DIVING DEEP INTO A NEW WORLD: Why you should try scuba diving at least once in your life!

Want to get Scuba Diving certified? Click here!

The ocean is a great teacher. I understood this very early on in my life as I started to learn how to sail at the age of eight. Since then, my relationship with the sea has (quite literally) deepened as I discovered more ways to connect and spend time with it.

One common theme about my travels is that they most of the time take me to tropical paradises. As a sailor and sea lover, I didn’t need any convincing to try out scuba diving for the first time. On my first solo adventure in Australia, while on a road trip, I ended up on the coast of the Great Barrier Reef. There were dive shops everywhere, and hearing that it is one of the top diving spots in the entire world, I decided to go for a fun dive.

After staring all day at the incredible wildlife under the sea, bright coloured fish, baby sharks, turtles and corals, I was hooked. I realized there is a whole other world to be discovered beneath the surface and scuba diving quickly went from being a one-time affair to a lifelong hobby and passion. I since then got my PADI open water diver certification, and dived in some amazing spots in Thailand, Mexico and the Canary Islands.

There are some other benefits of diving besides experiencing the mystery and beauty of the underwater world. I would even go as far to say that diving can restore your life. I am sure those of you who meditate and practice yoga will immediately notice how similar they can be to diving in a sense. Once you are underwater, you are completely disconnected from modern world’s distractions. There are no cell phones, unexpected emails and text messages or everyday problems. You are forced to be in the moment and focus on your breathing. You just observe what is directly in front of you. This, combined with the sensation of weightlessness, can create a healing effect.

Another benefit of diving is that it introduces you to an amazing community of people around the world. Trust me when I say scuba divers are some of the coolest, most down to earth and relaxed people. Everyone embodies a sense of freedom, an attitude of going with the flow, living in the moment and shares a love for the ocean and cares for the preservation of the planet. Some of my closest friends have been dive instructors and we never run out of shared experiences to bond over.

For long term travelers and nomads looking to stick to a budget, volunteering and working in dive shops can also be a great way to explore tropical locations while gaining further diving experience. Taking it a step further, if you are very passionate, you could continue your training to become an instructor, which means indefinitely extending your travels and permanently living in paradisiacal spots.

Personally, I choose to see it as a lifelong process of diving deeper in incredible locations and I am almost always positively surprised. My last dive experience was in Tulum and honestly, it felt like a dream. I was working in a tour agency promoting their offerings when Carlos, the manager and also a scuba diving instructor, offered to take me on a dive. He mentioned that we would be performing three dives in three different cenotes, which are deep-water wells found in the Yucatán Peninsula. I later confirmed that Mexico is indeed one of the best and unique diving countries in the world.

Cenote Angelita especially stood out. We dived 30m deep into a fog, that separated the clear freshwater from the saltwater and appeared otherworldly, spooky but exciting. Moving slowly into the fog we lost visibility but soon everything became clear. I started spotting colorful fish and navigated my way between narrow rocks. Looking up, I could only see the thick layer of hydrogen sulfide. It felt mysterious, supernatural and made for fantastic underwater photos.

The whole time during the dive I was able to move on my own, and I felt safe and confident, thanks to my previous technical knowledge from my certification process. The PADI certificate especially comes in handy in locations like this one where you want to go and explore the magic on your own and at your own pace.

Two years prior I had gotten my open water certification in El Hierro. It is the smallest island in the Canary Islands and don’t ask me why and how I ended up there. The guy I was dating back then was living in Tenerife, and after an argument with him I packed my bags and joined a friend, who was a captain and had just sailed from Africa to El Hierro on his boat. It was his time off and he was going for the diving license and managed to get me an additional discount, so I decided why not.

The three-day course was very intense and super technical. We were lectured on how the equipment functions, safety procedures, what to do and not to do underwater. There were assignments and tests after each day’s lesson and dives. It provided me with all the knowledge I needed to confidently dive without an instructor and I am so glad I did it.

I make sure to explore the underwater whenever I am at a remarkable seaside destination. In fact, I am now headed to San Andres Island, which is located on the coast of Nicaragua, and seems to be a top diving spot. I will share the details of it later.

Diving requires patience, it requires attention to detail, and a willingness to be as present as you can. And its rewards are endless, I haven’t even covered all the added health benefits in this post. So don’t worry if you ever need an excuse to drop daily life and get in the water!

Lastly, a little story from a dear friend of mine who is an ex-scuba instructor but can no longer dive due to an underwater accident and suffers from not being able to dive, daily.

When I asked him what makes diving so special for him, he told me this story:

“There was a guy who was also an instructor and he was doing a course with his students, he told me come and help me with this course, I need someone to play the unconscious diver in the bottom and the students had to search for me and bring me up to the surface. So, I go down and I find this rock and I stay behind it to make it a little bit harder for them to find me and I lay there and I look at this rock and there is nothing, it is just a rock. And then, because I am laying there for like half an hour staring at it, I start to notice that it has things on it. And the more I stared, the more things I became aware of. I would start to see these little white hands that come out, and scoop the water and bring it back into the little hole. They are maybe only 4 mm big. I never even knew they existed; I’ve never even seen it before. Mind blowing. And I start seeing these things only because I had nothing better to do, nothing to look around at and I just focused on this one point. And then after that I started to just go and dive and search for crazy stuff. Stuff that I had never found before, I would be very very patient and go very slow. It is crazy how much interesting, baffling, mind blowing stuff you can find. You can see that I liked diving a lot. I am getting excited just thinking about it.”

If you are curious about the underwater world and want to go for a fun dive, or get scuba diving certified, PADI offers the best courses in the world! I am PADI certified and I say it with confidence. You can check out all their programs by clicking the link below.

Want to get Scuba Diving certified? Click here!

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