DIVING IN BALI

18th August 2015

I have wanted to give diving a go and Bali seemed like the perfect location. I chose to go with Atlantis Bali Diving School, and a beginners day course was $120. After an early pickup at 7am we headed to the dive school to get kitted up. I'll admit right now I knew nothing about diving, seriously nothing. I had booked it the night before which meant I hadn't had the time to think too much about it and get freaked out. But as the minibus pulled up to the dive site at Tulamben I got a little nervous. I was paired with a guy called Tamas who was also a complete beginner. As our helpful guide started to explain the process I got a little more nervous. Once I had all the kit on, I got even more nervous, so by the time I was in the practise pool, I was fully blown nervous. Putting the respirator in my mouth was the first hurdle. Gag reflex kicked in and I couldn't last longer than a minute under water without wrenching the damn thing out and going back to the surface.

This was a big problem. A dive lasts half an hour, so I was going to have to either get used to having this thing in my mouth or not dive. Whilst she went through all the exercises with Tamas, I had some time to myself to try to calm down and learn how to breathe normally with the mouthpiece. After several attempts I had sort of got the hang of it. She quickly went through what I should do if the mouthpiece comes out under water and how to clear the face mask of water. And then we were off to the ocean.

The first dive was straight from the shore in front of the dive centre. For the first half my mask was steamed up, and being already under water I couldn't ask how to clear it. So we swam around and I saw blurs of bright colours but didn't really see any fish properly... Oops. Once I had the breathing down, I attempted to clean my mask, it promptly filled with water, some went up my nose and I spluttered and snorted and managed to somehow clean the mask and eject the water. Result. A whole new world of life was right before my eyes. It was incredible! The sea bed was awash with colour and life that I had never seen before. Giant sea anemones wafted with the movement of the water and clown fish sauntered in and out of the tendrils. We also saw tonnes more colourful fish that I don't know the names of.

After lunch we headed back out for the second dive of the day. 10 minutes walk up the coast and 30metres from the shore lies the wreckage of the USS Liberty, a World War II Cargo ship. This is what interested me about coming diving on this trip as I was curious to explore a ship wreck, (perhaps from watching Titanic too many times as a 12 year old). The ship was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in 1942, the captain managed to steer it to the beach at Tulamben, but the volcanic eruption in 1963 pushed the boat back to its final resting place in the ocean.

Again we went from the shore (as opposed to jumping in off a boat like you see in the movies) and slowly swam towards the wreck. Which was easier said than done, I couldn't get the hang of swimming horizontally with the massive tank on my back. I kept curling into a ball, maybe some sort of reaction to the strange place I found myself. Anyway, we slowly made our way there, I was half being dragged by the instructor, but it seemed to work for us. Slowly but surely the wreck loomed before us, at first just a shadow but slowly coming into view. It was very very odd. I imagined it would look more like a boat but it was teeming with marine life and every available inch of metal had been taken over by coral growth. It was an incredible site, completely out of this world. As we neared the boat and swam along side it, Tamas had a problem with his breathing and wanted to head back to the surface. We all went up and he seemed pretty flustered (it made me feel slightly better that I wasn't the only one freaking out) and he said he would stay on the surface while we went down again. The instructor is meant to be within arms reach of us at all times, so she obviously couldn't let him do this. We decided we'd go down a couple of metres and see how it went. She slowly took us down again and we went along more of the wreck. At times we kept quite still and big fish swam right up to us. Schools of fish swam around the wreck. It was breathtaking and out of this world. 

Obviously the crappy disposable underwater camera doesn't quite capture the depth and colours, so you'll have to use your imagination to fill in the blanks!

I left the centre marvelling at what I'd seen, but unsure about the actual diving part. Maybe I need one more go to get the hang of it...!