27th. December 2013 - 06:30 : It started simply enough...

Here I am, I finally made it. It’s 06:30, I’m sitting outside the Sari Sigara opposite the beach in Jimbaran, Bali. A father drifts by on his motorcycle, infant in hand. She is fast asleep, dreaming no doubt to the sound of the sea on the other side of the road.  I cannot believe that it’s the morning of the first day of my PADI Open Water Dive course (OWC).  Perhaps I’d better explain how I ended up here.

Wind back to late November 2013, work tells me that taking leave over the Christmas / New Year break is mandatory (with rare exceptions).  I’d planned to do the OWC in July 2014 but this changed things a bit. Over the next few days I had to organise a course, a plane fare, accommodation and ensure that my dive buddy was free to do the course. Oops, that also gives me less than a month to get a bit fit after a long winter’s hibernation: Not much I can do here so back to the hibernation comfort zone. Thankfully it all fell into place due in the main to impeccable organisation on the part of my partner.

The dive bus from Blue Season Bali, painted, you guessed it, complete with bubbles, pulled up exactly on time and we headed to the school. On the way we picked up a Dive Master from Canada who was taking two ex-pat Kenyans who were well on their way to becoming Dive Masters themselves, on an Adventure dive to Nusa Panida. In my excitement or rather trepidation of the day’s events to come, regrettably I forgot their names

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When I got to the dive school, it was a beehive of activity. Magically, the administrators seemed to create order from the apparent chaos. I think those waving clip-boards seemed to have something to do with it. Everyone seemed to gravitate naturally to where they should be.

I found my to-be dive-buddy and good friend G. I’ve no idea how our instructor found us. I think the large yellow L-Plate hanging around my neck made it rather obvious. Then again, perhaps it was more likely that he had seen so many of us that he could smell the cold sweat above the salty sea air. We were whisked away to start the course, without incident apart from me tripping as gracefully as I could over some diving equipment on the way to the classroom.