Province of Cebu

After yesterday's snorkeling, although nervous, we were super excited to begin scuba diving. We arrived at the dive centre for 10:15am and was hoping to practise with our equipment etc but Bro set it all up for us and took it all to the boat. This made us a bit anxious as it has been 3 months since we last dived and testing our bcds etc would have warmed us nicely back into it. The dive centre was super busy and just before 11am we were loaded onto the boat. Now, we have only ever done shore dives before, you just walk out with all your gear into the shallow water. For a boat dive you basically roll off backwards into the water, so I was super nervous about this. By the time myself and Will got our gear on our instructor and the rest of the team were already in the water and we were really feeling pressured to get a move on. Luckily another instructor on the boat walked us through it step by step and checked that we were all ready to go in a calmer manner. And I did it! I rolled off. It was kinda fun actually, well once I inflated my bcd and remembered to actually breather through regulator haha When Will got into the water he was getting quite panicked as his bcd wasn't tight enough and we were being rushed to begin descending so I stayed with him while he tried to fix his vest. In the meantime I was trying my mask and it was really loose so this gave me time to try and sort this out. It was all very panicky and rushed when we had to descend into the water. Neither of us were ready but we felt we had to just go for it. Looking back this was a stupid thing to do and a very dangerous thing to do. Will was able to cope ish with his bcd being a bit loose but my mask was the first of my major problems. On descending my mask just kept filling so I repeatedly was trying to empty it but now it was becoming painful to equalise and sort out my mask. So I had to ascend back to the surface to sort out my mask and wipe my burning salty eyes.

Take 2... The mask was fixed, I was able to equalise now I wasn't so panicky but I soon realised that I was far too buoyant and therefore couldn't sink far enough and would just keep floating upwards. It must have been so frustrating for everyone else in the group and I was getting really worried and embarrassed. But the worst part was that because I was constantly going up and down I had to constantly equalise. Bro tried pulling me down a lot using my fin but this made everything worse as I wasn't able to equalise in time and I was now in a lot of pain. For those that have never dived, if you can't equalise your ears are under immense pressure, basically like what you sometimes get on planes too. The only fix here was to add more weight which Bro did. He added another kilo to my jacket and it was better. I was finally able to scuba and, although honestly I was quite upset and stressed, I was able to enjoy the little amount of marine life we saw, but there wasn't anything spectacular. Along the journey we were constantly tracking our air gauge and as soon as mine hit below 100 things went bad for me again. I floated straight towards the top and couldn't get back down. Bro grabbed my fins to pull me down but this time the pressure on my ears was truly excruciating he grabbed another weight from another instructor and this did the trick. We swam a tiny bit more but to be honest visibility was quite poor so it wasn't that fun even once we had calmed down but it was soon time to end.

Getting back on the boat with the gear was pretty easy, but my mood was really low. I felt like I'd let myself down and more upsettingly I'd let everyone in the group down. I began chatting to the others and myself, Will and Shannon all felt the same. It wasn't a pleasant dive, we all had various issues and to be honest we all wanted to quit there and then. We dried off and went to lunch for a chicken sisig to discuss our individual problems and more importantly how we can fix them next time. We didn't quit and we went back for our second dive which was a shore dive called the Sardine Run. I am so glad I persevered as this time I had the right amount of weight in my jacket, we all were more confident with our equipment and so we were calmer.

The dive was really fun. Bro was able to show us a lot of the marine life which included Denise Pygmy Seahorse, Harlequin Ghost Pipefish, Giant Frogfish
Harlequin Sweetups, Map Puffer Fish, Big Eye Scad, Lion Fish and the star of the show sardines. Oh my goodness the sardines. There must have been thousands swimming around us. I can't describe how beautiful they were. At one point I was in my very own bubble surrounded by them and I couldn't see anyone from the group. When we finished we were all super buzzing.

We sorted out our equipment and chatted for a while and then decided to jump back in and go snorkeling along the coral wall. It was so much fun and this time we saw a pair of Lion Fish, a lot of clownfish, blue star fish, pipe fish, parrot fish and amazing coral. We got so distracted that actually we ended up swimming for over 2 hours! I can't believe I've gone from not a very confident swimmer and needing to have my feet near surface to swimming over a 70ft drop coral wall in a matter of days!

When we finally got out the dive centre crew were pretty impressed with how long we were out and we're already on the beers. So we decided to turn our evening into Will's Birthday! I ran back to the room showered and dressed and no one had moved a muscle. Well they moved to lift up there beer bottles haha

It was a great night, we all just sat, drank beers, chatted about all our various experiences travelling, went to the Taco bar for dinner and drank some more. As it was Will's birthday the owner made him bright blue drink with god knows what was in it but it was super tasty, obviously also very alcoholic, and then we finally finished the night with jackfruit flavoured tequila shots.

What a great day.

In terms of pictures we don't have too many as we took videos on our go pro. I'll probably upload them onto Facebook or create stills at some point!Read more