Day 34 - Diving again! Hurray and WHAT a day!

Yesterday, I decided, "Khalas ("enough" in Arabic), I cannot not dive anymore. Rain or shine, I'm going". And luckily, the coin fell on "shine". Diving with Javier is always a lot of fun (and nowadays also a rare treat, as I mostly dive with David and Edgar this trip), and today it was topped with many little awesome happenings, such as:

• Finally, got to play with some splendid toadfish (by the way, "splendid" is not a colorful epithet that I personally chose for the description - I wish, but rather part of their official name; and I have to admit, they are pretty splendid). They usually stay in little cave-holes and only show their pretty faces. I never saw a toadfish out of its hide-out, but judging by the shape of its head I just assumed that they are kind of roundish. But apparently it's not the case at all! Their body is eel-like. Now that I've learnt this, I feel a real urge of getting a full-body view of one. So Javier gave me a little yellow lure that is supposed to get toadfish out of their caves, because it reminds them of something tasty they eat, I guess. You have to be patient though, and also pretty careful not to let the fish swallow the lure altogether. So far, I haven't been successful with my plan, but it doesn't reduce the amount of fun I'm having in the process!
• On the second dive, at Paso del Cedral, we saw maybe 25 lobsters. And all very close to each other: a dozen were sitting under a coral ledge, very alert-looking, as if on stand-by for some important announcement, and the rest were dispersed in pairs in the very close vicinity of this ledge. It really did look like some lobster convention. And also, it made me very hungry.
• My tank was leaking in a pretty bad way, so that I could actually hear the bubbles, which was annoying at first, but then I got used to this "musical" background. The reason this is on my happy happenings list though is because I'm so glad that now even with a pretty bad tank leak I don't have to worry about my air consumption. In my wildest dreams last year I couldn't have believed that I would ever be able to finish a 70-minute 70-foot deep dive with 1,200 psi, while having a serious leak all dive long. It really is just a matter of practice though, which is pretty inspiring to me right now in relation to my Spanish. If I am persistent enough, same time next year I may be able to finish a 70-minute conversation with yet another 1,200 words left to say.
• Lately, I hear a lot of stories about panicking divers, whose "episodes" start with breathing some water through the nose by accident while clearing their masks. So, although it's a basic open water skill to be able to swim without a mask, it's been a while since my last training, so I decided to try and see how it feels. I was just a tad nervous, because, obviously, when you take off your mask, the whole point is NOT to pinch your nose, but just continue breathing normally through your regulator, and I wasn't sure how I would react. Well, happy to report that I didn't have the slightest desire to breathe through my nose. Somehow, when your breathing pattern is already set through the regulator, breathing through your nose is really not the first thing that comes to mind when you get a chance to do so. I want my next challenge to be somebody tearing off my mask unexpectedly during the dive, so that I can see how I would react, but so far no dive master wants to experiment with me this way while having a whole group of recreational divers to take care of: tearing off somebody's mask is a pretty agreesive act, and they don't want the group to panic that the DM has suddenly gone psychotic:). And I guess, they don't feel like explaining the whole thing to the group either. Well, I'm sure one day a boat will be just fun enough to be talked into it. I just have to be careful what I wish for. I don't want everybody in the group to partake in faking the psychotic behavior.
• I felt anti-social today, so instead of getting off the boat for the surface interval (one hour), as I always do, I tried to play iguana in the front of the boat and soak in some sun before the next dive, which turned into a windy power nap. Very relaxing.
  
  When I was here for 6 weeks last summer, I really loved the social aspect of diving for about 4 weeks. Almost every day, you meet new people, you learn interesting stories about them - how they started diving, what they do, what their outlook on life is. And it's absolutely fascinating. Until it's not anymore. I remember how after a month of engaging and fulfilling conversations with fellow divers during surface intervals, I just shut down, and my brain refused to even focus on new people's names and faces, let alone their life stories. At which point, I started having lunch at the dive masters' table. Actually, on the WOW dive from last week there were 3 guys (totally unrelated to one another) who were so happy to see me "again", inquiring me about my migraines, interested in how many weeks I was staying for this time... And I had ZERO recollection of who they were. I proceeded by very carefully working my way out of a potential public embarrassment by asking general questions, re-learning their names from their self-introduction to others on the boat. It worked! They ended up having no clue that I didn't have the slightest idea who they were when we "met again". And this time again: one month - and total loss of interest in new same stories. It is understandable, but still kind of sad, because some of the stories are new new and I hate to miss them.

And last, but absolutely not least, for this amazing dive day was an incredible display of human will-power and potential: a diver with a prosthetic leg. This guy just recently got certified, today was his 18th dive. The prosthetic leg is not waterproof, so he dives with one leg (which means only one fin) and special webbed swimming gloves. Last summer, I dived with a paraplegic woman, who used to be a diver for many years before getting into some terrible accident. She decided to never stop diving. She just uses swimming gloves, as her legs don't work at all. And she is an absolutely spectacular diver and doesn't require any special attention underwater. Human beings never stop to amaze me!