I’m back into the work rhythm again, so that means I already miss the beach every morning. Herein is perhaps a benefit…
Last week’s diving course was rather time-intensive. We took the course with the Meduza Diving Club. They were super. The instructors were great, not only as instructors but also showed great patience, knowledge and some great psychology in terms of calming nerves or assuaging fears. I highly recommend them.
After our group showed up a bit late on Day 2, we were “punished” by having to show up every day at 08:30 instead of 09:00. We were also at the dive club until 5-7pm, depending on the day. Add to that 45 degree Celcius daytime temperatures, and we got home every night and passed out almost immediately.
I found that my introductory dive in Turkey helped me since I had a bit of experience in equalizing pressure on descent. Nonetheless, I had a ton to learn. Ana had problems with ear pain throughout most of the course, including one incident where she flew up to the surface after becoming a bit dizzy. From our second dive Wednesday, that all changed when everything seemed to click. She suddenly no longer had problems equalizing and simply loved the sport. The 20m dive on Thursday was superb and was without incident.
In what I found out is not always done, our final dive consisted of various worst-case-scenarios where our instructor hovered around us and induced various technical problems. These included masks coming off, regulators being yanked out of our mouthes, tanks being shut off (ie: out of air), weight belts being released and uncontrolled inflation of BCDs - and sometimes combinations of the above. Kudos to Meduza for doing this.
After a week of carrying the weight belt (for some reason the instructor had Ana wear 2×10lbs almost all week), BCD & tank to the water was quite an effort that really did her in by Thursday morning. As a result, we took the decision that she was too tired to continue with the 2nd star course which was to take place Friday & Saturday. The diving school had no problem with us stopping between courses, and at no extra cost, we can continue with the 2nd star any time in the next 6 months.
I was really happy that she found an “adventurous” sport that she liked and we could do together, so I agreed that I’d also push off completion of the course so we could do it together. We’d make a serious change of pace for the weekend and spend most of the time relaxing. My only condition was that we do so in a much more comfortable place than the rather grimy sublet apartment we’d taken for the week.
The Sheraton Eilat was booked, and my brand loyalty to the Starwood Hotel chain resulted in us finding a great deal at the Sheraton Herod’s Palace Hotel (hotel’s home page) at the end of the strip. The hotel is BEAUTIFUL. Unfortunately, since I was sleeping without the a/c, I needed the windows open…and a wedding at the hotel kept their music going until 2am on the first night. To make up for it, Herod’s moved us from the Herod’s Forum (conference center adjoining the main hotel) to the Herod’s Palace and gave us complimentary access to the Vitalis Spa (hotel’s home page) . This was just what Ana needed to recuperate. Aside from all of the web sites, Ana insisted that we take many pictures of our own.
Ana spent all of Friday at the spa, while I went on a 20m dive to a sunken warship, which I really enjoyed. Afterwards, of course I joined her in the waterfalls at the spa to relax a bit. On Saturday, she was again back to normal and we both went on a 6m dive through some coral areas. In one location, we had to swim through a hole in a large rock. There were so many fish filling the opening of the hole, it was like a black curtain we had to push aside with our bodies as we swam.
So, now I’ve got another hobby and Ana have something to do outdoors we both enjoy for future vacations. It was a great week. The pictures are up on flickr.
[tags]diving,scuba,israel,eilat,meduza[/tags]
