Diving in the Caribbean

One day in Tikazalou, Juliane, one of the people from the hostel, said that he was going diving today. He asked people if they wanted to join him and I considered for some time and then said: "hell yeah, let's do it".

I hadn't dived in over 6 years, ever since I got my SSI open water in Thailand in 2018. But this time I had the money and the opportunity to go diving again, on top of that in the Carribean at some of the most beautiful dive spots on Earth.

On the first dive I was still super excited since it had been such a long time, but going with Juliane released a lot of that tension because he helped and guided me like a dive instructor. He has over two hundred logged dives and his dive master certificate so he's kinda good at it 🤗 One day he will be doing his dive instructor and work as a diving teacher, I know it. I'm excited for him, because I can see how happy he is when he dives. This happiness is contagious and so I smile the whole time on our way to the dive center.

We went to a small shop near Malendure. There was only a small group of people. Juliane and I went together with our dive lead named Bruno to a small spot named "The Aquarium". It's located near Pigeon Island in the Cousteau Reserve. The beauty of the corals blew my away and I was hooked again immediately.

The best thing was that Juliane brought an underwater camera with him and so I have pictures from the dive for the first time which makes me immensely happy because I want to share the beauty of this underwater world.

In total we went diving six times together over the next weeks. During this time Rebecca also had her birthday and her parents gifted her the diving lessons for the Open Water SSI so after that we went diving, the three of us together. The different diving spots we explored around this region of Guadeloupe off the West Coast of Basse Terre where all amazing. Going by names like "The Swimming Pool" or "Murphy".

We saw so many beautiful animals. Turtles, barracuda, but to me the best part where the swarms of fishes around the corals. And they were not afraid of us, just swimming there, close by, accepting us as part of the underwater world.

One day another diver with a camera joined our little group and so we had even more pictures, even some group pictures of all of us together, which makes me really happy. His name was David and the photos he took were mesmerizing.

That day we went around in the center of the Cousteau Reserve. There is a little statue there of Cousteau himself, on the sandy seafloor, smiling a wry smile, waving, with a hand that went missing over time somehow. These small moments of diving, of mystery, are what make it worth it.

The other day when we went through a small cave, it was just Juliane, the dive instructor and me and we slowly swam through a three meter long tunnel. The sense of claustrophobia and excitement that this made me feel was beyond explanations. Underwater with dive equipment, small spaces, caves and tunnels suddenly become a lot more scary and exciting. But I loved it, and can totally see why people would go cave diving...

At the end of the dive we came back up and goofed around with the seagrass, those are some of my favorite memories of the whole stay in Guadeloupe.

People like Juliane and Davide, make me think that I would also like to photograph underwater. But I am afraid that I would lose myself so much in the process of photography that I completely forget my surroundings and that something bad happens to me because of that. I would first have to become a lot better at diving before I attempt underwater photography.

The main problem with diving is that it's sooo expensive. A single dive in the Caribbean costs around 50€, if you have no equipment and are not an autonomous diver. If you buy multiple dives you get discounts but a single dive still costs on the order of 40€. This adds up quickly but I think that, in the end, the experience of diving is still worth it.

One idea that all of this spawned in my head is that owning a boat where you have all the diving equipment and compressors on board and touring around somewhere in Indonesia would be an absolutely amazing idea. Just living off the boat, going diving every day somewhere in Raja Ampat sounds like the dream.

Maybe some day I am going to do that 🤗 It's odd, but dreams for how to live life come to mind more often when I'm traveling.