Day 182! Today was a long day, but I’m so glad I did all the dives that I did. I got to lead my first dive today and I saw a massive turtle while diving at night. The next couple of days are going to be filled with a lot of diving… I’ll be double boating 3 days in a row, we’ll see how it goes!

I was able to sleep in a bit this morning as I was on the afternoon and night boat today. But I either had to attend a class or help set up bags. So I chose attending a class again!

I headed over to Taco Shack around 8:30am and ordered a muesli bowl… but I also received a text from my mother telling me a package they had sent for me allegedly arrived! So I went into the diving office to check, and sure enough, there was a package all the way from the USA waiting for me!!!

I was super excited to receive this package. Not only did it have a lovely note from my parents, but it also contained my GoPro!! Soon there will be some underwater photos and videos to add to the blog posts.

I’ll also be able to capture some of the amazing and epic things I see on a day to day… like if only I was able to use it on tonight’s night dive… but I didn’t have the diving housing for it yet (but more on that later).

My friend, and dive instructor, Chelsea, was teaching one of the morning classes today. I was excited to sit in on her class because I hadn’t seen her teach yet. I really enjoy seeing how each of the different instructors teach their classes in and out of the water. It’ll help me pick and choose how I want to teach in the future.

After class, it was time for lunch! If you haven’t noticed by now, there’s pretty much a lunch rotation. Today’s meal was chicken fried rice.

This afternoon, I was assisting Hector with his day 2 of the open water class. Just like in yesterday’s day 1, I would be helping the students do their skills and make sure they were done safely and correctly.

Today, for the first dive, Hector told me I would be teaching and showing the students how to fully remove and put back on their equipment under water. Mainly, he wanted me to do it because my Buoyancy Compensator was the same as the students.

This ended up going really well and Hector gave me some nice praise for this after the first dive.

We also ran through some other skills, like swimming without a mask on and emergency ascents. Seeing how I just did my stress and rescue, I was ready to help out with the emergency skills. I did mess up a couple of things when helping the students, but Hector was quick to step in and remind me of the step I missed or how to do it better next time.

It was a beautiful day today and our first dive lasted 73 minutes at Aow Leuk. It was the first day, recently, at this dive site where the visibility was actually good!

Our second dive of the afternoon was to Tanote Bay… and Hector told me, I was going to be leading this fun dive.

I was a bit nervous, but I knew the dive site was small and if I made a wrong turn or anything went wrong, Hector was there to help out.

We swam a bit away from our boat and free descended next to one of the buoys. Hector and I made a route prior to us leaving. So we made our way towards the giant cliff jumping rock, then turned towards the north east to head to the giant school of fish that have taken up residency at the bay. Then after blowing the students minds with the fish, we made our way even further to a sunken motorbike in the water.

I had never seen this part of the bay before, but Hector gave me a couple directional hints to make sure I made it to this part of the dive.

Throughout the dive, I was turning around and checking to make sure the students (and Hector) were still there and weren’t having any problems. I also was asking all of them for their air throughout the dive to make sure I knew our benchmarks (120 bars turn around and 70 bars start the safety stop).

On the way back, we passed through the school of fish again. We then ran into another Taco Divers group, who were also heading back to the boat. This made it a bit easier to head back to the boat, but I stayed mindful of our surroundings and knew where we were at the entire time.

I ended up leading the ascent back to the surface and when we surfaced, we didn’t make it back to the boat… but we did make it right back to the buoy line we started on! I was pretty proud of that, especially because this boat was so close to our boat as well.

The dive ended up being just about 40 minutes and we went down to 12 meters today! Tomorrow we’ll take the students down to 18 meters.

I was pretty impressed with myself. Hector then gave me some feedback on the dive. One of the big things was I need to swim a bit further away from the ground and corals. I may be used to my buoyancy and maintaining it, but the students find it a bit more challenging, so I need to make sure to maintain a better difference from the coral to make them all feel comfortable.

We got back to Taco Shack and I went to pick up my keys from the landlord. They had cleaned my room today and I wanted to go check and see how it looked. And it was so nice to see a clean room!

I then got a chicken taco and a tofu taco.

They were both delicious and a great way to fuel up before another dive, a night dive!

We then set out for our night dive, which ended up being a lot more of a packed boat than 2 nights ago.

Night boats are some of my favorites. Not only do we get to see cool things in the ocean and explore it with a torch. But we also get to watch the sunset from the boat and on the ocean.

This night dive ended up being so freaking cool. It was a pretty normal one at first. My friend Lydia (fellow DMT) was leading Kit and I on her first ever night dive, as the lead diver on it.

As the sun hit the horizon, we geared up, turned our torches on, and hopped into the water.

On the way down, my right ear was having trouble equalizing, but it was fine on the surface… so I swam up a bit to alleviate the pressure, and it never equalized. BUT, it also stopped hurting, so I was still able to do the dive. I’m not exactly sure why it happened and went away but I was glad to be able to continue the dive.

We made our way through the beautiful dive site of White Rock for 40 minutes. I had done a night dive at White Rock before, but this time was way better.

I had heard stories of a turtle that visited the dive site at night… but had no expectations of seeing it since Lydia didn’t know where it lived. BUT we started making our way around the dive site and then a moving creature caught my eye.

Out of no where a HUMONGOUS turtle came swooping overhead and I started “screaming” in the water. My friends Kit and Lydia didn’t see it at first and turned around, confused on why I was freaking out. Then with my torch I showed them the turtle and they started freaking out too! There weren’t many dive groups around us either and the turtle ended up swimming right underneath us!! It was so freaking cool.

We were all so hyped and giddy after this and we were very excited to tell our other diving friends about it!

We also saw some massive groupers hunting in the night. And then, Lydia’s torch went out. So I gave her mine. Thankfully there were a ton of divers out tonight so it kind of felt like a morning dive with all the lights. But it was a freeing and also disconcerting feeling to dive around in the dark with no torch.

I didn’t have my GoPro on me… but soon I’ll be able to capture moments like this!!

After the night dive, I went back to my clean room, showered, changed, and then went over to Taco Shack for karaoke night! I also got a late night dinner of Pad See Ew.

Tonight were my friends, Ami and Lina, last night on the island. So we all sang our hearts out and danced the night away to give them both a fun send off.

After singing a ton of songs and boogying down, I went to bed. But before I left, Lina and Ami both gave me very sweet, hand written notes. It was very sweet of them and I’m going to miss having them around! But I’m sure I’ll be seeing them soon enough.

– Elie