Best Travel Moments

[Diver0001]

Me and a friend were in Egypt with a random group of foreigners.

One of them was a police woman from Germany. As you can imagine she was not the most open type of person.
My buddy and I made it our "mission" to help her relax. We integrated into their group. We befriended her and became one of the club.

In the course of the week we were there she warmed up to us. In the 'pub', which was just a Bedouin tent near the edge of camp, she told us about her work, about murders, about how it was to be a police officer in Germany and how it affected her.

On the last day we there together. My friend and I were smoking the shisha and drinking beer. She had opened up enough that she sat between us and eventually fell asleep. She laid down between us and fell deep in sleep and started snoring. My friend looked at me and said, "mission accomplished!"

What I liked about this is that as divers we meet each other in a particular context and sometimes forget our "real lives". Our German friend eventually relaxed enough that her job no longer affected her ability to lay down with friends and sleep. Her guard was 100% down.

When do we get that in our real lives?

That's what diving does. It allows us to drop our guard 100%.

R..

 

[Wingy]

Great post!

Recently in Vanuatu after climbing Mt Yasur volcano at night then again at dawn after an impromptu "melting pot" party in a treehouse (complete with front row view of the volcano spitting out fireworks) I invited all the travellers back to where I was staying on the coast. A lovely Chinese lady who spoke only a bit of English travelling on her own turned up and we were able to help her as two of the strangers I'd dragged home were girls from Hong Kong who could converse fluently. I apparently forgot how old I am because I decided then would be a great time to go diving in the caves and blue holes.
I'd only been awake since 2.30am with 3 hours sleep but hey..
After dragging myself out of the blue hole I was crawling along on hands and knees, seaweed hair, snot bubbles, puffing and panting, mask mark etc trying to find a slightly less deadly place to stand up when I heard her yelling from the shore "Scuba Diver! Scuba Diver! I want to be just like you!"

What part? The nose bubbles or seaweed hair lol.

I got an email from Lisa in Shanghai yesterday who is currently taking swimming lessons on her journey to being a diver.

 

[drrich2]

For me, probably those times when I saw a particularly neat new animal of some sort, especially if said animal was big &/or dangerous in some way.

1.) Hilma Hooker wreck, Bonaire - a big green moray eel. Basically being in the water with something potentially dangerous, albeit if treated with respect minimally so.

2.) Key Largo, Florida - 1st 'real' (not nurse) shark - a Caribbean reef shark (saw 1st nurse shark on this trip, too).

3.) Belize - 1st shark feeding dive, and thus 1st larger (?5-6'?) reef shark encounter in close quarters.

4.) Jupiter, Florida - 1st close up Goliath grouper encounters. Saw then 1st in Key Largo (wreck of Spiegel Grove).

5.) North Carolina - 1st Sand Tiger shark encounters, and up close. 1st true 'non-Caribbean Sea' Atlantic Ocean diving.

6.) Channel Islands, California - Harbor seal messed with my fin. Got buzzed by a California sea lion. Was approached by a torpedo ray. Close encounter with a sea hare. 1st Kelp forest diving. 1st Experience with the Pacific Ocean.

Richard.

 

[ppatin]

During my second trip on the Juliet my then-girlfriend, now-wife and I were laying on top of the boat after a night dive. The boat was moving with its sails up and a rather impressive storm was kicking up in the distance. We just laid there relaxing, hearing the wind in the sails, watching distant lightning like a fireworks show.

Another memorable moment was at the end of our first night dive in Komodo. I'd done night dives before but they were always directly off of a boat in the Caribbean so there would be lots of lights when we surfaced. At the end of this dive we popped up, my eyes were still adapted to the darkness and the tender that was going to pick us up was still a couple of minutes away. I looked up at the stars with no lights around us and they were absolutely spectacular. I could've just sat there bobbing in the water stargazing all night long.

 

[wildbill9]

The look of astonishmental and pure joy of my soon to be wifes face after her first dive ever (it was at cayman brac). As snot dripped down her face she said "I have never seen anything like that before, I listened to you talk about it but I had no idea! And why didn't they tell me about sinus purge????" 29 years later we still are diving

 

[Centrals]

Everest and K2 after a long walk-in from the road head as a trekker on two different trips. If I have to make a choice, K2 looks more intimidating.

 

[bsppc]

Sunrise at Darwin on the Galapagos Sky. I was the only American on the full boat. All Europeans and only two of the 16 passengers spoke English. I was on the trip as a single. I enjoyed the peace and quiet. It is amazing how diving brought us all together in a common language of hand signals under the water and reviewing pictures back on deck.

 

[muzzon]

Whale sharks in the Philippines.

 

[DeputyDan]

My best travel moment - or the one moment I will never forget is as follows:

On our first trip to Bonaire, we were diving the dive site "old blue". My two daughters were 13 and 16 (or thereabouts) and were diving as well.

There was a very elderly couple setting there in beach chairs under an umbrella. Their family members would dive and the old folks (at least in their 80's) would sit at the dive site and enjoy the views. The gentleman asked me about my daughters and I told him we were from the USA and their ages. It was clear from talking with him that he was Jewish and from Europe. He closed his eyes and drifted away for a couple of minutes - when he opened his eyes he said - Life must be wonderful to be diving in Bonaire when you are 13 years old.

At his age and back ground I can only imagine where his thoughts went when his eyes were closed.
And yes we really don't appreciate how wonderful life really is!

This gave me a different and better perspective on life.