Utila – Week 4, Day 4: Plan B and Broken Coral
UTILA
Week 4
Day 4: Plan B & Broken Coral
December 07, 2022
I woke up to a dead and empty Underwater vision. Most of the staff had gone to Sandy Caye – an island close to Utila – to celebrate Clive’s 31st. The rest of us would join them the following day since we all had courses to assist on. For me, it’d the third and final day of the PADI Open Water course with Andreas and Brett.
As distraught as I felt about missing an entire day hanging out with the gang on a private tropical island, I simply had to do. With there not being enough clients, only God knew when it’d be possible for me to assist on another course – and I needed it as soon as possible to be able to graduate on time. And so, I had to use some of that pesky discipline I had almost forgotten about.
It was a pretty straightforward day. We went to Labyrinth, where they would go through some skills which they performed effortlessly, before we headed out on a fun dive. That’s where I saw the biggest lionfish I’ve ever come across. But not having a spear, I couldn’t do much other than look at it in awe. It’s funny how such a beautiful and elegant fish can be so deleterious to our environment, huh?
Then we had our second dive, where they did their last few skills before continuing with the dive. It was at this point that Andreas got a bit too cocky. In trying to swim upside down, he ended up banging his tank on a piece of coral, breaking off a sizeable chunk. I’ll never forget the look on Rachel’s face – pure disappointment and shock. I’ll never let him live this one down!
Seeing the look on their faces when we got on the boat and told them they were fully certified divers, I realised the significance of what I had been doing all along. I might have been doing my divemaster training programme just to spend more time in Utila and dive more, but by becoming a professional, I could actually start teaching if I wanted to. Much like Giovanni had told me back in Belize before I went on my first dive, the diving industry is in the business of changing lives. And boy did it change mine! In fact, at that point, I was thinking to myself that if something were to ever happen to me and I couldn’t practice medicine, I’d have a valid Plan B with diving!
We returned to Underwater Vision, which was just as dead as it had been that morning. It was kinda sad, mostly cause it’d be Harry’s last day and barely any of the staff were around to send him off. He, on the other hand, didn’t seem too concerned. He’d hidden his worn-out socks inside the Halliburton Wreck and was heading off to Canada for a ski season. Goodbye Harry!
Stay wild,
Marius
Post-Scriptum
Amelia old me that the previous day, Andreas had asked her to give us a couple of minutes of privacy before going into the room. I was this close to murdering her when she told me.