February 4th, 2017

Day 312: Practice Dive in San Cristóbal

AKA, Lindsay’s Dive of Shame. So, Lindsay got REALLY psyched out over the supposed dangers of diving in the Galápagos, and her confidence was pretty shot as we headed out for our 3 practice dives this morning. It didn’t help that we had a shitty night’s sleep thanks to a power outage that turned off our AC around 2AM and gave her anxiety that we would sleep through our 5:30AM wake-up call.

Even though our dive masters were a bit late (chock it up to “island-time”), we were geared up, on the boat, and ready to plunge into our first dive site by 7AM – right on schedule. Our first site – Five Fingers Rock – would be our deepest (30M-32M) and most difficult site, with strong currents similar to what we could expect at Darwin & Wolf. Lindsay was scared shitless, but was pretending to be cool. We sat on the edge of the boat to do a back-roll into the water (yet *another* thing we had never done before) and a practice negative entry (entering with an empty BCD and descending immediately upon hitting the water rather than going in with an inflated BCD, signaling “OK” and then descending slowly).

 

6AM sharp and no one is at the dive shop! A good 15min later our instructors show up and we head out to our first dive site: Five Fingers Rock

We successfully flipped backwards into the water and after only a few moments of disorientation, we sank below the waves pretty rapidly. Luckily, equalizing the pressure in our ears was not a problem, and we were able to go straight down to 30M within a few minutes. It was the coldest water we’ve ever been in (around 22⁰C – we were both wearing 5mm thick wetsuits), and since there was a cloud over the sun as we jumped in, it was pretty dark at the bottom. As we slowly started to swim forward, Lindsay was very cognizant of the heavy pressure of the water around us. The pressure felt so strong, she started to imagine that she was having trouble breathing. All of a sudden, she started to freak out: what if the pressure was too much? What if she lost her regulator? What if it stopped working? What if she fainted? People faint all the time when they are scared, WHAT IF SHE FAINTED AND THE REGULATOR FELL OUT OF HER MOUTH? She was 100 feet below the surface of the water – no one would be able to rescue her in time! SHE WOULD DROWN!!!

Here’s a diving term for you all – nitrogen narcosis: an alteration in consciousness that occurs while diving at depth (25M+). The sensation produces impaired judgement similar to being drunk, but can also cause vertigo, paranoia and an inability to focus. Nitrogen narcosis is caused by the anesthetic effect of nitrogen at high pressures (like underwater) – it is easily reversible within a few minutes by simply ascending into shallower water.

Lindsay tried to shake the paranoid thoughts out of her head, but she was having trouble focusing. She tried to keep swimming for another minute, telling herself to just power through it, but she kept thinking, ‘what if it’s too late when I finally say something?’ She soon turned around and signaled to Jennifer that she was having trouble breathing and she wanted to surface. Jennifer tried to give Lindsay the signal to calm down and breath (which she didn’t know), but Lindsay just shook her head and gave the signal to surface again. Jennifer took her securely by the arm and slowly started to head up. As soon as we reached 15M, Lindsay’s fear subsided and breathing was easier again. By the time we surfaced, Lindsay saw that she had only completed 15min of the dive. Pathetic. Incredibly disappointed with herself (and more than a little embarrassed), she climbed back into the boat to wait for Igor.

 

Igor successfully completes the dive and surfaces with Daniel on the other side of the rock. He gives Lindsay a disgusted look of disbelief when he hears why she abandoned the dive. #areyoufuckingkiddingme #moneydownthedrain

Igor, on the other hand, had zero problems during the dive, and lasted a good 35min before running low on air. He tried not to rub it in too much, but he couldn’t hide the glee in his voice as he informed her that a sea lion had come out to play with him just a few minutes after she left! Sea lions are known for being extremely playful with divers and they are not at all aggressive underwater – this one kept swimming around and around Igor’s head for a good 2min before darting off. The good news is, he caught it all on camera! The bad news is, we soon discovered that the red filter we bought in Thailand for USD $5 is a piece of shit. Unless you are literally at 30M, it turns everything in the frame bright red! And even when we were at the proper depth for the filter to work, without a flashlight, the filter made the image too dark.

Note: the underwater photos below are HORRIBLE. Don’t worry – we didn’t use the red filter again for the rest of the trip. As a matter of fact, the stupid thing actually broke the next time we tried to use it, so the photos in the upcoming posts will be MUCH BETTER. I promise. J

 

Igor was all smiles after his dive – he saw so many animals and told Lindsay about everything she missed

 

A sea lion swims circles around Igor and Daniel, and a huge sea turtle with barnacles on its shell floats by

After she calmed down, Lindsay was able to complete the next two dives without panicking. Our second dive was our first cave dive – a very narrow and kinda scary L-shaped passage that was only big enough for one person to go down at a time. At a round 20M we each dropped feet-first into a dark hole (we were both given flashlights) which took us back down to 30M. The exit of the cave was via a 2M wide x 1M tall tunnel. Unfortunately, it had a sandy bottom and Lindsay kicked up a lot of sand in Igor’s face (called finning), so the pictures and video didn’t really out.

On the way up, Jennifer demonstrated how to deploy a safety sausage underwater and instructed Lindsay to give it a try. She tried to blow bubbles into the sausage using her emergency regular, but they didn’t seem to go in. She finally jammed the whole fucking reg inside the tube and blasted plenty of bubbles inside. As the sausage started to fly up toward the surface, all of a sudden Lindsay felt a strong upwards tug: the coil of rope in her and was completely jammed, preventing the sausage from going up to the surface! We were still pretty deep (10M) and hadn’t done our safety stop yet, so we couldn’t just go up after it! Lindsay tried to pull the damn thing down to try and turn it upside down and release the air, but it was too full and she couldn’t pull it down. After a good 2min of struggling to stay under, she finally lost her grip on the line, and the sausage disappeared toward the surface. Poor Jennifer went swimming after the lost gear. Seriously – today was not my day.

Our last dive was around an old shipwreck called the Karawa. Other than a Blue-eyed Damsel fish and a striped sea snake, we didn’t see much there (Lindsay and Igor agree that we’re just not that into wrecks). Finally, Lindsay had a dive where she didn’t freak out, and didn’t lose any equipment – she tried deploying the safety sausage again, this time with success. While today may have been Lindsay’s worst dive performance ever, she was grateful that at least all of her newbie fuck-ups happened in the relative privacy of a practice dive rather than in front of the entire dive boat.

 

Lindsay gives the OK for our next dive, which sadly didn’t have any animal more interesting than an OCD Blue-eyed Damsel Fish which will physically move a sea urchin if you place it too close to its nest

After returning to land, we had lunch with our dive masters to debrief and chat about the upcoming trip. Igor asked Jennifer, “So how screwed do you think we are?” She squirmed and said a bit unconvincingly that we would be fine. (Clearly she still thought we had no business being on a liveaboard, but since we couldn’t get a refund at this point, she wasn’t going to say so.) She did, however, advise us not to tell any of the fellow divers how many dives we had.

We went back to our hostel to rest for a few hours, then ventured back outside in the late afternoon to stroll around town and enjoy the sea lions some more.

 

Huge iguanas are all over the place! They have no fear of humans and remain still even when you come quite close – we have to be careful not to step on them by accident

 

A prickly pear cactus with one yellow flower still in bloom

 

San Cristóbal – the #1 destination for sea lions!

 

No zoom lens needed – you can get right up in their face (safely behind a fence) and they LOVE to pose for pictures!

 

Fisherman leave their boats unattended at their own risk! Don’t be surprised if you find a sea lion (or two, or three!) asleep inside when you get back

 

Lobos here, lobos there, lobos EVERYWHERE

 

A baby lobo naps next to the beach as the sun sets on the horizon