Our vacation does a nose dive

Wednesday, July 4

Today, Jim and I had signed up for scuba diving. You could get resort certified in one day and take two dives. Jim was certified when he was 16 so all he needed was a refresher course. I, had never scuba dived. Or had the desire to. Or cared to.

But being young and in love has a strange way of making you think you want to do things you wouldn't ordinarily do. Like try to breathe under water. But more on that in a sec.

Here is the pier that the big boats docked at. These were the dive boats, the glass-bottom boat, and the deep-sea fishing boat. Isn't the water beautiful? Ahhhhh. I SO wish I was back there.

Ok. Ok. Back to posting. Let's see. How shall I describe scuba diving? Hmmm. How about "I don't know" because I didn't do it. The class I went to had a video. We watched it. Kind of made me nervous, but I wasn't going to give up without trying. We then went to the pool. The instructor made us swim 2 laps to warm up. I don't know why. I also know that I almost could not do it. I made it, but my heart was beating SO hard when I was done. I felt like I had just gone out and sprinted an entire mile! Before my heart returned to normal, we hooked up to our scuba gear and were told to put our mask in the water while holding onto the side of the pool. I did just that, AND PANICKED! I knew air was coming out of the oh, um, thingy you put in your mouth, oh, the regulator. But my brain saw the water and said "NOOO! Can't breathe under here!" So I came up. I then spent the next 20 minutes (at least) trying to convince myself that I was fine. I wasn't scared of drowning. The water was 4 feet deep! But for the life of me, I could not quit freaking out when I went under. It was like being claustrophobic. One instructor even came over and tried to help. He said in his lovely Jamaican accent that I was not the 1st, 2nd, or even 10th person to do this. He said they teach thousands of people to dive every year and this is not unusual at all. I eventually got down on my knees in the water, but I still didn't like it. I would come up and he would say, "why did you come up?" And I would think "was I supposed to stay down?" This was, afterall, scuba DIVING!

Long story short, I wimped out and left. The next day, Jim had a cold so he couldn't even go on the dive he signed up for. So, we wasted $140 finding out that I couldn't scuba dive. But you can't say I didn't try! Jim says maybe we can find a lake up here to practice in. I say maybe not.

AFTERNOON - Trying to recover from the bad morning
We took a glass-bottom boat ride in the afternoon. Unfortunately, the skies were clouding up so the water was getting murky. However, we still saw some sites. This picture was taken from the top of the boat. The dark area you see is where the seaweed was growing. The lighter area is pure sand. When you looked down, either through the glass or on top of the water, you could see straight to the bottom! And the water was so blue! There must be over 1 million shades of blue in one snapshot of the ocean.

EVENING -- 4th of JULY!

The crew at Sandals did a wonderful job trying to make us Americans feel at home on the 4th of July. They had a cookout at one of the restaurants that included grilled shrimp, grilled chicken, pork, good doughy bread, and all desserts topped with cherries! There were red, white, and blue balloons tied to the backs of our chairs, which made it feel like a kid's birthday party. We met a couple there from Michigan, and then one from Canada. I don't know why the Canucks were at the American celebration, but they were very nice. (and just married)

Later, Jim was developing a cold, and I was just worn out from my "swim" earlier in the day so we turned in early. And vowed to just stay in the pool tomorrow....well almost...


Ok. Ok. Here's one more picture of the ocean. This one is now my computer background. I may have it blown up and put by the side of my bed.