"Just rent" ?? Try renting equipment in an undeveloped region of a third world country where it's a good idea to bring your own valve o rings and where it's difficult to buy anything: no restaurants, no supermarkets, no drug stores, no convenience stores, dirt roads and certainly no dive shops. No hotels, just small places to rent that may have, if you're lucky, a working refrigerator, when the electric power works. The equipment some of the individual small operators have is very limited and sometimes very worn. They may have wait for the jitney bus to bring refilled tanks every couple of days from a distant resort. Primitive, wonderfully primitive.
Granted these are very out of the way locations, and they are growing harder to find, disappearing, but some of us crave places where there are no computers, no email, no phones, not even the kind that connect to the wall with a wire. Screw civilization. It's great when no one in the world can contact you except your immediate neighbors. Sometimes I want to see the stars clearly at night, and hear only the buzzing of insects and the chirping of tiny frogs. A rare experience, but when I can make the connections I carry everything I need with me, and maybe a few extra mask and fin straps that are always greatly appreciated.
Granted these are very out of the way locations, and they are growing harder to find, disappearing, but some of us crave places where there are no computers, no email, no phones, not even the kind that connect to the wall with a wire. Screw civilization. It's great when no one in the world can contact you except your immediate neighbors. Sometimes I want to see the stars clearly at night, and hear only the buzzing of insects and the chirping of tiny frogs. A rare experience, but when I can make the connections I carry everything I need with me, and maybe a few extra mask and fin straps that are always greatly appreciated.
