Day 178! Today is the big day! The day I’ve heard so much about from other dive masters (DM/DMT) and instructors. It’s the intense finale of the stress and rescue course, the one where they push us “to our limits.” This is a big milestone for divers and is a big step into the professional world. I was pretty nervous and excited for what was to come, but you’ll soon find out!

I woke up today actually feeling a lot better than the night before! Getting 10+ hours of sleep a night has been working wonders for my health, so hopefully I’m getting close to being done with this cold…

I popped over to the Taco Shack lobby to start my day with another muesli bowl.

To be honest, the muesli bowl finally started losing its appeal to me yesterday. But today I asked to have no papaya and instead have pineapple and it made it a whole new experience. So plenty of more muesli bowls to come!

I was still a bit under the weather, but since I was able to participate in the stress and rescue day one, I thought I’d try again for day two.

We went over to the classroom and started our lecture.

Throughout the class, we talked about more emergency procedures. Specifically how to help an unconscious diver under the water and on the surface.

Every so often, Taco, the hostel dog, would come by to offer some encouragement and ask for some attention. It was very cute.

We also discussed what the dives would consist of today.

The first dive was going to be a “hell dive.” This is a dive every dive master and instructor goes through to push our stress to the limit (but more on that later). The second half of the first dive would be applying what we learned about helping unconscious divers.

The second dive today was search and rescue. An object was going to be hidden on a dive site (the object symbolizing a lost diver) and we had to navigate our way through the dive site methodically enough to find it.

We had a bit of time after class before lunch. So I went back, took a quick nap, played some guitar, and then went back to the lobby for lunch.

I still wasn’t sure if I would be able to equalize today… but I was feeling better then yesterday so I was optimistic!

After lunch came assisting time. One of my responsibilities as a DMT is to help set up bags for customers. So we went downstairs, along with some instructors, to help put the freshly cleaned dive equipment (from the morning divers) away and help set up the bags for the afternoon divers.

This is always a bit of a hectic and organized mess, but it always works itself out.

We then set off for our dives! Kit and I were both super excited about our dives today. We had heard so much about how crazy the “hell dives” could be and we were ready to take on the challenge.

Today for our first dive, we were headed to Aow Leuk.

We got on the boat and chatted more about what the plan was for the day… and then it was time to set up our equipment. But today, we had two minutes to do it BLINDFOLDED.

Not only were we blindfolded and in a time crunch, we had lots of people yelling at us to go faster or that we messed something up… and then my mentor, Chris, out of no where says “Elie, hope you’re thirsty” and then whoosh, I was soaked with water. This gave me a chuckle but I kept chugging along successfully putting together my equipment.

We got to our first dive site ready to jump into the water. For the first 10-20 minutes of our dive, we’d be experiencing the “Hell Dive.” We descended down into the water and I was able to equalize a little bit, but this dive wasn’t going to go very deep in case we actually did panic.

Throughout this dive, we followed Iris through the water. Out of nowhere, our mask would be taken off or our regulator would be ripped out of our mouths… maybe even at the same time. We would have to find our regulator and put it back in, before removing the water from our mask (or finding our mask). Sometimes our fins would be taken off, our buoyancy jacket would be messed with, random stress situations from the day before would arise… you name it, it probably happened.

A lot of the times, when they would mess with one thing, while we were fixing that issue, the instructors would cause another issue.

It was tough, but not as bad as I had heard from other people’s experience. However, if it was me a two weeks ago, I would’ve been panicking left and right. But the entire time I kept calm and composed and knew what needed to be done in the situations thrown at me.

The second part of the “hell dive” was a one on one version.

Chelsea took Kit and Iris took me and they both went to town trying to stress us to the max. Immediately my mask was taken off and regulator thrown away. Just as I was fixing those problems a horde of bubbles was streamlining my face from Iris’s spare regulator. Then she unclipped part of my BC that I didn’t even know existed so I assumed she somehow took off my jacket without me knowing. So I went to fix that but once I figured out what was wrong, she had already taken my mask and regulator out again and more bubbles. Every time I clipped one side back on it was immediately unclipped as I started the next.

This went on for quite some time and eventually ended in an air share with Iris. She gave me a big fist bump and had a pretty maniacal grin on her face at the same time. It was intense, but I know it’s in my best interest to experience this to understand how to act better in moments of extreme situations.

Was I stressed? Not really… was it a lot? Yeah. With having a true panic and stress a couple weeks ago, I’m not sure how they could replicate that again. There’ll always be a part of me that knows it’s an exercise or that I’m right next to the surface. But I’m glad I went through this to show that I could manage something like it if it were to arise again.

For the rest of the dive, we ran through rescuing an unconscious diver under the water and on the surface. But before we started, we were graced by the presence of a random giant puffer fish!

After running through the scenarios a bunch, it was time to switch tanks and gear up for dive two.

Dive two was at Tanote Bay. Before we got into the water, Chelsea and Iris dove in first with two PVC squares that they were going to hide around the dive site. When they returned, they had sob stories about losing their dive buddy.

We had to ask them questions that would help us locate this “buddy.” We asked, where they last saw them, a general direction, things around the area, etc. basically anything to help us pinpoint the location a bit better.

We then hopped in with our compasses and made a general plan of our search route. Luckily for us, our pre planning and questions paid off and on our first leg of our search route, we found the square.

This was super lucky, but also at the same time, we took what we learned and used that to succeed very quickly.

We then spent the rest of the dive cruising through Tanote and seeing the big school of fish that currently live there. But, the challenge wasn’t over yet.

Iris asked us to find the boat.

I had a general idea of where we needed to go, so I lead the group back as far as I could navigate us. Kit chimed in a bit too but eventually Iris called it quits for us and we surfaced.

We weren’t too far off, but our navigation still needs some work.

I did have some troubles with my ears on this dive, but I took it slow and eventually was able to enjoy the dive all the same.

With that, we successfully finished our Stress and Rescue course!

We had a beautiful sunset on our boat ride home and we all sat and chatted about the day amongst other random topics. I love how much time I get to spend on the water and on a boat, it’s pretty incredible.

We got back to Taco Shack and unpacked our bags, cleaned them, and then I went home to shower.

Afterwards, I came back to eat dinner. I ate by myself and definitely needed the mental break after a long and tiring two days. My plan after dinner was to go to 7-eleven, get a sweet treat, and then go to bed…

But the universe had other plans. I randomly decided to go a bit further to the big 7-eleven on the island. And here I ran into Chelsea and Hector, two of the Taco Diver instructors. They were just heading to dinner and to play some cards and they asked if I wanted to join… I thought sleep could wait and decided to join them for some cards.

Well, they ended up going to a Khao Soi restaurant… and I hadn’t had Khao Soi for so long so I decided to splurge and enjoy a second dinner, not long after my first one.

Hector and Chelsea wanted to learn a new and simple card game, so I taught them a family favorite of mine, Kings in the Corner.

Now, if I had looked at Hector’s cards prior to explaining the rules, I probably would’ve taught them a different game… but we made do. His cards were numbered up to 12 and the suits were sticks, cups, swords, and coins. Apparently it’s how cards in Spain work unless they’re gambling.

They enjoyed the game and caught on fast. Then we played another card game that Hector called 4s, I’ve called it golf in the past. He slaughtered us at that game and then we called it a night!

Now the stress and rescue isn’t fully over. I still have to assist a stress and rescue course… and they won’t take it light on me then. That’s for sure!

Since I pushed myself the past two days, I asked Chris for a day off tomorrow. So I’ll be relaxing all day and hopefully kicking whatever illness I have!

– Elie