Well... what can i say, we have just spent the best 5 days of our trip so far and are now fully qualified open water divers!!! Which is something i never thought i would ever say considering i cant swim all that well and the sea used to scare me!
We were all signed up and arrived at the Dive Shop early in the morning to get the boat (again!) to our own island where we would be the only ones on there for the duration of our stay... This boat was a proper boat and i gave a massive sigh of relief, we were a bit worried about spending so much on the next 5 days (almost double our allocated weekly budget) but when we saw the boat we knew we had booked with profesionals... and when we got there it was more than confirmed!
I cant describe how paradise like this place was (honeymoon type place), the house was amazing and our room was something that we never expected to stay in being mere travelers that we are! The balcony (yes you read right!) opened to a view of just ocean with a few dotted islands, and the bed was bigger than a king!!! We had struck gold and that was before we realised that we had three gourmet meals cooked for us a day!!! We had our own beach out front and a jetty at the back which you would snorkel from... and that was the island! Totally uninterrupted bliss and Lee and I had the whole place to ourselves!
The Diving - I wont lie, i was very very nervous when it came to the diving at first... We had a talk through with Juan our instructor and donned our gear (Lee looked like a male ballerina in his black skin suit and me in my pink and blue outfit reminded me of my first dancing costume without the tassels!) and got cautiously into the great big big big ocean where we were to learn our safety exercises... So there we were, sitting at the bottom of the sea (well we were only a few feet down) doing our safety stuff, taking mask off, sharing air, all that stuff that i wont bore you with! After that was all done (it was a bit more intense than that etc) we went for our first dive!!! It. Was. AMAZING!!!! Nemo´s all over the place!
The second dive was the best for both of us, the dive site was called My Aquarium... which it was literally that... you get in and the fish come up to you straight away!!! (other dives schools feed them so the expect food), they followed us around our dive, nibbling on fingers and heads! I looked at Lee at one point and he was swarmed by them! I never expected to see so much on the dive, at one point a massive shoal of purple fish just rained down on us.... We did a shipwreck dive also and i cant even begin to name all the fish that we saw... but the trumpet ones were my favorite along with the balloon fish. Along with the fish there was just valleys and walls of coral everywhere.
So with all the dives and reading over with we have become qualified!! The school was excellent and would recommend it and the location, Isla Pavito, to anyone - www.cartagenainfo.net/dolphindiveschool/english
We really really struggled to leave that place, we were privileged enough on the second last night to see from our balcony dolphins swimming in the sea, which apparently is pretty rare, so that really topped it off for us!
We gave a sorrowful farewell to the place this afternoon and are now back in Cartagena.
So here we are, back down to earth and to rags and complete budget traveling as we have to claw back 300quid from somewhere... the plan is now (which is very rough) to stay here for the next few days, visit a mud volcano and then make our way down south to catch the four day boat to Peru via the Amazon.....
We have loads and loads of pictures that will be uploaded in the next few days...
So, sorry for the long long post but over and out for now!
K & L xx
Colombia
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