My First Unfun Dive

My day started off pretty typical.  I woke up after taking some benadryl to take care of the millions upon millions of bug bites that I have.  It was a serious pain to get up, but it was a deep, deep sleep.  The morning was occupied with doing DAN oxygen provider training.  Who knew that such a short book could take three hours to get through.

After lunch, we headed out to two dive sites to do a midterm skills assessment exam and AGRRA fish surveys.  The basis of our exam was to make sure that we are good divers and dive buddies.  I think I did well, but I have serious issues when it comes to swimming in a straight line at the same depth, so that part I probably failed.  But the first dive site we went to, named Windsock (a foreboding name from the start), had an extremely strong current.  I threw up in my mouth a bit towards the end of the dive from all of the work I was having to do to go against the current and get back to the exit point.  I asked at the end whether the current is normally that strong there, and the answer was no, but I'm not too sure about that just considering the name.  My dive buddy, who is a dive master, said that if she were the dive master on this dive that she would have aborted the dive and that she had never felt a current this strong on Bonaire. It was just an unpleasant dive all the way around.  Considering that we were with some new divers that only have nine dives under their belts, I don't think that we should have done this dive.  My worst dive to date.  If the experience hadn't been so unpleasant I bet that I would have really enjoyed the beauty of the reef.  It would have been a better drift dive than a scientific dive.  At least  I got to see a Cubera Snapper, a fish that we have been learning about, but I had no idea how big it could get (three feet).

Luckily our second dive site of the day, Cliff, did not have a current to it.  It made for a much better dive experience, although I still couldn't swim in a straight line to save my life.  I definitely need to get better. I managed to miss seeing a large barracuda which was really upsetting to me because I really want to see one.  I couldn't find him despite my dive buddy pointing frantically at him.  I did, however, manage to see a porcupine pufferfish at the exit to the dive.  I didn't realize that they were such large fish.  I would say probably a foot and a half long.  That was my accomplishment for the day I suppose.  This was a good dive to end on for me.

This a picture of my roommate Marissa, in case you all were wonder what she looks like:

She is fixing her earring.  I will attempt to get pictures of everyone in CIEE into this blog so that you know who I am talking about.  Thanks for being patient with me while I get things together.