I'm back from Eilat and am now a PADI certified, two star, Advanced Open Water Diver!
I took my courses through the Red Sea Lucky Divers in Eilat, a small city on the southern most part of Israel. There was the initial five day course for the Open Water certification which taught me the basics about diving. I read a text book and had lessons about the physics of diving and we did lots of exercises underwater learning how to use the equipment and what to do if something goes wrong, like your air supply is cut off or you lose your mask underwater. I was lucky enough to be the only person to sign up for the course that week so I ended up taking the complete course one on one with my instructor, Dmitriy. It was fantastic because we could do the exercises quickly and still have time to explore the reefs.
After the Open Water Course there was an additional two days of diving to reach the Advanced Open Water status, which means I've had a bit more experience and I'm trained to dive down to 30 m (100 feet). The Advanced Open Water course also gave me the opportunity to explore some areas of Adventure Diving, like visiting a shipwreck, deep diving (30 m), underwater photography, and underwater navigation. I'm so glad I took both courses, the first one got me comfortable with diving and the second one helped me see how much diving has to offer.
Dmitriy, along with most of the instructors at Lucky Divers, is from Russia. Over a million Russians live in Israel, and Eilat had numerous tourists from Russia, so during my week there I heard far more Russian than Hebrew, both at the dive center and wandering the city. Dmitriy's English was good, but there were a few occasions where having a good imagination came in handy to finish his sentences. One of my favorite translational quirks was during the lesson on decompression illness where we talked about the dangers and symptoms. To begin the list of symptoms Dmitriy would point to his shoulders, elbows, and wrists and say "heengees" which at first left me drawing a blank but I quickly realized he was saying "hinges" instead of "joint" to describe joint pain, which is a major sign of decompression illness. It's always nice to look at something familiar in a new way.
During the Open Water course we talked about underwater photography and I got pretty excited about, and he's pretty passionate about underwater photography and filmography so he brought along his camera on all six of our dives for the Advanced Open Water course. It was amazing! We started with the wreck dive:
I asked Dmitriy how this boat came to be wrecked here and he told me that in the 70's Israel purchased several ships like this one from France, and France in turn did not deliver the ships to Israel.... so Israel went to France and stole their ships and brought them back to Eilat. I hoped the story would get juicy, but turns out the ship had a decent stint in the navy and when it had become too old to use they sunk it to make a dive site. Not such a dramatic story, but this shipwreck was really fantastic to see.
On the next dive I got to try my hand at underwater photography and it turns out it's really difficult. Take into account all the things it takes to get a decent photograph in general, and then add water currents, trying to keep yourself in position by how much air you breath into your lungs, accidentally kicking up sand that clouds the image, fish not holding still very long, and having to be about a foot away from close up subjects for the image to look decent, and trying to light everything correctly, while not snagging yourself on the reef or floating into an anemone.... It was hard, but really fun, I've already been looking at underwater camera equipment for the future...
Here's a few of the photo's I took:
And here's the one's my instructor took:
I've got a lot to learn...
The next day Raz came on two of the dives with us, first we did our deep dive down to 30 meters (100 feet).
30 meters down things got darker, bluer, and colder. We took a flashlight to shine on things and it was amazing how the color would come back when shining pure white light on them.
Sponge!
Back in the shallow water we took a decompression stop to help extra nitrogen work its way out of our bodies safely so we don't have painful "heengees" and have to go to a decompression chamber.
Angel Fish
Getting certified to Scuba dive has always been on my list of things to do, and having this opportunity in Israel was wonderful. Diving with Raz was such a treat, and getting to see all the coral and sea life in the Red Sea was amazing. I absolutely love diving and can't wait to go again!
