Andy Brain Doesn't Compute

We were ready at 9:30 and met Tata and went through some assessment questions before learning how to setup our equipment. This wasn't too bad, I'm quite good at jigsaw puzzles as long as it's not a tent I've never seen before!

A little boat was ready to take us 500m to the bay which we arrived in to practise our confined dive skills. The videos we watched showed this part to be in a swimming pool so being out in the elements was the first surprise. I got my kit on and managed to backwards roll out of the boat as instructed without any issues. I struggled with my first few practise breaths underwater and then it became much easier. I suspect most of what I will write will jog the memories of those of you have already been through this! Then there are two basic skills you learn, taking out your regulator (the bit you breath from, throwing it away from you and then being able to recover it. The second skill is being able to empty water in your mask whilst underwater. I can say that both techniques look straight forward on the videos and the demo from our instructor, but like my mind in so many of these situations it would just turn to mush when it was my turn to do it. After several failed attempts and rushes back to the surface of the water we attempted some swimming around before heading back for lunch.

After lunch we went outside our hotel in the water with just a snorkel, mask and fins to practise moving our legs from the hips and not from the knees. It went fairly well even at my snails pace (we had to do it for 400 meters).

In the evening we got ready for sunset, sitting on some beans bags on the beach outside our hotel, making a mistake ordering happy hour two for one cocktails and ending up with two each rather than one! Tata came and sat down with us and we had a chat, he lives on the island and is a Telecoms Engineer when the diving season is over, he is 43 and has a wife and 7 children. One of his daughters (who's 18) is a dive master for the same dive school. We asked him about the Typhoon last year, he said that although he has witnessed many, this one was very scary. The roof came off his place and he had to make the decision to stay or to go. They choose to go so then he had to take control of the situation and get the family out to the back of the house ready to run to the neighbours. They made it across ok (although Tata had two broken toes from trying to hold they table they used to jump on to as a escape route. A few minutes later he looked back and 3 Palm trees had fallen onto his home.

There was a clear view of the sun dropping into the water, and soon it was darkness. Sun sets around 6.

Times I've tripped over my flip flops since being on the island; 7

Items brought from mini-bars; 0 (I'm being resilient!)

How many times I've got up to turn the air con off; 30