Sue and Marie

This week has been crazy with Semana Santa. It seems to be that everyone who came to Puerto Vallarta over the holidays, wanted to try diving, well, nearly everyone. This need is easily satisfied for anyone who is not certified by doing a discover scuba dive or DSD. Our afternoons were spent in our pool teaching the 4 basic skills we like to teach our new divers before taking them into the ocean. This lets our divers get used to breathing underwater before taking them into the ocean.

We teach how to take our regulators (the bit we breathe through) out of our mouths and put it back in and then we take it out of our mouths and throw it over our shoulders and retrieve it. Why do we teach this skill? Well, imagine seeing something really cool, the 1st thing most of us do is to go wooooow. Funny thing is, our regulators fall out and we need to get them back. It´s also cool to have your photo taken underwater without a large piece of equipment shoved in it. The regulator fills with water when we take it out of our mouths, so we teach how to get rid of this so no one chokes.

Another skill we teach is how to clear a bit of water from your mask. This is useful as masks sometimes let a little bit of water in. Hairy men have a problem with this as the mask doesn’t seal properly. I have a problem with this as I am old, and when I smile underwater which is often do, my wrinkles cause my mask to let in water! Having a bit of water in the mask is sometimes useful as masks often get a bit of fog in them. We can rinse the water around inside to remove this and clear it out without having to go to the surface. If you put a little bit of pressure on the top of the mask, tip your head up a bit and blow out of your nose, the water comes out the bottom of it. Always good to remember not to breath in through your nose when it’s got water in it. Washing your sinus´s out with salt water stings, but certainly clears the head!

We also give everyone a thorough briefing on the equipment and how it works, how to relieve the pressures on the eardrums when we descend, a ton of hand signals, safety rules and all of the wildlife we will see when we are diving and how to interact with it. We don´t touch anything we see or frighten it as that is the quickest way to get bitten or stung underwater.

Then everyone is ready to go into the ocean and do a couple of dives down to a maximum depth of 40 feet. This is plenty deep enough for your 1st dives. We took everyone to Los Arcos last week and everyone had a great time. I am sure most will continue on and take a course so that scuba can be an ongoing part of their holidays.

We want to let you all know how simple diving is so more and more of you give it a try either in the pool or in the ocean. We want to dispel the myths that it is dangerous and only for the wealthy beach bum types. Fact is, it´s often cheaper than a good night out and doesn´t give you a headache, but it will give you something to talk about on your next night out. If there is anything specific you would like to know about diving or any questions you have, please drop us an email and we will answer them in the column.