Qualified - Diving Part 3

Today was our last dive to qualify as PADI open water divers. We had to go out to Al Boom's dive centre at Fujeirah to do this, but it was worth it, diving there is really something.

We had actually gone out towards the East Coast yesterday for a bit of wadi driving with Peter, Sabine and Jannek, their Danish visitor, so we stayed at the Fujeirah Hilton for the night. A lovely place with a cute little beach (home to many crabs), where we enjoyed the sunset on our balcony.

Diving off a boat brings a whole new set of challenges for the inexperienced diver, including having to roll backwards from the edge of the boat into the water like they do in spy movies (called back roll entry, surprisingly). The other is having to share a boat with the inevitable dimwit show-off who has seen sharks, whales and turtles in every ocean of the World.

So far no underwater pictures, just us (and a German guy in the background checking his kit) Luckily there is no talking underwater so we could enjoy the sights of colourful fish darting in and out of rosy red corals in peace. We also followed the lazy path of a turtle and discovered a flounder disguising itself as the seabed. On the beginners-mistakes front we managed, in the first minutes of our dive, to: get tangled in the descent line from the boat (Fiver); get detached from the tank (Stuart); get stung by a sea urchin (Stuart); and almost lose the snorkel (Fiver). Despite this we were allowed to qualify, so now we are now able to borrow tanks and dive where and when we like. Maldives - here we come!