Egypt impressions part I

A friend of mine asked me to join him on a spontaneous dive trip to Egypt this year, so of corse I was in!

The trip took us to Sharm el Sheikh, a place I have never before thought about going to.
Anyways – I liked it a lot, but yet – it was very difficult for me, too.

I am a spontaneous, outgoing girl, I like to express my thoughts, talk to people and enjoy myself.
But I found this quite challenging in Egypt.
One day, I left our hotel in order to get some souvenirs in the stores nearby, while my friend was staying at the hotel.
After entering the first store, I saw the salesman and another man (I guess a friend) having their lunch. Of course, I couldn’t keep quiet and wished them “Bel-Hana we’eshefa” (which is supposed to mean something like enjoy your meal in Arabic, no clue if I got the spelling right).
Instantly, one of the men got up, picked a bracelet for me and put it on my arm. Of corse I liked it (after all, I’m a girl), but it took me some time to realize he gave it to me as a gift – of course “you don’t have to buy anything” (nooooooo….)
Soon, they started asking their typical questions “where are you from”, “what are you doing here” etc.
One of them started complimenting me, whilst the other one left the store. Actually, I still felt comfortable then.
In the meantime I got another present – a necklace.

When I returned to the bracelets (I was still looking for souvenirs), he started singing next to me. First, I liked the idea of him not caring if I (a client) was around and just sing, but he was actually singing about me. I can’t remember the lines, but it was about my eyes being a window to heaven, my smile making him comfort and my voice sounding like angels.
This was a little to weird. Now, I wanted to leave.
But still, I didn’t want to be rude, so I politely told him I had to l leave. He wanted to give me a goodbye present, another necklace. When he put it on, he was so close. I felt his fingers on my neck, his breath too, oh, how I wanted to get away, but he sure took his time.
When he was done, I said goodbye (this took for about 10 mins as he wouldn’t let go of my hand and I didn’t want to upset him, as I wasn’t quite sure whether to be pleased or scared) – and finally left the store.

That was when I decided to not go shopping on my own again.

Deep reservations

Those of you who read the february issue of the Dive Magazine might already know this, as I got to tell “what happened to me” in there. To all the others, here you are:

Pushing your maximum depth may seem adventurous. But I found out it isn’t big and it certainly isn’t clever

People new to diving often ask about your deepest dive.
I’ve started using this as an opportunity to explain not how amazing the dive was, but what I learned from it, and why I’d never do it again, why you should never exceed the depth limits of your diving qualification or the depth you feel comfortable with.

It was a cloudy July afternoon and five of us decided to go diving. Jim and Lisa had done the same diving course as me, but while Jim and I had received our certification, Lisa still had to demonstrate one skill to complete the course. Luke had been diving for about a year and Tony was our instructor.
We decided to try a new dive site near our home in Germany. We arrived and put on our gear. We decided to dive in one big group: Tony buddied with Jim and Lisa; me and my close friend Luke followed them. From among the newbies, I was picked not to dive with Tony, because I had the most experience – it was my 75th dive.

Our first dive took us just below 50m. My training qualified me to dive to 20m, and the next course I was about to start would involve diving as deep as 40m, with an instructor. But Lisa hadn’t even finished her first course. I must admit that I don’t remember much from the dive. As I’m generally fascinated by how our minds work slower underwater, I always try to calculate easy things, like ‘6×7’ when I dive. I did that then, and I didn’t feel I was any slower than usual.
Back on shore, Tony asked if we wanted to go for another dive. Lisa didn’t feel well and hadn’t enjoyed the first dive. Looking back, I have to say she was clever. And strong. It’s hard to say ‘I’m out’ if all your friends want you to join them. We decided to stick to our positions, so Jim and Tony were ahead, Luke and me behind. At about 40m I stopped looking at my computer. I felt everybody began to dive faster, and I didn’t want to lose them. I had no clue
where we were or how exactly I would get back out. I calmly came to the conclusion that I had to follow my friends. I didn’t want to be accused of wrecking their dive, but I was also afraid they wouldn’t listen to me.
Suddenly, I realised Jim was dangerously low on air. He only had 50 bar left in his 12-litre tank and we’d been trained to end the dive with 50 bar, not to use it up. So Tony gave Jim his alternate air source.
Today, I can’t clearly remember whether we started to ascend right away or went a few metres deeper, but I did see Luke still descending when Jim and Tony started going up. As he was just looking at his computer, it was pretty obvious to me what he was trying to do: hit a depth record.
By then, I was frozen (only Tony, was in a drysuit) and glad we were going back. I had started to dislike the dive as I felt I had no control over it and realised I was putting myself and others at risk. None of the computers showed deco stops, but we did an extended safety stop anyway.

Jim, Tony and Luke had loved the dive.
At least, that’s what they told everybody. It happened only a little more than a year ago, but now it all feels so awkward, wrong and thoughtless. I didn’t know anything at the time, but I’m changing that by getting more training and qualifications. Plus, I always pay attention to where I’m diving and who I dive with. I look at maps of a new dive site before I go there, because I want to be able to find my own way around. More importantly, I talk to my buddies about what exactly we’re going to do: how deep are we going? How long for? Which direction are we going? That way I can make an informed choice to do the dive or not and resist pressure from friends to push my limits.

Weekends….

A weekend without a dive wouldn’t be a weekend 🙂

my first ocean dive… or: diving in Brasil.

This summer, I’ve spent 3 weeks in Brasil for the World Youth Day. After the “main” World Youth Day programm in Rio de Janeiro, I’ve spent a week in Buzios, where I got the chance to dive in the ocean. This was to be my first ocean dive!

After a bit of googling I found a diving center that seemed quite nice. So a friend of mine went and started looking at the given adress. Of course (it

BRASIL (Photo credit: gi varga.)

wouldn’t be Brasil…) when we arrived at the adress, there was nothing. But on the way there we had passed several other diving centers, so of course we checked them all out:
Most of the people in the centers didn’t talk english at all, others only very little, so it was much easier for me to use my tiny little bit of portuguese that I had learned the 2 weeks before. Besides, I could use my hands. Like you would under water. Of course.

Before talking to them, I had a slight preferation for the SSI-Center. But as I talked to the guy there, I felt he had no clue. He didn’t actually know where we were going to dive, he couldn’t tell me how much time (about) we were going to spend underwater, nor could he tell me the size of the tank.

So the actually most attracting center was the PADI-one. The guy in there (Pablo) seemed really trustworthy (even though his english was very poor). And as I was also looking for a try-dive for my friends, it all seemed perfect.

Buzios

I came back the next day with a brasilian friend of mine who then helped translating everything. So we fixed everything up.
By then, I unfortunately knew I was going to be the only member of our group to go diving. The others either had a little cold or used to get seasick, which, of course, isn’t very helpful if you plan to spend half a day on a diving boat.

So on friday it was finally time for my first ocean dive!I got up early in the morning, because we were supposed to meet at 8 by the diving center. Even after almost 3 weeks in Brasil, I was very “austrian” and arrived there at quarter to 8. Of course, there was nobody else. 10 to 8: nobody. 5 to 8: nobody. 8: nobody. Finally, at about 10 past 8 Pablo arrived and opened the shop. I got in, signed some papers and then we got in the car. I was a little confused, because he had told me there were going to be some other people too, but I figured out we were going to pick them up.

I soon had to realise that the two others didn’t speak english, german, french ot italian either- and those are all the languages I speak. Anyways. I decided to stick to underwater-language 🙂
They were: a guy, let’s just call him the brasil-guy, and his girlfriend, who was a real appearance:  tiny (but not all of her body parts were tiny, there was a big exeption), and about 2cm of make up in her face. (we were about to go diving, true?)

On our way we went to pick up an oxygen analyser as I was going to dive with Nitrox.
Pablo gave the analyser to me: I had never seen such an easy-to-use analyser.

not our boat, but our day 🙂

then we finally arrived at the boat: it was such a nice day! 🙂

I was actually allowed to carry one bag (but only together with that other guy, and it wasn’t heavy at all!)
and we got on the boat, where we were allowed to do: nothing.

I must admit: that’s a thing I’m not used to. Usually, I do it all, I do it myself, and finally: I know it’s done and I know it’s done properly. Well than, after a view minutes I was given a diving suit (and pablo took exactly the right size) and so I thought this would mean I could start getting ready. So that’s what I did.

After trying on the neopren suit, I started looking for the rest of my gear. First, I checked my jacket, tank and instruments. Instantly, Pablo came and wanted to check my EAN mixture. I told him I wanted to check it myself, which seemed very weird to him.

The rest of the equipment was… well… not that up to date either, but I figured out it was ok, except for I could hear some air coming out somewhere by the first stage. So “we” changed that. In this case, “we” of course meant Pablo did it while I watched him. It was so weird!

Next, I was given fins.
You might actually call those things fins. you might also call it plastic-crap.
Unfortunately, only those fins fitted me.
It was terrible, it was so hard to keep a trim, especially with the waves coming in, they were so tiny and so soft.
I was so glad I had at least brought my own mask. That was acutally a point where all the others starred at me  and laughed: “professional, eh?”

I quite like this short sequenze, because it shows how little I was allowed to do myself:
Sitting there with my gear on and my mask in my hand, I saw a guy coming up to me with a anti-fog-spray.
I prefer spitting in my mask – so i quickly did that, before he had any chance to spray it. he just laughed at me. The very moment I wanted to get up to clear my mask, he took it, and went to clear it for me…

Then we finally got into the water, I loved it!

Visibility wasn’t that good that day (as Pablo said), but I didn’t even notice, as I am used to much less visibility.
There were so many fish, colourful fish, different fish, interesting fish, i had never seen so many beautiful fish.

 

Soon, the first turtle came by.
Of course, I had seen some turtles the days before, when I went snorkeling every day. But this was so different (of course)! 🙂

our dive was about 50 minutes, we actually had to get back up because Pablo was low on air. His comment: “you not open your tank, you no breath”

so then it was the other 2 guys turn. The basil-guy did quite well, he liked it and he actually dived, whereas his girlfriend was very fun to watch. she never really got underwater, I could always see her tank, but I think she didn’t realise it, for when I asked her how she had liked it, she said it was so much fun. Unfortunately we couldn’t talk much more, for she didn’t speak underwater-language fluently 😉

After that, we got to a different spot and it was my turn again. (in between the dives, I had been able to change my tank all by MYSELF, haha, what a good feeling)
Not much to say, but I want to show you some more pictures. I know, they are not very good quality, but they were taken with Pablos camera, which wasn’t very high quality. But anyways. It’s pictures 😉

I especially like the middle one: I think you can see about everything:
visibility: mediocre
equipment: ….
me: stunned by everything
my trim: well, it actually doesn’t look as bad as it felt…

I loved that one the way back the brasil-guy and his girlfriend fell asleep, whereas Pablo and I tried to talk a little more.
When we went to a gas station, we were asked if we wanted some coffee which was offered to us by the gas station. I really liked this. Man, one should offer this everywhere. The coffee was tiny (as it always was in brasil) but it was gooooooood! 🙂

But I also started wondering why people tend to be so tired after diving.
It can’t really have to do with the pressure, for the girlfriend wasn’t really under water, it might be the hormons with the excitement and so on, but maybe one of you knows? I’d love to hear more!

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

Name(required)

E-Mail(required)

Webseite

Kommentar(required)

Submit

Δ

Barotrauma

Barotrauma is physical damage to body tissues caused by a difference in pressure between a gas space inside, or in contact with the body, and the surrounding fluid.

In early fall (it was my dive number one hundret and something) I went diving with a couple of friends in a lake nearby.
The lake is one of my favourite lakes, not underwater, but it looks so nice on the top – I always was attracted by it’s look.

Anyways, this time, we were going to dive there – like many times before.Altogether we were 4 ppl. Me, an instructor and 2 buddies of mine that did the same course earlier.

We had two very nice dives – there are two wracks on the bottom of the lake which we visited, which was very nice to. Visability was OK, it was just a fun diving-day.
After the two days (and a short break) we decided to do another, third dive.
I asked my buddies if we could do a buddy change. After diving with a girl-buddy for 2 dives, I wanted to do the third dive with my boy-buddy.
Of course, this was fine with everybody. We decided that my instructor + girl buddy were to dive in front, whereas my boy-buddy and me should just follow them.

As we started our dive, I felt pressure in my right ear. But as I never ever had any serious problems with my ears or my ear clearing I just went on, slowed down, though. (Mistake #1, what about going back up?)
A few meters deeper I decided I couldn’t go any further as my ear was really aching now.
Now I guess my buddy made a mistake, too. He wasn’t close to me. In fact, he was about a meter deeper than I was, too far away to reach out to him.

As I wanted to go back up, I felt like I had to reach out to my buddy to tell him (mistake #2, what about waiting for my buddy to check on me?) – but as I couldn’t reach him from where I was, I clenched my teeth and went down to him (Mistake #3, what about using my torch, or even changing my position and using my fin to make him aware of me would have been enough…)
The very moment I reached out to him and showed him the signal for my problem: boooooom!

I just used my one hand to hold onto him, and my other hand to circle in front of my eyes – which was supposed to mean “I’m dizzy” – then I hold onto him.
Right at that moment I was very glad we had both done this weird diving course: how many times had we practised how to safe your buddy: how to get a buddy back up to the surface without him/her helping. ‘Cause that’s exactly what my buddy did.

Back up to the surface I felt like everything was OK, I wasn’t dizzy anymore, I could hear, everything was fine. But luckily my buddy took the lead and made me get out of the water. Soon I started shaking. Usually, my boy-buddy isn’t the care-taking person, but back at that moment, he really took good care of me. I know, with a different buddy this might not have happened, but to sum it up: it was me, who made 3 big mistakes and I am just happy how he dealt with the whole situation.

When our 2 buddies got back from there dive, we didn’t tell them the whole truth for neither of us realised the whole situation.
On the way back in the car I felt like it was getting harder for me to understand what people said, I had a very hard time listening. Besides, a weird-colored fluid was coming out of my ear. It was a reddish ocher.

my tympanic membrane (green) had 2 big claft

The next day I went to see an ear-doctor who told me my eardrum was injured. There were two big cleft.
The cold water that got through that cleft into my tympanic (the red area in the picture) which was not only the cause for my dizzyness and total leck of orientation, but also caused an acute ear.

Of course, my hearing wasn’t that good anymore, and I had to go through hundrets of listening-tests.

At that time of water-abstinence I started to really get into diving theory and learnt very much about my body and myself.

The hard thing was, that even though everybody knew about me not beeing able to even go swimming (i had to keep my ear totally dry) – i got some messages almost every weekend asking wheiter I wanted to go diving.

When my hearing-ability was back to normal, (and that took about 3 months) – the doctor finally gave me the OK to get my ears wet again. Means: I was allowed to shower, or to go swimming. But no diving at all, no headers, just plain swimming, head above the water.
This was like heaven to me. I’ve been missing water sooooo much! And yet it was aweful. I just wanted to put my head underwater….

But that took another month. Around christmas, the doctor gave me the OK to do 3 very safe dives, meaning: in the local swimming pool, at 3 meters depth, with a buddy, under total control, with very slow de- and ascending. I was the happiest girl ever! The 3 dives were all fine, I could try my fins, work on my buoyancy, i enjoyed it very much.

The next time I went to see my doctors I thought he would say I’d be allowed to dive again. But of course not. I was allowed to do 2 5m dives – same circumstances. The only problem was that it is very hard to find some 5m pools in my area. But ok, I got to manage that.

Finally, I was allowed to dive open water again! Limited at 10meters though, but YEAAAH YIPPIEEE YEAAH YEAH!
We went in a lake nearby and did a very nice, long but slow dive. When we checked our computers afterwards, our descending rate was 4 mps at most.
Another open water dive at 10m and I was allowed to go “normal” again.

After all, it took me about 4 months to get into water again…

I am very happy I am able to dive again and even though I’d never say “i’d take this again”, I am very thankful for this lesson.
I’m still very careful at de- and ascending, I am super-careful with my ears and I always check on my buddies 3 times or more once they seem to have some problems with their ear clearing.

it wasn’t that bad

Today, I just kept thinking about what I wrote the days before…
It seems to me, you must be shocked by what I wrote about my diving course.
Therefore I really feel I have to say: it wasn’t that bad!

It’s just… we were always told that this was to be a very tough course (which it was, indeed), and we were going to be part of the worlds best scuba divers afterwards. That kept our expectations high. And I guess that’s why the fall afterwards was quite deep, too.

Anyways: I didn’t want to trade, for I think this course was a very good start into diving – but I am very glad I took some more courses afterwards, and I am even more glad knowing that I don’t believe what I was told many times: “After this course you won’t have to do any specialities, you’ll know it all”.

But let’s go step by step…

starting to become a diver

During all the training hours in the lakes and mudholes I always felt a lot of pressure put on me. On the one hand I felt ike I was the worst student of our course and on the other hand I didn’t feel like our course was there to learn – it seemed to me, everybody was expecting us to show that we knew how to do it. Therefore I made some friends go diving with me (apart from the lessons) and as one of my friends was assistant instructor it was ok for my instructors, too.

After 2 or 3 dives apart from the course I started to enjoy diving. I still remember the first time I was told that I was just doing good (and nothing about what I did so badly wrong was mentioned by a friend. It used to be quite sometimes that I’d ask my friends to go diving with me in the afternoon (after diving lessons in the morning) – it just was a totally different thing!

I couldn’t wait to finish my course and become a certified diver, which I finally did in early summer of 2012.
Afterwards I soon was “the buddy” – as I was just finishing university and “only” working on my thesis, I was able to manage my time all on my own and always found time for diving. Therefore, I could join almost everybody who went for a dive.

As a result, I soon was allowed to guide my own dives as I had spent 10 hours underwater after getting my certification. Now I feel like I had no idea about what guiding a dive meant, but back than I enjoyed now having to find an experienced enough diver to join me. I was able to go diving with my diving-course-buddies. And of course, they all wanted to join me, as I was available and flexible.

That’s when I really started being a diver. I enjoyed spending time under water, even screwing my gear together wasn’t that bad anymore.
Underwater it seemed like all my thoughts were blown away and I could just dive.

Nothing else.
Breath.
Kick.
Dive.

about me (and my first dive)

I kind of feel like giving you an idea of who I am would be an awesome idea. After all, this blog should be some kind of personal.

I was born in the late eighties the last century, in a small town in the centre of europe.

Swimming (Photo credit: maraker)

At the age of 4 I had my first swimming lessons, I must admit: my mum rolled me up for swimming lessons about 4 or 5 times ’til I was about 6 years old. After every course I used to be able to swim a little, but then I forgot it again, due to the leak of continuos practice. Finally, I was put into some kind of “swimming zoo”:

Actually I was rolled up for the youth part of a big, good and useful organisation, but our weekly practice was more like having fun in the water with our “trainer” (who was actually more like a grandpa to us). As we grew older, that of course changed. I’ve had some really good trainers, ones that turned me not only into a really good swimmer but in a person feeling at home in water.

Swim training 14 (Photo credit: Michael Lokner)

Let’s skip some years now…

In 2011 I was asked if I wanted to specialise in diving. I had only little idea what that would mean, but as time allowed me to roll up for the course, I did.

At first, it all seemed so difficult:the theoretical part was so tough, everybody seemed to understand physical laws, our bodys reaction, and also about diving gear.
To me, everything was new. And it was so tough!

But fortunaltely, I kept going:
I asked other members from our organisation to teach me individually, I spent hours and hourse with the script I was given.
After passing the exam I felt awesome.

Again, it shouldn’t be that easy. The nights before my first dive I had some really bad dreams. I dreamed about loosing all my friends, because they went diving in my flooded house – they just went to look for something or someone missing and never came back up again.Finally, we were there: the day of the first dive. Of course, getting all my diving gear together correctly was another big problem I had to deal with. To me it seemed, my diving gear had to be treat differently every time. One time I had to screw to the left side, the other time it had to be to the right side. Besides, I was really scared of getting blown up by something exploding with all that high pressure.
After looking at my diving gear with some mentors about a hundred times, getting it all together, putting it away again, just to start all over, I finally figured out the how-to.
For complete understanding I must say that I never really got how to screw a screw in or out, nor ever understood where the heck right or left was.

Informal Recreational diving flag (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Another big part was done. Yeah!
Underwater for the first time everything was new. The teacher who joined my for my first dive was really old (I still don’t know how old he actually is, but I guess about 70) and underwater he looked like dead to me: he was so freaking pale. Luckily there was another diver with us – and as long as that diver didn’t react to my dead teacher I felt like I could trust everything being OK.
Next problem: my two buddys seemed to be in the perfect spot all the time. With me, it was more like an elevator. One time I went almost up to the surface, next I went back down into the mud. The only thing that kept me believing in my self, was my two buddies telling me I was doing quite well after that first dive – even though I could hardly believe what they said…

Why? and What?

A couple of years ago (2007-2010) I really used to love blogging.
I blogged about everything – just things, that occured in my daily life. Sometimes more interesting, sometimes less.
The most interesting period in my blogging-career was certainly around 2008 when I went to live in Canada and blogged for all my loved ones back home.

Anyway: the last couple of weeks I kept thinking about taking up blogging again – even though this time it should be a more specialised blog:
I started diving in 2012 and only a year (and more than 100 dives) later, diving is my biggest passion.

As I had lots of weird experiences, useful ones, ones I’ve learned from, and ones that even may help others, I find it a really nice idea to blog about all that.
It should only be about me, but also about what my friends and buddies experience – and also about YOUR inputs. – Yes, that’s it. I’d really love this blog to become a discussion platform that may help us all to become better divers 🙂

Besides, sometimes, I feel, it’s just nice to get rid of some weird experiences by telling them someone listening. I feel like the internet’s a great spot to do so: If you like my blog – or the one or the other post – read it: if not, go along, I’m sure you’ll find something that adresses you more.