We are for Scuba!

When we first moved to Indonesia, one of the most common questions people would ask us was if we were divers. Initially we thought it was kind of strange that people mentioned diving so much, but we quickly learned that Indonesia is home to some of the best scuba diving in the entire world. Sadly, despite this newfound knowledge of Indonesia's glorious diving, our answer to the diving question was always the same: no, we are not divers. Well, that all changed in March.

After the the Bromo trip, I trudged back to Jakarta, and Gloria was still in London for work. So when Chris asked me if I wanted to come meet him in Bali the following weekend I jumped at the opportunity. He found a place to stay in a small town called Amed, which is on the Northeast side of Bali, and on Friday, I headed out for the quick trip. The place where we were staying is a dive resort called Puri Wirata (in conjunction with Bali Reef Divers, and while we were there we decided to check out a Discover Scuba course. Basically this is an easy, fun way to experience scuba diving. If you have never done this I can't recommend it highly enough. It was an absolute blast. You start with some basic scuba instruction in the pool, then you head out to the ocean. Oh, also you get to wear wet suits, and everyone knows we all look better wearing skin tight body suits.

True Bromance

Fully adorned in our matching wet suits, we ventured out for our dive. It was pretty sweet. We went to the "Japanese Wreck" site, just down the coast from Amed. The history of the wreck is mostly unknown. Nobody seems to know how or when it sank, and supposedly even the fact that it's referred to as a Japanese ship because someone found an "Asian style" toilet on the ship and assumed it must be from Japan. Seems legit. The dive site itself is pretty spectacular. We saw tons of fish, a moray eel, a stingray, etc. Sadly I did not have an underwater camera with me, so here's a couple images courtesy of Google Image Search.

The ship's propeller (photo credit here)

photo credit: here

And here's a video of the site from the dive company we used:

After Discover Scuba, I was hooked, and as soon as I got home I told Gloria we have to do this. So we made some plans and few weeks later we were back in Amed to get our PADI Open Water Scuba Diving Certification. We stayed at the same place, which turned out to be a great decision. First of all, because it is an absolutely beautiful place.

Check out the view of the sunrise from your room! I made a little time lapse of it that turned out so-so.

 Our instructor Tom (who also helps run the place), is a great guy and was an awesome instructor.

Tom, our Belgian, metal head SCUBA instructor

Also, we were really fortunate that there were two people there, Olga and Jarno - a fabulous couple fron Finland, getting their dive master certifications. So we essentially had 3 guides for just the two of us. Score! 

Olga & Jarno, our Finnish dive master student instructors

Getting geared up

After taking care of all the initial pool tests and learning the basics, we headed out to the ocean for our first official dives! As you can see, for this trip, I brought along my GoPro camera, and my plan was to take all sorts of underwater photos & videos. Here's a few from our first dive.

Gloria, with our guide Tom leading the way

Tom up ahead of me. The underwater world is truly beautiful 

And here's a little something I threw together of us diving.



Despite these turning out ok, I learned something very important on that first morning: trying to shoot photos and videos while simultaneously learning to scuba dive doesn't work at all. So after the first morning, I left the camera at home and focused on diving. Fast forward 3 days and we are officially Open Water PADI certified divers! Many thanks go out to Tom, Olga, and Jarno for all their help.

Lastly, I want to make note of how proud I am of Gloria. She was a little apprehensive ("totally chicken shit" - Gloria's words) when we first started diving and during the first few dives she had to take a couple minutes to calm herself every time we submerged. But by the last dive, she was more relaxed than I was and was doing much better than me. She did a fantastic job and I couldn't be more proud. My wife kicks ass!

So there you have it. We are certified SCUBA divers. Seriously. Marine life, be warned: we're coming to find you.