Scuba

Now that we’ve become weather wimps living in Southern Italy the next trip had to be somewhere warm. Our recent trip to Austria and Germany between Christmas and New Years ranged between -5 and -8C with wind chills going down to -15. Even though we enjoyed the Christmas markets and other festivities last year, we have become acclimatized to the point now that we both thought it was way too frikkin’ cold this time. Yes, very shameful for 2 Canadians that should be sitting in their shorts at those temperatures. John wanted to go somewhere and sail for a week while I thought I wanted to go somewhere warm, and maybe do a day sail, but not spend the whole time on a boat.

As John tends to be the one who plans our various voyages he sat down at the computer and after many many cups of coffee one Sunday, emerged to proclaim that we were going to the Maldives and finally getting our PADI Scuba qualifications. He had done a few resort dives, but I had only ever snorkeled, and always came up with various excuses why I would not get trained/qualified in various warm climates that we have been in.

John can easily reinforce why we should do this in order to have the skill for the future while we’re on our boat to more easily clear snags, inspect/clean the hull, will save money, blah blah blah… But yes it will be good for me to final stop avoiding it so that, yes, we can do all those practical things but mainly for us to be able to explore the underwater environment without the usual restrictions swimming and snorkeling have, and interact with the various critters that we have not up to now been able to get up close and personal with.

Then again, there is always this to think about, “trying to physically get us in the water”??!!!