Getting Wet

Miles from Home - 3013.0 miles
Firsts / Highlights - First time diving Curacao
Activity - SCUBA diving
People - Mark & Suzy (owners of The Dive Bus), Bas (divemaster), Chip, Janette & Jarett (New York), Mike & Bruce (NW Connecticut).

This post is from August 15-17.

Greetings from 12 degrees north latitude.



I have been successfully and safely reintroduced to SCUBA diving. I spent the first day at the Marriott’s dive operation just getting my feet (and the rest of me) wet. I snorkeled in the morning and went for a boat dive in the afternoon. It was a good dive, but I never intended to dive with the Marriott (Caribbean Sea Sports) operation throughout my stay.





I read about a small operation called The Dive Bus on www.undercurrent.org, and decided to spend most of my time with them. They use a bus (van actually) rather than a boat to get to their dive sites. Their approach allowed me to take advantage of the great shore diving on this island while still having a dive master along as a security blanket. With an experienced “buddy”, you could easily do all of your dives right from shore and not really need a dive operation except for tank rental. Since I am alone and fairly inexperienced, I feel better diving with a pro.





The owners of The Dive Bus are Mark and Suzy. They moved to Curacao from England about 6 years ago and are working hard to make the business work. Very nice people. Mark drives the bus and leads the dives along with a staff divemaster from the Netherlands named Bas. Mark is the guy diving with the rubber chicken. Suzy runs the hut at their house reef and was my contact as I set things up by e-mail. She got me started on a specialty diving course to learn how to dive on Enriched Air (nitrox) yesterday.



One of the keys to an enjoyable dive is to keep the group to a reasonable size. With The Dive Bus, I have never been in a group of more than 5 people, and tomorrow it looks like it will only be me for both dives (along with Mark as the divemaster). Until now, the dives have been fairly shallow (mostly less than 50 feet). Tomorrow, weather permitting, we are going to dive the “Superior Producer” and “Car Pile” sites. Both of these are going to be in the 80-100 foot range.



I’ll explain more about “nitrox” tomorrow when I will hopefully be certified.