Diving with my brother last week in Aruba. Not strictly solo diving, we were "diving with Clive" and my brother, being a relatively new diver, usually had to thumb the dive about 40ish minutes each time. Clive being Clive would wave bye and I'd get another 20-25 minutes on the tail end solo.
I loved these quiet, reflective moments to myself. It was so enjoyable diving with my brother, yet I was never at peace completely because I was watching him, being a good buddy, and he's a newbie diver so I was hopefully more brother and less father on those dives. Unshackled from that innate tension, I found the quiet solo moments refreshing, contemplative, freeing.
We dove Arashi Reef, the Antilla, Sponge Reef and the airplanes. Turtles, spotted and green moray eels, a couple lion fish, and all the typical Caribbean marine life. The Antilla was mesmerizing.
Two interesting experiences:
I brought a DIN to yoke converter, expecting there would be little DIN valves available, which worked out great. However, I was absolutely unable to find a shop that had a DIN converter to fill my pony for solo. Consequently, I did not dive with a pony. I had to reconfigure my regs to have a traditional accessory secondary stage regulator which irritated me on every dive bc I didn't like how the hoses were running, but that's a different issue.
This did mean, however, that I was diving solo without a redundant air source. This really pissed me off because a) I almost always dive with a back up, and b) I had brought my pony specifically for this purpose. Consequently the solo portions of my dive were relatively shallow (50-25 feet). I'll always travel with a DIN compressor converter now.
The other issue was the Aruban security went crazy with me traveling back to the states with an open, unvalved cylinder. I usually carry it on. They said no. I explained they were misinformed, please get an airline agent (Delta in this case). The agent showed up and said the cylinder had to be checked. I explained I didn't want it checked because I was afraid it would be mishandled and she needed to learn the Airlines policies which clearly allow me to take an open cylinder onboard. She left for 15 minutes and came back, allowed me to board with the cylinder and wished us safe travels. I've never encountered issues before like this but it reflects (on both accounts) how Aruba seems to be a vacationer's dive spot, they certainly are not used to pony diving.
When I first showed up with my pony, I was asked, "so you use that to extendbottom time? You an air hog?" - always a sign to me that they are unaccustomed to redundant air sources.
Nonetheless, two menial hiccups in an otherwise beautiful dive experience.
Or just use one of these...
