DRUNK DIVING

I’m finding it difficult to concentrate this afternoon. Goldfish brain brought on from spending so much time under water I’d say. And what a lot of water it was. Thirty odd metres of it. One hundred feet. The kind of depth that brings on brain bubbles if you don’t handle it correctly. The pressure of all that water over and around you constricts the oxygen in your body. That, and breathing bottled air, spikes the nitrogen levels in your cells. The nitrogen attaches itself to fatty tissues in your brain disrupting the synapses. For some people this brings on nitrogen narcosis, a semi-euphoric feeling a bit like being three beers into a lazy Sunday afternoon. At least that’s what it felt like to me as I settled on the silt at the bottom of The Cavern and watched wide eyed as the bubbles from my regulator burbled and danced toward the ceiling of the underwater cave. It’s a nice feeling and a dangerous one too. Judgement is impaired and poor decisions made. For some people, like my dive partner Phil, activities that would be simple on land become impossibly difficult to manage when you’re “narced out”. In one exercise the dive master held up both his hands, with three fingers extended on each. Using both his hands, Phil had to signal how many extra fingers the dive master would have to raise in order to bring the total tally of fingers extended between them to ten. Three times Akmed raised six fingers and three times Phil raised six fingers in return, each time becoming more insistent that he was responding correctly. He was adamant. In my own half-cut state I found it quite funny. I had an under water giggle at his expense and then failed the test myself.

Feeling drunk thirty metres below sea level wasn’t the only good thing about today’s dives. Diving the Bells to Blue Hole route is an amazing experience. It’s lazy writing but the feeling is indescribable in any satisfactory way. At twenty five metres you look around and see nothing but fish swarming over a coral reef that starts at the surface and literally disappears into the blue beneath you; eight-hundred metres of it. Today was a good day.

The Coolest Thing I Saw Today!

The coolest thing I saw today was a sea turtle effortlessly cruising past me. He didn't want to play. Still super cool.