How I learned to Scuba Dive in The Canary Islands
My story of a try-dive off the Lanzarote coast.
Scuba diving is something I’ve always wanted to do, but also always been a little bit afraid of. The idea of being cut off from oxygen is pretty scary, but I have always been in love with the water. As a child I would live in the pool on holiday, diving down to the bottom and seeing how long I can hold my breath. The appeal of not having to come up for air was very appealing to my young self.
I finally got the courage to go for a try dive while staying at Playa Blanca in Lanzarote. This is a resort popular with British tourists and ex-pats, and the dive school I chose was run by a man who came from a town close to where I lived.
A try-dive is the most basic of scuba dive experiences and requires no prior knowledge or diving experience. You also don’t have to do any theory work beforehand. The trip is run in small groups, with a low instructor to guest ratio, to make sure there are eyes on you all the time. This means you don’t have to worry about oxygen levels or any of the technical stuff and you don’t have to worry about anything going wrong.
On our try-dive, there were three first-time divers. My husband and I were joined by a German man. With us, we had two instructors. This high instructor to learner ratio meant we could feel confident that we were being well taken care of.
I had pictured us jumping off the side of a boat, like in the movies. The reality was we walked into the sea from the shore. The water gets deep quite quickly in Playa Blanca, but we were always in sight of the beach, and I felt confident I could swim back if needed.
We were loaded up with enough weights that when we put our regulators in, we sank quite naturally to the sea bed. We started at a depth of around 2 meters and scooted along the sand until we were around 5 meters. This is the maximum depth for a try-dive.
At this level, we were able to see a variety of small fish, in lovely colours. The fish confidently swam around us, and some were quite curious.
Breathing underwater is an unnatural experience. My body rejected the idea and I felt panic rising. Shortly after going down I swam back to the surface and took a few deep breaths. One of the instructors followed me back up. I told him I couldn’t do it. He reassured me and held my hands as we dived back down.
After that whenever I felt the panic, a took a few deep breaths. I repeated in my head “breath, breath, breath”. My body calmed and I was able to enjoy the experience.
We were down for around 30 minutes overall. The highlight of the trip was a far off very big fish, lurking in the darkness. We later found out it was a barracuda.
One of our instructors had taken a waterproof camera for the dive, and back in the shop, he showed us photos and videos from our trip. We gladly paid the extra £20 to get them on a hard drive.
I adored my try-dive, and have since been on several more try-dives in Mexico and California. I’m hoping to get my PADI this year, and one day dive the Great Barrier Reef.
Have you tried diving? Would you like to? Let me know in the comments
