RunningWithBulls.com - The curse of Sanfermin

08/11/05 - 11/11/05:
We are spending the week in La Gomera, in la Islas Canarias, Spain studying for our PADI Open Water Diver Course. We are doing it with the La Gomera Dive Resort in Playa De Santiago.

Over a year ago we said we wanted to get our Open Water Diver certification, and we wanted to do it in the Canaries.
The idea was put on the back burner for about a year, until we thought of it again recently.

All fell into place, the flights (with Aer Lingus - flying to Tenerife Sur, approx. €180 return each), the school La Gomera Dive Resort (located in Playa De Santiago, on the grounds of the Hotel Tecina), and the accomodation (staying in a beautiful apartment owned by the famous Mary Carmen!).

We arrived on the Tuesday mid afternoon after a horrible 6 (yes SIX) hour flight with Aer Lingus. This wasn’t the captain’s fault, with bad turbulence and a real grumpy (especially the snotty blonde cabin-crew member) it was “memorable” flight.

Once we arrived all changed, well once we got on the bus to the port. The airport was horrible, it was jam-packed with millions of guiris (yes, I too was a guiri, but I had a little decorum, and respect). Bloody foreigners everywhere!

I digress here a little. One of my inter-cultural rules of foreign travel:
If you are going to go to another country, learn the following words - hello/good bye/please/thank you/yes/no/excuse me/ i am sorry. These are the minimum words you need to have to show a person, who’s country you are a visitor in, that you respect them and are willing to adapt (in even a very small way) to their culture.

That’s all. You don’t have to become fluent and converse with all, BUT you do have to be able to speak in *the language of the country that you visit*, and if you don’t then you are rude. And I don’t care about people saying “oh but I am scared/embarrased/shy”.

How embarrassed would you feel talking [insert your own language here] to someone that doesn’t speak that language!

And I don’t care about you saying “Oh, but I am too old to learn something new.” When you changed your TV, or you microwave last, you had to learn how to turn it on didn’t you?! Well then….

I myself am a very bad student, but I know how to interact and act when in a small number of countries (more added regularly!)

Anyway, back to the diving course. A lot of the theory reminded me of Rescue swimming with the Irish Water Safety Association teachings that I used to teach.
A certain amount of theory and a big helping of common-sense. Some people don’t have common-sense and I guess you have to teach it to them.

The PADI approach to teaching diving seems like a good idea, it reaffirms that the most of the teaching is incase something bad happens, and this is the way to stay safe and have fun in the water. A lot of it is good thinking and common-sense.

The Dive school was very nice, it was small and well manned. Our instructor Brian (a English guy living there for 4 years and having 20 years experience) was a really cool guy. Very patient with us and gave interesting information along with the course teachings.

Yesterday we did our first dive. Wild. Excellent. Scary.

The first thing that came to my mind when we went under was the opening scene and opening music of Le Grande Bleu, Luc Besson’s (with music by Eric Serra) movie about freediving (and some love-story subplot, but we’ll forget that).

Standing still in the blue. Looking up, and seeing blue, down seeing blue. Absolutely amazing. Staying within the necessary guidelines, still made the dive an amazing experience. It is like you have to learn how to walk and breath all over again!

We are used to moving in 2D, but here you move in 3D! Another dimension of fun ;P
The 30-40 minutes felt like 3-4 hours. It was never ending until it ended
We came back to the centre and sat the final exam, which we both passed wonderfully! (When did I sit a paper exam last!).

Today again we did some theory work in the morning and then in the afternoon, another dive.

16/11/05:

Well we arrived back to cold, damp, miserable Ireland last night, after successfully passing our PADI Open Water Diver course. Our 3rd, and 4th (final) dives were the best of the whole trip. We managed to stay down for in total 2h 17mins.

If anyone reading this is interested in starting diving and is looking for a sunny place to do it, then La Gomera would be a great option.

I will be writing more on this in the coming few days.