Rescue Diver…yay!
Whew! I did it! I am now a certified PADI Rescue Diver, so yay me!
I made it through both my “hell dive” and my “hell day” without (terrible) incident! The nice thing about the rescue class is that it gave me some exposure to lots of the things that I’ll be learning in much greater depth during my dive master course. Although I learned the basic rescue skills in this course, and had the chance to practice them a little, I’ll really be able to practice and refine them in the master class. Nonetheless, simply practicing them and enacting the scenarios and practical exams were a great learning experience.
On my hell dive, Thomas and Chris (the other divemaster who was conscripted to “torture” me) threw at me as many things as they could think of that go wrong during one dive. Stuff divemasters normally have to deal with like broken fin straps, panicked divers removing their mask and oxygen, runaway ascents, divers going loopy with narcosis, divers trying to take coral “souvenirs” etc. I had to be on top of my game and catch things either before they happened or before things got bad! It was a challenging dive, to say the least.
We also had a scenario that day where I had to find and rescue an unresponsive diver from the bottom of the ocean, bring him up to the surface, give him rescue breaths, get him onto the boat, start CPR and so forth. It’s a good thing to have practiced because on my hell day, of course one of the things that happened is at the end of one of our dives, someone went back down to the bottom and faked like they got stung by a stonefish, so I had to do another unresponsive diver rescue. Of course, I didn’t know that one was coming! We had just surfaced from a rather lovely dive and I was chatting with one of the other divers and waiting to get up onto the boat when we realized his dive buddy was not there anymore. Also, earlier in the day, there had been a man overboard situation I had to deal with. Quite the drama-filled day!
View from my hotel, El Nido
We finished it off with a beautiful dive, though, at a place where we went through a tunnel cave. The tunnel was essentially a 90-degree angle. At the curve of the tunnel, there’s a spot where you can ascend to a little air pocket (not that you want to breathe the trapped air there!) and then go back down to continue through the tunnel. We saw lionfish in the tunnel and just as we were coming out, there was a turtle hanging out, as if to greet us! After looking around on the other side of the tunnel, we came back through it before returning to the boat.
El Nido Bay from OG’s Balcony
It was a very beautiful dive. Right at the curve of the tunnel, there’s one spot where you can look and see both entrances to the tunnel, as though they’re two blue holes, while right above you in the cavern are a few openings where the water surges through with the waves, making spectacular currents for your air bubbles to float up in.
We only did two dives on that third day, but after 8 dives in three days, I didn’t mind taking a nap in the sun on the boat after lunch before heading back to shore, a newly certified rescue diver! I must admit, I treated myself to a massage in town that night as well. At approximately $10 for an hour treatment, I couldn’t resist! Also, I think I kind of deserved it after that challenging rescue dive course!
Next step, dive master!
Congratulations on your diving prowess! Can’t believe the things you did successfully!
It was a demanding class, but I actually enjoyed it! I am even looking forward to my divemaster class, which will be even more challenging. Of course, I’ll get to dive a lot, and that’s all it will really take for me to like it! Thank you for reading.