Dive! Dive!

As the weekend slowly crept past we found ourselves waking up at 6:45 AM to get ready for our diving adventure. It took about 15-20 minutes before we could muster up the courage to creep out of our tent into the cold, wet day. We didn't have enough time left to eat proper breakfast so we threw a box of nut bars in our bag along with the other stuff we though we might need (Towel, swimming trunks, harpoon), brushed our teeth and raced off to the start of the campsite to wait for the bus, which came 1 minute later. The bus driver (it was actually more a van I guess) seemed like a nice guy and he told us loads of stuff about kiwifruit, the local strip of beach that they plan on putting 300 houses on (which the locals don't agree with), manuka honey and all sorts of stories about his sons. When we got to the dive center at Tutukaka (it was called Dive!Tutukaka surprisingly) we were quickly herded into a nearby building they used for class, along with another (German again) girl, who was around 27, called Julia. After a short introduction she said that the medical statements we needed for the course were planned for later that morning. We then got to the point of payment, and because we only knew an approximate price for the course and there weren't any ATMs in the neighbourhood I was slightly nervous about whether we brought enough money or not. It turned out the course was quite a bit more expensive than we thought and I in fact did not bring enough money with me and Jasper only had just enough.
After stressing out a bit we found that we had just enough money (with about 5 dollars to spare) in our grocery wallet (a wallet we used to keep money for groceries), so I just borrowed the money off that and everyone was happy again.
The first day of the course was all theory, mostly pretty basic stuff with regards to buoyancy and air compression and expansion. The first few hours were filled with watching a DVD, answering some question in our book, doing a test and then watching the next DVD etc. We both passed our medical exams fine, though Jasper was told to be careful with his ear, and headed back to our little classroom, where the DVDs and exams were already waiting for us.
By 4:30 PM we were released from our little cell, shipped into the van and back to our tent. Once we were back we hurried to the store to buy more food, cooked it in a hurry and then had to get to our studying, as we had to read and answer questions for two more chapters.
After 2 very tiring hours we headed to our tent and fell asleep.
The next day we woke up at 6:45 AM again, did our usual routine, threw in a whole bread, some jam and a knife. We had the same driver and, unfortunately he had the same stories.
This day we just had to finish up our exams for the last two chapters, drop off the girl for her medical and then head off to a pool for our first diving experience.
The pool was located in the back of a shop for diving gear somewhere in the neighbouring town of Ngunguru. It was bigger than you'd expect and had a shallow ridge where you could get used to all the diving equipment you had on, and beyond there was a deeper part which was about 3m deep. At first we just sat down on our knees in the shallow part and did some exercises like, removing our mask and filling it with air, regulator (the breathing device) recovery etc. Then we headed off to the deeper part, descending along a rope that led to bottom of the pool. Even though it was only a shallow pool, we still had to equalize our ears because the biggest volume change happens in the first 10 meters. Jasper was a bit nervous about this part but it all went fine and pretty soon we were all sitting at the bottom of the pool, ready to do more exercises. At first we just did the first few exercises again, and also did alternate air supply breathing where you had to pick the spare regulator off your buddy's gear and breathe through that. We also practiced perfecting our buoyancy and becoming neutral.
The 4 hours we spent in the pool raced by and before we knew it, it was time to go back to our campsite again.
The next day started the same as the days before, including the stories told by the bus driver, but this time we were going on a boat to the poor knights islands and do our first open water dive. Needless to say we were both pretty excited and a bit nervous as we walked onto the boat that was going to take us there. It was a big boat and there were plenty of other divers coming with us, so the boat ended up being quite full. During the 40 minutes it took to sail to the islands Debbie (our instructor) briefed us on our dives and on the exercises we were going to do there. These were mostly the same as the ones we did in the pool, only this time we'd be at 8m depth and in salt water. The wetsuit we wore was about twice as thick as the one we had on in the pool, we also had socks and a hood on, because the water was about 14 degrees. And because we had a thicker wetsuit we also had more weight on our belts (wetsuits are quite buoyant because of small air bubbles in the fabric). Feeling quite encumbered and a little ridiculous we followed Debbie to the edge of the boat and jumped into the water. The shock of the cold water trickling into my suit stunned me for a split second before I floated to the surface and gave my buddy an okay signal. It took a while before the water in my suit warmed up, but because from the surface I could already see tons of fish swimming below I didn't pay any attention to this. Once we were all in the water we started our descent to 8m, following a line down and equalizing our ears every other second. Once down, Debbie signaled me to sit on a patch of sand close by and it wasn't until I managed to get myself there and on the ground that I noticed all the fish around, circling us with what seemed like a mixture of curiosity and fear.
Once I looked back at the others I saw that Jasper had also successfully made his way down and was having no troubles with his ears, which was a relief. After we did a few of the exercises Debbie swam ahead of us as she showed us around the area a bit. But because I was struggling to get my buoyancy right, I kept falling towards the ground or floating towards the surface, I probably missed out on a few fish but I enjoyed it all the same.
We were the first ones back on the boat so we had plenty of room to clumsily get out of our wetsuits and dry up. After a nice cup of hot chocolate and when all the others were back on the boat we headed for our next dive site. Once we got down into the water I headed down first, as I sat down I saw that Jasper was having some problems with his ears and it took a few minutes before his ears felt good enough to get to the bottom. When he joined us at the bottom it was time to do some more exercises, including Mask Clearing. Unfortunately it seemed that Julia's mask didn't quite fit her anymore as she couldn't get it cleared, after trying for about 5 minutes Debbie took her to the surface and they went to get her a new one. All this time Jasper and me sat on the bottom, by this time getting a bit bored and cold, and we eventually decided to play charades. Though Jasper had some pretty weird clue as to what it was it wasn't hard to guess that the answer was Lord of the Rings when he pointed at his ring finger.
Unfortunately by the time Julia and Debbie were back we lost so much air that we couldn't swim around for all that long. After we got back on the boat we headed back to Tutukaka, wrote a little about the dives in our Diver's Log and hopped into the bus who was waiting to take us back.
That night it seemed that the guys who rented the cabin next to us were having a party and came back at around 3:30AM we noticed this because they were yelling a whole lot and one of them tripped over one of our tent lines. It seemed they also brought along some local girls as they were yelling even louder than the guys, needless to say we didn't get much sleep that night.
The next day we headed out to the same boat, which took us to a different dive site. On the first dive we did a few last exercises and then explored the area. There were extremely gorgeous creatures called nudibranchs (go ahead google 'em) and lots of fish and other aquatic creatures. The dive ended too fast for my liking, but unfortunately we didn't have enough air to continue. We reached a record depth (for us) with 16 meters for 40 minutes. The next dive-site was an archway that was apparently very famous and in the top 10 of Jacques Gusto's dive spots. It was beautiful alright, about halfway through there was a huge school of fish swimming so close together they blocked out most of the light. When we got out of the archway and into a part where the sun could reach again the transition was breathtaking, the view seemed a lot better than it was before and there were fish all over.
When we got out of the water, Debbie congratulated us on becoming open water divers and we all had some hot choco in celebration. Unfortunately we our ride was waiting for us as we came back into the harbour and we couldn't drink a beer with the others, so we said our good-byes and headed back to our tent, where we made celebratory pancakes and had cake for desert.
That night we slept for about 10 hours.

Pictures:
http://s713.photobucket.com/albums/ww138/lingonlas/NZ%2023%20Oktober/