Florian Hengartner

This week I learnt scuba diving. I'm a PADI certified diver now :)
We've been 2 days in the classroom learning the theorie and practising in the pool. Then we went on a boat for 3 days with which we drove out to the great barrier reef.

Once you are in the wet wetsuit and have the bcd, tank, regulator, weights, fin , mask/snorkel and all that stuff mounted the adventure can begin. I saw many many different fishes down there. trompet fish, flutemouth fish, clownfish (nemo :), parrot fish, lion fish, barracuda's, shark, turtle etc. and the different corrals, sea cucumbers, sea star, x-mas tree worm, ...

The live on the boat consited of diving, eating, a short brake, diving, eating, a short brake .... ( to be continued) ... and sometimes sleeping.

The night dive was very special. You see barely nothing in the water, everything is dark. The conditions were very rough, rougher than on any other dive. It rained and even on the ground the current was pulling on you. Also we trained some navigation skills. All of that made it challenging, but on the other hand that's why this is one my favourite dives. Though we didn't see many animal's because of the darkness. In the night everyone has a glowing marker on his tank and a torch. The torch is realy important, because otherwise you hardly can see anything underwater and not less important it helps to regain the possibilty to communicate with signals as you can't speek to each other under water. The funniest thing of the night dive was the funky underweare and shirts we wore over the wetsuit. The purpose is to identify your dive-buddy (and everyone else) in the darkness.

I had a fantastic instructor (crazy girl), boat crew and many great dive mates.
On a side note: I knew they also offer a german course (I took the english) but I was very surprised to find a swiss instructor at the school. In total we've been six swiss people on the boat.

I enjoyed the diving very much and would recommend it to everyone!
..maybe with exception of people who get seasick. As for me I liked the bumps very much - it's like on a neverending rollercoaster ride :)

have a good time.
florian