I first started diving 10 years ago. I was a reluctant student, but as we were going to the Red Sea in Egypt, I thought I should learn to dive as I am not great at lounging around poolside all day. So, I signed up for a course in England where I completed the pool skills, studied and passed my exam. I was then issued with a piece of paper to take on vacation with me. This meant I didn´t have to do the required 4 open water dives in England, but in the warm, clear waters of the Red Sea.
Once I had completed these open water dives, I was a certified open water diver and the oceans were mine to play in. I wanted to dive more on this holiday, so went to sign up for a few more days of diving, only to find it was $20 more to take the advanced course. It seemed silly not to. This meant I could dive on the wrecks out there, do a night dive and go down to 100ft. I also did a navigation dive and a peak performance buoyancy dive. These all increased my confidence and ability in the water, and that is where I developed my buzz for diving.
After diving on every holiday after that one, we returned 3 years later and took our rescue diver course. This course teaches how to find missing divers, how to bring unconscious divers to the surface and how to resuscitate them, amongst lots of other useful skills. Carrying adults up the beach in 120° heat was hard work. Most of the tourists on the beach were blissfully unaware of the fact we were practicing, and gave us a huge round of applauds every time someone “magically” came back to life
We returned to England after this with a 6 year game plan on escaping the rat race and diving for the rest of our days.
6 years later, we arrived in Manzanillo to start our dive master and instructor training. Dive masters, generally speaking, guide divers, keep them safe and have too much fun. Instructors teach divers how to dive. Both have their own responsibilities and should work together hand in hand.
Following our instructor training, we were thrown into the deep end of the pool and were employed as managers of the college we attended, dealing with the complete running on the college, as well as teaching the students. Although this was a great learning experience for us, it was hard work, if one can call diving work.
We took the next step up the training ladder and became master scuba diver trainers, which means teaching lots of specialty courses. More training followed as we began teaching in the instructor development courses, which are taught by course directors (the top of the PADI tree) and became staff instructors.
After 2 years at the college, we needed a change, and went to teach on a small island off the coast of Borneo in Malaysia. We had an amazing time there living with the chief of the village and his family and diving every day. Sounds ideal, but after a year, we needed some creature comforts, like electricity, hot water and some good food.
There was also that small need to own our own dive business too. PV really did seem to be the only place to do this, so here we are. It´s taking it´s time, but we are getting there, and there is always manaña.
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