So it seems that 2016 started pretty well so far. Let me rewind a bit to January and the last few months.
I spent a fair amount of time last year prepping my application for the PADI Course Director training (CDTC). For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, here:
See the last box that says “Course Director”? That’s what I was aiming at. It allow you to train instructors fully, to basically be a super PADI instructor. It is not as easy as just saying it to get there, it is the last step on the ladder so to speak, so there is a selection process for it and no everybody gets in.
So the whole application was done by the end of November, and then I just had been waiting patiently until the 15th of January, date when the answer was due.
It was a bit more nerve wrecking than I thought it would be to be honest. Anyway, on said morning I get up and check my emails: nothing. So I coffee up, get dressed and go to work even though I was not supposed to go dive that day because there is a pile of work emails waiting for me. After the second coffee, check my email again and….email has arrived, and I have been accepted for the program!
Ensue a round of hugs and me being thrown in the pool for celebration, and more coffee, and then I decide to go and fun dive to celebrate as the boat hasn’t left yet.
There is a group of instructors/friends/divemasters diving, so I join that team and I happily drop in the water, thinking that it’s nice and warm and that I expect no more today than to be happy in my happy place the ocean, and maybe spot a cool nudi or two if I am lucky. The guys make jokes about how I should get to see a mola to celebrate, but the water is warm so I expect no mola.
So we drop down to 30+ meters, we check out the bottom, nothing big there, so we cruise along the slope, me nose on the reef looking for small nudibranchs like I do most of the time.
Until Jake grabs my arm and shakes it like a madman while pointing up towards the surface. It took me about 2 seconds to figure out what that HUGE shadow above us was: a whale shark.
(Now, those of you who have dived with me or have been reading this blog know that there are a few big things I still havent seen diving. On top of that list for at least the last decade, the whale shark. The elusive whale shark has been avoiding me for years, even when I went to specific places to see it and was always disappointed. Over a thousand dives and no whale shark. It had become a sort of joke that I would do often before jumping in: “maybe today is my whale shark day, haha”.)
A WHALE SHARK. A bloody huge, beautiful, amazing whale shark.
(turns out later it was a baby, about 4/5 meters we reckon. Still, huge!)
FINALLY !!!
Said whale shark is really shallow, so I shoot up like a rocket from 20 meters to 10 (totally not hearing my computer beeping at me because I am too busy screaming in my regulator) and then try to keep up with the whale shark who is going against the current, minding his own business, swimming effortlessly along the reef. A few minutes of magic and joy really. I shed a tear or two.
The rest of the day after that was just a huge cloud of happiness and whale shark.
Then it started raining, finally. Now I am not even gonna start about rainy season, because I am SO over it already.
This month I will be busy with IDC, getting back into running and getting ready for CDTC!
