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Laurie
is certifiable... er... Certified!
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So
I finally, quite literally, took the plunge, and got my PADI Open
Water Diver Certification while in Costa Rica. Knew I'd have
to join in the family tradition sometime...so here I am in my diver
finery with mask print on my forehead to prove it! Despite
some of my long held irrational fears about diving..ie.. running out
of air at 40 feet under and/or being attacked by a shark, I made it
through four days of classes and passed the test! The rather
accelerated course typical of dive shops involved watching four
hours of instructional videos, reading, written exams, confined
water dives in a swimming pool, and two days of diving in the ocean.
Although I'm glad to have it under my belt (weight belt
that is..haha), I cannot say that it was a walk in the park!
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| A
shot with my cheerleading hubby |
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I
was fortunate to be there during the off season and therefore had
one on one instruction, but there were a few confounding factors
that still made for a slightly less than desirable initial diving
experience. For one, my instructor's English was not great, so
he had trouble communicating during times when I needed most
encouragement, and he was a big intimidating guy who looked and
acted like Ray Liotta with the same two faces - sometimes nice and
funny as Liotta was in "Corina, Corina" and sometimes a
bit scary as in "Good Fellas." So that didn't help. Then
the fact that we practiced in a hotel pool that was no deeper than 6
feet, made it challenging to practice my natural buoyancy as I would
sink to the bottom and then float straight to the top and then sink
to the bottom and up to the top and flailed all around in between.
I'm sure it was a comical to "Ray," I mean Ivan, and have
to giggle at myself in hindsight. Lastly, my open water dives
were in somewhat cold waters with only 2 meters of visibility max -
with a four foot white tipped shark passing only a few feet
before me. But in reality, it may sound worse than it was. I did see
an abundance of colorful sea life, and it had to have been better
the usual quarry check out dives that folks do when taking the
course inland. Overall, it was a character-building
experience, and now I can dive with the guys and Carol on future
vacations. They look forward to introducing me to warm, clear blue
Carribbean waters sometime very
soon.
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Look
at 'dem Howler Monkeys!
We
were all giddy to have caught up close views of this family of howler
monkeys in the trees lining the beach. The mother carried it's cute
little baby on it's back, and the five of them stayed close together. I
watched them jump from tree to power line and then cross over
playfully in a leap frog fashion all jumping over the first monkey, and
then that monkey brought up the rear. Appeared to be a protective
behavior, but might have been just plain fun!
Amigos
de Playa de Coco
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| After a
full day of diving, we all stopped for fajitas and margeritas at this
Mexican joint. The owner of this little dive was way cool...as
you can see. Caught him as he was just watching the cars go by, hangin'
with his cat, and listenin' to his favorite Billie Holiday and BB King
tunes spilling out into the open air. Ahhh..our kinda place.
These new found pals (Edward from
Cambridge, England and the crazy canook honeymooners, Dylan and
Laura), toasted my success as a new diver.
Crazy amigos from left to right
(below):
Dylan, Edward, John, Mom, Laurie,
Matt, Laura
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Luis, one cool cat, and
his pet gato, another cool cat |
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We had so much fun we continued our
festivities with two nights of beers and a wild card game called PIG,
(thanks to Edward) which involved passing cards around the table
quickly until one person got four of a kind who then was to stick out
their tongue. The last person to stick out their tongue then got a
letter from P-I-G. Needless to say, this was an entertaining and
ridiculous looking game. I was usually the first one out because I was
too in to collecting cards and singing ("lalalalala..."
as Matt would say)
than watching for silly, protruding tongues.
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| Quite fun, eh? Holy
Smokes!
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