Good morning, Florida!

I had to get up at 3:45 to catch my flight this time, and I´m not going to lie – sometimes it really sucks always having to choose the cheapest flight. But I got over it as we entered Key Largo. YES, the heat hits you in the face, and YES, you wished you were a sea mammal because of the humidity. But I really like the place, it´s totally laidback. Maybe this might sound a bit weird, but it actually reminds me of Kenya. Except there are better roads here, and it´s not that dirty. But the weather, the one-floor-houses, the slackness and the palm trees…basically a lot of the scenery reminds of my trip to Kenya in 2006.

This week we are doing our 12 open water dives, and we are staying with Ocean Divers. That is pretty cool, because right beneath the center is Hyperbarics International, which is owned by Richard ”Dick” Rutkowski. He is considered a pioneer in the fields of hyperbaric medicine and diver training – especially in relation to the use of breathing gases. He is the founder of The International Association of Nitrox and Technical Divers (IANTD), and I am pretty sure it wouldn´t be a lie saying he introduced the recreational diving community to Nitrox (and he is of course the guy behind the famous quote in this blog entry´s title).

But back to our diving. Monday we had our first two open water dives, so we all set out on the fair boat named Santana. We were fresh and lively in spirit – 100% ready for some saltwater. After two dives there were only 4 out of 11 people that hadn´t puked their guts out. BUT, we saw a sea turtle!! And now I have loaded up antihistamines to prevent motion sickness. Never knew I was such a wuss, but to my defense – the waves were brutal. Honest.

Second day we did 4 dives – and not even one of us puked. Success! Most of our dives are on Molasses Reef, which is a huge reef complex with lots of groove coral formations. There are fish EVERYWHERE, and me and my dive buddy, Amanda, had a little special one following us. He was too curious for his own good I think, but it was so much fun when we practised our skills and the fish would swim back and forth between us. We saw lots of marine life, and luckily I didn´t have to learn what Fire Corals are the hard way. Puh. Just to mention a few, we encountered moray eel, snooks, surgeon fish, stone fish etc. I could go on for hours. Really.

The third day (today!) we are also doing 4 dives. The first was Spiegel Grove, a dock landing ship for the US Navy. She was intentionally sunk in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary to function as an artificial reef, and I got to say, man, she´s huge. By huge I mean 160 meters. I could easily get lost there. She lies at a depth of around 40 meters, and with all the currents swirling around there it could easily be a strenuous dive – but we had good visibility and almost no current at all! Would love to go back there some time.

Between the 2 morning and 2 evening dives we got a chamber run with Dick Rutkowski, which was hilarious. We didn´t go very deep, about 20 meters for 12 minutes, but since gases acts more like liquids under pressure, our voices was pretty much similar to any cartoon figure you would find on Cartoon Network. I have never been in a chamber before, so the experience was pretty cool. Among other things they had EKG and a setup for intravenous infusion there, as well as sprinklers! I have no idea how the sprinklers is going to help you if the chamber catches fire and explodes, but I must admit I still have a lot to learn.

Right this moment I just got back from our last 2 dives today – night dives! A sea turtle passed me just 2 cm away, and I could feel the shell with my hand as he gracefully moved through the water. Magical!