Rangali Island, Maldives
Today I experienced my first day of open water scuba diving! Not surprisingly diving in open water is considerably more fun than diving in a pool. Our morning started early with the breakfast buffet at 8AM. Breakfast is always the most important meal of the day but it’s especially so on Rangali Island because it’s free thanks to my gold membership. It’s hard to find a meal on the island for less than $50 a person, so tanking up in the morning is time well spent.
After breakfast we made our way to the dive shop to meet up with our instructor for the trip. Rob was a hilarious British Welshman. His sense of humor was constant and dirty but thoroughly entertaining. Any time he was describing something that could go wrong or did go wrong he would say, “BALLS.”
Our dive instructor Rob posing in the Dive Center.
The first hour and half of our session was instructional in nature, discussing dive plans, dive computers, hand signals, etc. By 10:30AM or so we made our way out to the Rangali Lagoon for our first dive. We went over a few basic in water skills, tested and practiced buoyancy, saw some sea life and called it a morning. The dive wasn’t earth shattering for me in that I didn’t see anything I hadn’t seen snorkeling many, many times before (clown, puffer, parrot fish, etc) It was, however, really fun to see things from below the surface. The first dive left me excited for more dives.
Ben was quite hungry post dive one, so we went to the Rangali Bar for lunch. Ben loved his burger to the point that he thought it was value for $40. My quesadilla was decent but the view was wonderful.
We returned to the dive shop after lunch. We chatted with Rob a bit more about basic skills, multiple dive days and gear. We then wandered over to the Rangali House Reef for our second dive of the day. We learned Rob’s favorite mnemonic for checking one’s scuba gear. BWRAF is commonly used to remind divers to check their bcd, weights, restraints, air and face/fins. Rob’s suggestion to remember BWRAF is “British Welshman Really Are Fantastic.” I’m fairly certain if someone asks me 50 years from now about BWRAF, I’ll remember Rob’s phrase.
During our dive we confirmed more skills including CESA (controlled emergency swimming accent), swimming ability with a snorkel and a safety stop. Ben got his first chance at feeling a significant current on this dive as we were much further out from shore than in the morning. On this dive we also got to see much more sea life including an entertaining and feisty moray eel, vermillion rock cod and clown trigger fish.
A crappy photo of a moray but it gives you an appreciation for how close we were to the fish.
After the dive we walked back to the dive center with Rob and filled out our dive logs. We then cleaned up and made our way to dinner at The Lounge at The Quiet Zone Bar. The Lounge food comes from the same kitchen as the Rangali Bar which is on the other island. To that end the food takes a while to be delivered and it was served a little cold. Even cold, it still tasted delicious. I had an eggplant sandwich on focaccia with a salad and fries. While waiting we enjoyed the view below that turned from early evening to night.
After dinner Ben and I took an extended stroll back to our unit. We had a good conversation about emoting and communication during which I learned Ben considered today to be one of the top three days of his life.
We must be up early for the scuba boat which departs at 8:15AM tomorrow. To that end it’s bedtime.
Until tomorrow,
Katy
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