April 26 SCUBA Diving Refresher Class and Dive

Today was spent cycling down to Karang Divers at the southern end of the island for a scuba refresher course. We spent a couple of hours in their pool, in salt water like our Juliantos Hotel, reviewing all the basic safety rules and clearing masks underwater, etc.  Next we got into an outrigger boat for a dive in the channel to an area know as Hans Reef, with individual, patient supervision from instructor Alex of Karang Divers.

David and Alex preparing for dive off outrigger boat

 First David went down, using a rope, to the bottom at 8 meters and then went along the reef, ending up a couple of hundred meters down-current when they surfaced 40 minutes later. Although this is considered only a mediocre dive site, there were at least 20 fish species that David was not familiar with, and it was an enjoyable and relaxed dive after almost two years without SCUBA.  There were many fish that would be great in an aquarium, including one like the Valentine Pufferfish that was Leslie's favorite in our tank in Oman. Then it was Leslie's turn, and she rolled off the boat in her gear and slowly descended with Alex down the rope to about 4 meters, when she felt she had had enough, so came up to the surface, then decided to go down again for a few meters then back up. Leslie has had a fear of depths that she is trying to overcome, compounded by an experience when she inhaled water instead of air when she put the emergency buddy regulator in upside down during her initial SCUBA course at a depth of 12 meters.

We returned to shore, and decided to try diving again next day, but that was the boatmen's Friday off, so we agreed to do it Saturday, so that we would consolidate our confidence. We lunched at Scallywags and made plans to spend Friday with a tour of nearby Lombok. We dined in style on wood-fired pizza at a beach-side restaurant, Biba Beach, that Leslie had identified.