Scuba Diving and Snorkeling
The highlight of my holiday was taking a 6-day Diving Course on the Watamu Reefs. I had initially planned to take a shortened version of the course, which would have enabled me to dive with an instructor, but I quickly got hooked. Mathilde was happy with the nanny and the boys were happy playing with their friends, so I managed to take the full PADI open water diver course.

I took the course with Aqua-Ventures together another guy, Patrick. We had a good instructor, Arnold who took us through the videos, written exams, 4 pool sessions and the 4 open water dives.

Swimming weightlessly underwater in the pool, without having to go up for air was a wonderful feeling. My first open water dive is what I will remember, however. It was rather windy, so we dove at "Turtle reef" in the inner reef and visibility was down to only 5 metres or so, but it didn't matter. It was a wonderful experience to be down there with fish and the colourful coral. We dove to a depth of around 9 metres. The highlight was spotting a turtle resting in a hole in the coral. We stopped and watched it, then carried on round the coral outcrop. Half way round, I felt my flipper touch something behind me and it turned out to be the turtle. It slowly swam beside me and then past me back into its hole. I couldn't resist gently touching its shell as it went past. They are really beautiful, graceful creatures.

The second dive was also on Turtle reef, but the last 2 dives (one after the other) were on "Canyon Reef" in the outer reef. I have to confess that I was incredibly seasick out there in the boat, waiting for the nitrogen to come out of the blood before the second dive but it was worth it. The visibility was 15-20 metres and we dove to a depth of 18 metres. We saw another turtle, an octopus, a big grouper fish, several lion fish, a crocodile fish, sting rays and lots of other sea life.

Erik also got to try scuba diving in the pool as the diving school did a "Bubbles course" for children aged 8 and over. Erik was really good and took to it like... well, like a fish to water I suppose. He said he was Commander Cody (a Storm Trooper from Star Wars) and that his scuba gear was a jet pack! It was great to swim around the pool underwater with him.

A boat from the hotel went out to "The Coral Garden" on the reef at low tide every day for snorkeling trips and we went most days. We brought bread with us and hand feeding the fish was great fun.
Mathilde came with us twice. The first time she was afraid the fish would eat her, but she wasn't scared the second time. Erik was very good at diving down with the fish and Daniel had no problem using the snorkel, mask and fins to manoeuvre around on the surface. Inger-Lise had been snorkeling before in Bali on our honeymoon and really enjoyed doing it again.

Jeremy