To begin with we sailed north to Tyrell Bay, Carriacou where we had arranged to do our PADI open water dive course with Conny and George at Arawak Divers.  We had done a SCUBA experience dive there last year and felt very comfortable, safe and well looked after so we decided that that was the place for us to literally take the plunge. 

The dive school is on the waterfront so it is a short walk across the beach and straight into the sea which was a lot more fun than doing the first part in a swimming pool.  Jane spent the afternoons on the appropriately named Paradise beach while Mike and I did all the drills, checks, drills and checks of diving.  Clearing your mask underwater is the most uncomfortable but with a deep breath (!) and telling yourself to get a grip it is perfectly possible to take your mask right off underwater, go for a swim with your eyes open, put it back on, straighten the straps, get your hair out of the way otherwise it will leak, put your fingers on the top, tip your head back (for some reason that is always the horrid bit) and blow hard through your nose.  With a bit of luck you come back straight to find a mask full of air and only your stinging eyes to worry about but quite often you need to do it a couple of times.

After an afternoon in shallow water doing such things our second day started with a trip out on the dive boat to the Barrell reef where our first dive was just for fun as a reminder of why we wanted to do this.  Conny is an enthusiastic and knowledgeable guide who spots all sorts of interesting things that Mike and I would probably still miss because we haven’t got our eyes tuned in as it were.  After about 45 minutes we had used most of our air so back to the surface for a quick drink and new tanks then back to the drills again only this time rather deeper down.

Four days in all with two dives each day and we really felt very happy with things by the end.  Conny was rightly very strict and would not move on to the next stage until she was happy we were doing things correctly but once the drills were done each day we went off to explore the reef together.  We saw many beautiful fish of course, spiny lobster swinging their antennae, bright blue moray eels curled up and minding their own business (good), an octopus, fabulous and very varied corals and then Conny found a seahorse!  Fantastic.  They have seen them on other reefs in the area but never on this one.  About seven inches long with it’s tail curled up and bobbing happily among the coral.  It seemed unfazed by our presence and then Conny  picked it up and passed it across for us to hold.  We were really surprised by this, partly because we would have expected the seahorse to thrash about a bit and be generally unhappy but it seemed quite at ease.  Conny knows her sealife though and is extremely environmentally aware so we doubt she would have done anything that would be inappropriate.

Because we were training we couldn’t take photographs but here is a picture from a book Conny had…

And here we are at the end….