PADI Open Water Diver!!!!

Yes - that's me!! *squeals* I am a qualified Open Water Diver and can now be let loose in the water with a tank on my back and a Darth Vadar mask in my mouth! It is very very exciting and I think Ange and I are now addicted! We are in Coron, a small town/village on the island of Busuanga, in the north of Palawan (a group of islands right to the west of the Philippines - apparently Palawan was once part of Malaysia and broke away in an earthquake, however many years ago (I am thinking hundreds of thousands, but whatever...) (btw - this is an insanely slow computer - I am not sure how long I will last before I get fed up and storm back out into the heat of the day!)

Today is our last day here in Coron and we are being extra cautious about not diving and flying, so are having a quiet day today - I want to do some souvenir shopping and visit a gallery (thinking about Christmas presents), there is a hill that we want to climb and later on we will go to some hot springs about a twenty-minute jeepney ride away.

Anyway - I will tell you a little bit about diving, but probably not everything now as I don't want to make this a super long entry and I could talk about it for days. Ange and I flew down here in a tiny little plane on Friday morning (it was an eighteen seater, with no toilet, steward or even cabin pressurisation! As we were taking off, Ange turned to me and said, "it's like Lost" (the TV show about the people whose plane crash landed on a remote desert island and they have to survive there!), which wasn't particularly comforting!!! Anyway - we finally got to Busuanga and had a one-hour jeepney ride to Coron through this incredibly green and lush countryside - each time we leave Manila the lushness just astounds us. We started our course that afternoon with Maddy, who is the friend of my friend Kim in Manila. Maddy is British and has been a scuba diving instructor here for about five years (I think?) and is just the loveliest person - we had so much fun with her. We did 'academics' on the first day which consisted of watching a few very cheesy videos that PADI (Professional Association of Divers Inc., I think?) have for their course.

The Open Water Diving Course generally takes four days, although you can do it in three. There are five videos you watch, followed by 'academics' sessions, four quizzes, five 'confined water' dives, which is where you go through things in shallow water (often done in a pool, we did ours at a shallow beach) and then four actual deep dives - we started out going to 12 metres and by the last one went to 18 metres. The next day (Saturday), we were joined by another guy, Richard, who was a Filipino from Manila and did the course with us. (just an aside - I have been trying to log in to msn messenger for thirty minutes and am about to do something violent...) So we were off scuba diving around the sites of Coron.

Hmmm - I may leave this here as I don't want to be too long and boring. I will come back with more news soon...

Tomorrow we are flying from Busuanga into Puerta Princessa (the capital of Palawan). We will do something around there tomorrow, go to the Underground River on Saturday and then fly back to Manila on Sunday (*cry*) Really don't want to go back......

Anyway - toodles