Breakfast with dad at our local bakery haunt and then Lindy & I set off to explore. We didn't have to dive until 12.30 so we had time to kill.
We found amazing iced coffee at this little place Rio Coco just by our dive school so spent the morning under the palm trees going out dive theory.
We set out for our third accreditation dive at a shipwreck just off the reef. This was to be out first official deep dive of 30m despite having gone to that depth at the Blue Hole. It was pretty incredible checking out the wreck- we saw some huge fish & moray eels as well as a laptop & even a toilet that had been attached to the wreck by other divers.
We had a bit of a play around at the bottom, shared a packet of chips & cracked a few eggs to show what the pressure did to them. It was hilarious but also horrifying to think that's what it was doing to our bodies!
All was going ok as we ventured around the wreck but then Lindy had a problem. I wasn't sure what was going on & by the. Doug had hold of her. She seemed panicky & was fiddling with her mask. I thought it may have been her eye issue from Mexico & that the pressure triggered something & started to feel myself panick a bit. They were ascending pretty quick and I was told to stay down rather than come to assist as we were still at about 30m or so. The situation wasn't improving & I was was able to come up a bit and hold her hand to try calm her but in the end her & Doug had to ascend.
We came up after the required safety stop & I was so relieved to see Lindy was ok. Her bloody mask wouldn't clear & she couldn't see. Not being able to see at that depth & not being able to clear would have panicked me too. Anyhow despite seemingly being ok, her & Doug had to then have precautionary oxygen to compensate for the quick ascent. They then had to spend the afternoon with the doctor and linked to the DAN medical assessors to confirm no symptoms of decompression illness. Thankfully both of them were totally ok & would be cleared to dive in the morning.
We agreed to delay the completion of our advanced course until Saturday, do our free fun dives on Friday and then start the journey through to El Salvador on Sunday. All sorted.
Trish, Lindy, dad & I reconvened for dinner & ended up at Bucaneeros - an American BBQ type place with grid iron on plasma screens, lots of pirate propaganda and Mark Anthony music on repeat. Weird place, awesome food & piña coladas. Dad seemed completely tanked after half a light beer & poor Trish didn't seem to know what the hell she had gotten herself into.
Dinner conversation was random and varied, mostly dad talking about things nobody understood, pulling out his worst french-spanish-English language skills & lecturing Trish (an English teacher) about 16th century English literature. Trish took it in her stride and gave Dad a run for his money, her best call being 'you're very intercontinental aren't you Tony?'.
A night with some awkward moments punctuated with good humour.
