Well, last weekend was one of the highlights in my life. as you might have read on my previous post, I was enrolled in a diving course with a certification to be a PADI open water diver *yeah baby!* - and last weekend was our real dive in the open sea, no more pool sessions! woohoo! :D
We went to Pramuka Island for the dive trip. there were 12 of us going on the trip, our PADI instructor, Ko Ronald (he's like the coolest guy on earth, seriously! - no matter how hard we joked around, he seemed able to always maintain his self-control, it's so hard to make him crack XD), Priska (the dive master wannabe and also, a friend of mine who has successfully dragged me into the diving course - in which I never regret it a bit), Otto (our underwater photographer and also the advanced open water diver wannabe - he did his courses with us there in the open sea), Suresh (a diver from Malaysia who is also a dive instructor and currently works in an advertising company in Jakarta, he shared lots of his experience and knowledge with us the newbies), Tommy (a diver who works for Jakarta Globe - woot! woot! he's like the funniest american i've ever met :)), Mas Arip (also a diver who works in the lab at RS. Pertamina Cempaka Putih, in which i thought was cool!), Mas Zam (another diver who happens to work at salingsilang.com, this guy is definitely a historian, i totally enjoyed talking with him about Indonesian history and museums), and of course, there were us, the open water divers wannabe (Ais - the sweet girl who's always craving for a cold soda after every dive and gladly share her shampoo to prevent our masks from fogging, Hendra - the college guy from Bandung, the youngest among us all, Andry - the most hilarious one! he just won't stop making us laughing with his presence, such a joy bringer :), Nagarajan - who seemed to be always on the phone every time we looked for him, he's a very nice guy though :D and of course there was me :D)
we set off from the Marina Bay, Ancol around 8 am in the morning using a speedboat. we arrived at Pramuka Island around 10 am something (not quite sure of the time) because we should drop off some people at Tidung Island. once we're arrived at Pramuka Island, we went straight to the house where we would spend the night there. we unpacked our bags, changed our clothes and got our diving gears ready for the first dive trip.
We took off to the open sea around 11am and stopped at our first diving spot, the fun divers set off first with our local guide while all the open water divers were having the review session (where we had to do all that we had learned in the pool sessions in the sea). we did get a little difficulty in maintaining the buoyancy since it's our first time being in the sea and it's so much different from being in the pool (d'oh, of course lah) but after a while we could finish the first review nicely :D, weeoooo! after our first dive session of the day we then stopped by the Semak Daun Island to have lunch. we rest there for a while before going to the second diving spot of the day.
On the second spot called Ella's Reef, we had a bit of difficulties. Andry needed to come up faster because his mask was too tight, Ais got her nose bleeding and the current was too strong that finally we had to give up and came up to the surface. I felt so tired when I needed to swim over to the boat, glad that Ko Ronald gave me his help to find the boat's rope so I could I swim over to the boat by holding on the rope then the boat's crew helped me by pulling the rope closer to the boat and helped me got up. IT WAS SUPER TIRING. - after everyone was on the boat, we got back to Pramuka Island.
Ella's Reef was actually quite fascinating, I finally saw the clown fish for real and other cute and colourful fish (which i don't really know the name - haha) - I also saw the dolphins swimming on our way to Ella's Reef. The only unfortunate thing was the strong current.
Once we're back at the house where we're staying and got cleaned up, we're relaxing, some went to the mosque to pray, some were chit-chatting while drinking beers and eating chips (and whatever food we could find to eat). Priska then asked me to go with her to wait on Ko Ronald and Otto while they're doing the night dive, it's one of the course that Otto would need to complete to get his advanced open water diver certification. While the boys were in the water with their flash lights and did their night dive, I sat with Priska at the pier, looking at the stars and listening to "galau" songs :D. It was so awesome to see the stars on the night sky, very clear and very bright. Definitely something you won't find in Jakarta.
After the boys were done with the night dive, we're heading back to the house to have some dinner. It was nice to know that when we're back, the food was just delivered to our house. Then after dinner, we were all caught in interesting conversations with each other. My second favourite time after the diving sessions, getting to know new people. It was totally a good time of laughing, exchanging stories and friendship bonding before all of us went to sleep.
On the second day, everyone was already awake at 6.30am, breakfast was served at 7am and then we started to get ready to for the second day dive trip. On this second day, we had a new friend from the free diving community (those who dive without the oxygen tank) called Jason (it was pretty cool to meet people who would hold their breath for 2 to 3 minutes and went to the deep). When we set off to the diving spot, there was drizzling rain and .... THERE WAS A RAINBOW! a beautiful 7 colours bow :') - and everyone was sure that it would be a good day.
AND IT WAS A GOOD DAY :D
Our first dive session was nicely done, I saw a purple sea slug (or nudibranch - as Priska told me later on :))), some sea urchins and other sea creatures (I still can't name them XD). We even managed to get a better buoyancy than day one, we could even joked around underwater, making silly signs and poses. It was a happy diving session :D - on this first dive, we went off with Priska while Ko Ronald was doing a deep dive with Otto (it's another thing that he required to do for his certification). Our second dive was about 30 to 40 minutes after our first dive, this time, we would do another review from the pool session we've had earlier. We got to dive around and had some sight seeing. I got stung by jellyfish for several times and every time I tried to look around to find the culprit I just couldn't find it! Otto dived in with a camera this time and we got to spoil our narcissistic side a bit, posing in front of his camera. Then around 15 minutes before we went up, we had to kneel down on the sand in which a bit hard because the bottom was slope with corals all around and I scraped my knees. We did the last two techniques review and officially passed as open water divers! YAAAY!
After a the second dive session we went back home to have lunch, got cleaned up and packed our stuffs to get home. We had some time took some pictures, laughing and playing around while waiting for the boat to come. The trip back home was bumpy and rough (will tell you about the detail in the next post), glad that we safely arrived at the Marina. After bidding farewell to some of our friends and packing up all the diving gears that would need to be taken home by Ko Ronald, Otto and Priska, I went to church with Priska straight from the Marina after dropping Hendra off at the DayTrans spot in Mangga Dua Square. It was totally a good day, the worship and the message were totally awesome and I couldn't thank God enough for the weekend trip. When people said that I'm lucky, I know for sure that I'm not just lucky....I am BLESSED ;)
It's always exciting to try new things and especially meeting new people and get some new friends :) - hopefully we would all see each other in the next trip and people, I'm officially a diver now, oh yeah! XD
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