Day 8 (12/1/12)

Today was supposed to be the day we did our dive and snorkel. So we got up praying that it wouldn’t rain and spoil the entire day for us. It had been raining the entire night before but it was relatively clear when we woke up. We got ready and went to the Lombok Dive Office where we had booked for our dives that day. As we stood there trying to conceal our nervousness with an outward appearance of bubbling excitement, instead of being taken to a place where we would be trained for the dive, we were taken to watch a really really long and boring training video about how to dive and snorkel. The scenario was so similar to attending a boring class in college that I found myself trying to hide my phone and secretly message people. It was a slightly embarrassing when I realized what I was doing!

The Dive

The minute we finished watching the excruciatingly long video, we were ready to be taken for the dive. But guess what happened? It started to rain! Looks like the rain gods hate us from the bottom of their buckets! But we continued trotting in the rain. After a long walk we changed into our dive suits and put on the fins for the feet, and were asked to get on a small boat. Once in the sea, Mohni our dive instructor, a young dynamic man, told us how to put on the oxygen tanks, how to breath underwater and what to do when water went into our mouths, eyes and so on. The first thing we were gonna do was to go 1 meter deep and pinch our noses. This helps ones ears to pop and get adjusted to the increasing pressure underwater. It was all about the bloody pressure. Unfortunately, when we went in 1 meter deep, my ear infection flared up and the pressure shot a pain in my ear. I couldn’t take it anymore and I wanted to come up. But before I could say that, Vishu gave the signal to come up.

V - Well, maybe it appeared to Sruti akka like I had given “the signal”, but in reality I had done nothing of that sort. A desperate and frenetic dash to the surface befitting a panicked elephant would be a more apt description of my actions. My apprehensions of the previous day were not misplaced, it appeared. You know the phrase “a fish out of water”, well that’s kind of what I was, in the water. I took this little misadventure as a sign from the sea gods and returned to dry land with my tail tucked firmly between my legs. Sruti akka decided to stay and give snorkeling a shot.

The Snorkel

I was determined to see atleast 1 turtle so I ignored the pain in my ear and stuck on. My efforts paid off. In the first few minutes of the snorkel, I not only saw a brilliant turtle, but also a puff fish and something that looked very similar to a baby shark!! Yayyy! :) I am just mentioning the fish that people rave about seeing but what I really enjoyed most was the other zillion fish that I didn’t know the names of. There were little blue illuminated fish, beautiful flora and tens of schools of fish going about their business. There was a whole world down there. Another world that I was looking into. It’s quite an experience to be a witness to a world beyond, or in this case the world below . I wonder how it would feel to witness our world from the cosmos above!

I enjoyed snorkeling and would love to do it again under better conditions if the opportunity presented itself. But if it doesn’t, then I won’t miss it. It’s something that everyone must try and experience atleast once in their life.

V - As for me, my love for the oceans remain undiminished, but I now understand that we must pursue this affair from a respectable distance.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful and we have a whole weeks worth of blog entries to catch up on. So, that’s all for now.