Don't forget, where I live you must always travel to do some technical diving (ok, till 55m is possible). for diving in old mines we need to travel 500km too. We don't live in an area of caves or really deep lakes. Wrecks are here at 30m max.
I could do adv. nitrox at home and I did that. But I wanted further in technical diving, for me it was trimix as a first choise. But I wanted to try cavediving too. But I don't like following a guide in a big group in a cenote in Mexico or so. So then a course is better. That was for me the reason to book a holiday and a complete package with the whole course for cavediving. (cavern, intro and full). And I really liked it.
And then I did at home my normoxic, and 3 months later on a holiday the full trimix. Is it fast? Yes. Too fast? no. At home I did a lot of training dives to learn myself multitasking under water. I never did a fundamentals-course (the reason: I have seen too many snobs after doing this course, they think they are better than others because they have a tech-rating, but other organisations are still bigger) The cave course was easy for me. My friend had more difficulties, but finished too.
Now I feel comfortable when doing long bottomtimes at 55m. 3 or 4 stages carrying? no problem. A dive in an old mine is nice too and I can do it now and I do it a couple of times a year. And if needed I can go deeper than 60m too.
and yes, sometimes we do trainingdives in the shallow lakes
The diver where this topic started for has now bought a twinset and decided to do adv. nitrox and normoxic trimix. And then in the future a cavecourse.
