Whilst Dave was doing his basic Open Water Diver, I decided after my previous 15-20 dives, it was about time I challenged myself and took the Advanced course. I wanted to gain the skills to feel more comfortable underwater, and besides, it was one of my goals for this trip.

To qualify, I had to do five ‘adventure’ dives which included peak performance buoyancy, fish identification, naturalist (doesn’t involve swimming naked) and navigation. The one dive that I was a bit apprehensive about was the deep dive to 30m. For those of you who no nothing about diving, after 25m, some people experience nitrogen narcosis, which can include symptoms such as euphoria, confusion, memory loss and generally going a bit crazy. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to the experience.

To demonstrate the effects of deep diving, my instructor had me do a timed task at surface level, and then repeat the task on the bottom to see how much longer it took. He wrote the numbers one to twenty in words in a random pattern and I had to point to them in order. Easy enough. As we descended past 25m I did begin to feel a little confused and giggly. Once on the bottom, Ross gave me the slate with the numbers on. As I looked it I felt very confused – the words weren’t right. I tried turning the slate upside down but they still didn’t make any sense. I realised then that words were back-to-front, and thinking that the slate was perhaps made of glass (it was obviously plastic) I turned it over to see if that would help.

The truth is, Ross, egged on by his fellow instructor Peter, had actually written the words back-to-front to make me think I was going crazy. They got the result they wanted! I tried to do the task anyway, giggling all the way through it, and got to sixteen but just couldn’t see seventeen. I knew it began with an ‘s’ but couldn’t concentrate any longer and gave Ross the ‘I give up’ I sign. He laughed and asked me to check my how much air I had left. I gave him the signal for ’90 bar’ (out of 200) and we ascended slightly to finish the dive. After a few minutes and as the effects wore off, I looked at my air and realised that I now had ‘100’ left, so I must have had more than 90 on the bottom – proof that I did go somewhat crazy and confused. Although I felt very tired afterwards, the dive itself wasn’t as scary as I thought it might be and I did enjoy feeling like an extra in James Bond with my big dive computer strapped to my wrist (I’m sure it had a laser gun function).

We’ve seen loads of stuff underwater here including lion and scorpion fish (both poisonous), big angel fish, moray eels, trumpet fish, squid, trigger fish, various nudi branches and loads of corals. It’s a great place to dive, although getting a little cold now at 26c in the water (two wetsuits required!).

Now that I’ve completed all the necessary dives I qualify as an Advanced Open Water diver and feel much more comfortable in the water. One travel goal achieved – yeay!