Scuba Diving

One of the activities we decided we wanted to try at some point in the trip was scuba diving. Joe had never been before and I had only had a go once on a family holiday in Turkey when I was very young so we thought it would be a great opportunity to take a PADI experience course. For this we went to Let’s Dive Palawan and we have to say we were very impressed with their credentials and professionalism.

We started with a classroom style briefing in the office, going over the do’s and don’ts of scuba, before heading out to shallow water to practice essential skills like recovering your respirator and clearing water from your mask. After this we headed out on a 30 minute starter dive to get used to being in the water and practising moving with the gear on. I was told I’m positive buoyant meaning the instructor had to keep adding a load of weight to me to stop me drifting to the surface (Joe was negative buoyant meaning he sank like a stone).

We had about 30 minutes to recover from our first dive, sharing bananas and cookies with the boat driver before we headed out on our second dive. This time we did the whole ‘falling backwards off the boat in gear’ thing before heading to a depth of 12 metres to check out Palawan’s coral reef. Visibility is not the best here, but the water was clear enough for us to spot basically the entire cast of Finding Nemo. We were in the water for 35 minutes and were praised as ‘naturals’ because we were able to keep up and didn’t need to be dragged around like some novices.

We now have our PADI registration which means for the next year we can do fun dives with a qualified instructor without having to do all the training again. Overall the day was exhausting (who knew breathing underwater could be so tiring?!) but incredibly fun. We both enjoyed it so much we are thinking in the future we’d want to do more training and become qualified ourselves!