Diving off old boats
I see coral and fish
Also big green turtles.
On Thanksgiving, we went snorkeling on an Indonesian island off the coast of Bali.
Traveling.
After an hour of yoga class, I felt prepared. I was ready. We headed to the scuba diving place, only to learn that, to my great alacrity, we were an hour early.
We passed the time away by playing a talking game. When our instructor, Adrian, came, he told us about the safety stuff. They had this whole sign language thing, with only a couple of signs. Here they are:
👍: I need to go up.
👎: I need to go down.
👌: Everything's good.
🖐️: Stop.
👋: Something's wrong.
👈: Look over there.
There were some others, but those are the ones I remember.
We got on a boat with a lot of pro divers. They dived off by hanging the Co2 tanks off the edge and lifting their feet. They instantly backflipped off. I was a little nervous, but we drove to somewhere more shallow and it was easy-peasy. The instructor, Adrian, said I did a complete backflip before I hit the water.
It was an interesting feeling. The air was cold and stale. Adrian said to take short inhales and long outhales. There was a gauge on a tube on the attached straps that showed how much air was left in the tank. It usually starts at 200, then descends. When it reaches 150, we were supposed to tell the instructor. When the needle got to 15, dubiously dubbed the Red Zone, you kicked for the surface.
There was a bunch of gadgets on the equipment, like a little suit inflator. There was a small grey button and ab big black button that inflated and disenflated the gear, so we would float or sink.
Once he got into the water we found a lot of interesting animals there were tons and tons of fish, obviously, but we also saw about three giant Greene Turtles. Seriously, they were vastly huge. Their shells were as long as Papa. They were just chilling on the sea floor, looking at us like, What ya gonna do?
We also saw a huge sea slug as long as my arm and a thing I can't explain. Look it up. It's called a feather star.
Also, we saw these cool stone statues that someone put underwater. It was a ring of men and women holding hands, and then a bunch of people lying on the ground. Interesting.
The breathing bit was not at all terrifying. I just breathed. The main problem was ear pressure. See, we dove twenty-one feet at maximum. That may not sound like a lot, but trust me, there is pressure. My ears hurt.
So all in all, scuba is fine. Angus absolutely loved it, and is now torn between becoming a plane repairman and a jet fighter pilot and becoming a master diver.
Me, I still think I want to live in a cottage in Norway, writing and illustrating books about dragons.