Bali, Indonesia: Learning to Dive

Sanur

As humans, we are naturally drawn to water. You know that feeling of calm that stems from being on, in, or near the water. The sound of the ocean waves. The feel of it engulfing you as you jump into its depths. The Earth is made up of 71% water, and our bodies contain around 60% water, so when you think about it, it makes sense. Our bodies need water to live, and it is the basic building block of our existence. The ocean holds 96.5% of all Earth’s water. And though it might bring a sense of calm upon us, the ocean is extremely mysterious. Science has taught us so much about the ocean’s fragile ecosystem and the marine life living inside, yet two thirds of ocean life still remains undiscovered. Essentially it’s a whole other world under the surface of those blue waters.

I’ve always wondered what it was like down there, especially beyond the shore where I can touch my feet down. Josh and I have done a lot of snorkeling (especially on this trip) and love it. It feels like you are gazing down through a giant window, getting a glimpse inside this massive foreign space, where all the fish and marine life move about their day as if you aren’t looking. It always shocks me how much life lies just below our fins and masks as we kick around.

The idea of diving- of actually descending into the blue depths to experience it from within, rather than watching from above, always appealed to me. But it also terrified me. Of course the first thing I’d always think of when jumping into the ocean are the creatures that could harm me. You know the ones- big sharp teeth… SHARKS! Or the stingers like jellyfish or stingrays…or just the massive fish that might brush past me and freak me out for no reason. But all the amazing things you can see completely outnumber the scary things, and I really wanted to try diving at some point in my life. Josh and I wanted to learn some new skills while on our trip around the world. We’ve been (and are heading) to so many amazing places along the ocean with beautiful reefs and marine life this year. This was definitely our time to learn to dive.

I don’t think of myself as a brave person. I actually get nervous about things way to easily and sometimes unnecessarily. However, I’m a firm believer in getting outside your comfort zone and testing your personal limits. Usually this leads me to doing new things that scare (or sometimes terrify) me. But through the experiences I expand who I am, and shake out some of the nerves that used to be there. Diving was one of those things that definitely hit some nerves, but I knew I needed to try it anyway.

We did a lot of research and landed on Bali being our place to learn. It was a great price with reputable dive shop options who had great reviews, and amazing reefs with warm water. We wanted to get Open Water PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) certified and go through the complete course properly so we could dive around the world in the future and really know what we’re doing. The PADI course is pretty in depth, and requires 3-4 full days of classroom, pool skills, and open water diving. Because of this, we waited until we were done teaching English to get certified. When our month of teaching ended we headed to Sanur, which is a smaller beach town on the southeast coast of Bali. We hadn’t been to Sanur before, but it was nearby many of the famous diving spots in Bali, and we found a really good Five Star PADI Certified dive shop, Bali Aqua to do our course.

Sanur was beautiful, and incredibly calm. Since we were still in rainy season it was a pretty quiet time of year for tourists, so we saw some people out and about but it was pretty laid back. We rented a private bungalow through AirBnb nearby the dive shop, which was a five minute walk to the beach and the main part of town, and it was perfect for our time there.

The course was actually a lot more work that we though it would be! It was pretty intense. Leading up to our first day of class Josh and I had to read several chapters of the dive manual online, and fill out quizzes for each section. It took us quite a bit of time and it was a lot to remember because all the concepts were completely new.

We didn’t have much free time since we were at the class all day for four days, and when we were done we were completely exhausted. It poured down rain a couple of the nights too, so we passed out pretty early. But we did manage to have a couple really great evenings in Sanur (when the weather cooperated) and got a couple awesome sunsets on the beach and found an awesome Italian restaurant that we became short-term regulars at for many of our meals.

I thought learning to dive would freak me out, and I was completely spot on. The nerves were flying for all four days. The first day was all classroom theory, which was extremely helpful, and pretty straightforward, but a lot of information. Our first pool day was tough! Jumping into the pool with a metal tank strapped to my back did not feel natural to me, and I was so worried I would sink.

Then we had to check off all the important skills, primarily dealing with emergency situations under water, like taking your regulator out under water and putting it back in, taking on and off your BCD under water, taking your mask off underwater and putting it back in…. the list goes on. It made me realize just how many things could go wrong….yikes! Luckily our instructor Branko was amazing. He was incredibly thorough with all the different skills we had to learn and really helped us both master it. Josh and I both had our minor freak-outs in the pool, but we made it through the day unscathed (minus pruny hands).

Our first dive in the ocean was something I will remember forever. It was just Branko, Josh and I diving in Padang Bai, about an hour from Sanur. We went out to the reefs on a little wooden boat. We got all our equipment on, then leaned back (tank first) and fell into the ocean. I came up to the surface and gave the ‘OK’ signal, then we began descending into the ocean. I could breathe fine with my regulator tightly clenched in my mouth, but I immediately felt like I wasn’t getting enough air and started to freak out. I could feel the panic starting to rise up in me and began to think of everything that could possibly go wrong. My heart was beating out of my chest and my mind started telling me on repeat ‘go back up, go back up.’ But then I looked around. I saw the pink and yellow corals, and the fish swimming around me. Then I saw Branko and Josh, and I began to calm down and slow my breath. Everything we practiced started to come back to me, and seeing the incredible reef reminded me why I was doing this. I focused on slow, deep breathing, and began to swim with the two of them as we explored around the reef. We did two dives on our first day, and both were spectacular. Seeing the ocean from the inside was exhilarating, and felt magical. It was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Being able to glide through the water made me feel like I was in outer space, and all the marine life we saw felt out of this world. It was such an exhilarating experience!

We did two more dives the next day, and I was definitely still nervous when I first got into the water, but once we went under it faded away. On our second day of diving we took a boat out to some islands near Bali, Nusa Lembongan and Nusa Penida. The area was absolutely beautiful, and we saw cuttlefish, clownfish, stingrays, and more. It felt amazing to end the dives with our official PADI certification, knowing we can now explore anywhere!

Tulamben

We actually enjoyed diving so much that we decided to dive another day with Branko, and headed over to the northeast part of Bali to Tulamben to dive into the famous shipwreck there, the USS Liberty. The ship was hit by a Japanese torpedo during WWII and was intentionally stranded on Tulamben, where it was unloaded. Then, in 1963 Mt. Agung erupted and the lava ended up pushing the wreck back into the ocean, but at a shallow depth of 3-29 meters.

Since then, coral has grown all over the boat and it is incredibly full of marine life. We did two dives at the wreck, and swam through the boat seeing shrimp, eel, and fish of all shapes and sizes.   By the end of our six dives I finally felt really comfortable diving, and was no longer thinking about my every move and breathe.

I’m so glad we decided to try diving, and I feel like it has opened up a new world to explore and discover. I couldn’t have done it without Josh being my ‘buddy.’ He kept me calm so I could carry on, and now we have a new bucket list forming of all the cool dive spots to explore in the future.