun tricks -- falling backwards from one side of the boat and flipping into the water below (2nd picture!)...before donning our scuba gear that's thrown into the water after us.
Descending under the water is always a trip; there's something exhilarating about your field of vision moving from the water's surface to below... while there's something relaxing about hearing your breath through your regulator and seeing all the resulting bubbles around you.
Goa is known to have poor visibility, which ironically becomes a great place to learn, as it leads to increased confidence underwater. And despite visibility ranging from 2-6 meters, we still see tons of sea life: coral gardens, eels, schools of trigger fish, sergeant majors (because of their stripes!), lion fish (see pic below) and even a jellyfish! (full disclosure though: the jellyfish was dead, but still pretty!)
By far the hardest skill to master is buoyancy control -- in other words, actually staying at the depth you want to stay at during the dive. Tyler and I would signal down, and we'd go down down down CRASH into the rocky bottom below... Or point up and ascend up up up until we'd almost have to be physically pulled down so we wouldn't actually surface.
But hey, it's a start, and a good one at that! It's amazing how steep the learning curve is and how confident we already feel on our fourth dive compared to our first.
And best of all, we're now certified scuba divers! Our next underwater adventure awaits... here we come, El Nido, Philippines!
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