The Life Aquatic

As the lads headed onto Cartagena to catch a boat to Panama, I returned once again to Taganga I had decided to do an open water diving qualification. I suppose I saw it as an investment as I had always regretted not doing the full course that time with Bamb in Ko Tao in 2002.


I shopped around and settled on Calypso Diving School. They were trying to flog me their ´Diving Safari´deal where I´d be based in el Parque Tayrona once again but really I just wanted the eh most economical deal (as I hadn´t really budgeted for it) which was based from Taganga. In the end they offered me the Safari deal for the price of the land based one as it suited them better. Score ! So I headed off for 6 dives based on a beautiful isolated beach in the National Park only accessible by boat.



Eating fresh fish, collapsing into my hammock every night at 8 to be woken by the rising sun at 6 in the morn. Sooo relaxing. There were a few of us doing the dives together. Names elude me now but Helena and Will (i think - Scotsman with an English accent, questionable), Leicester from Cambridge and his girlfriend from Sweden and the little Israeli with those disturbingly tight swimming togs.


The diving was pretty decent too. Mark the English West Ham supporting instructor was bang on too. Saw a few octopus´s and a Manta Ray, among others. The only thing that Mark didn´t was spend a lot of time on the theory part of the course (thankfully. god its boring) but this proved a bit of a problem when myself and the Colombian girl sat the exam. After 3 days of problemless diving, I fuckin failed the test !!


Funniest thing was the boss guy kind of looked at me, gave me back the test with the proper answers and told me to read over them. When finished he asked me whether I now understood. I replied positively. This pleased him, so he signed my certificate. I had now passed !!

Aah Colombia - what a great country. Era I always hated physics in school anyway....