Lewis the Lion goes to the diving centre for the first time
The way that Lewis the Lion was living out his dreams on this magical trip around the world, well so was his travelling companion, Helen.
Lewis stands with Helen as she wears her diving equipment
She had wanted to learn how to dive all of her life and now in Mexico, she had her golden opportunity. Lewis the Lion was really happy to see his friend realising her dreams too but was just happy to watch on because as you know, cats aren’t great fans of water. With his recent bath, Lewis the Lion had had enough water for the moment! However, he still had fun seeing his friend learn this new skill and her enthusiasm and excitement seemed to rub off on him too.
Lewis the Lion is happy to meet Ronnie, the diving instructor
First of all, she was introduced to her new diving instructor, Ronnie, who would help her to pass her PADI open-water diving certification. Ronnie was from San Andres Island in the Caribbean and had been diving for a long time. Lewis the Lion thought that he was very friendly and was very good at making people feel at ease. Ronnie was a very patient teacher with Helen, explaining things carefully and making sure that she went over things time and time again.
Lewis sits on the diving instructor’s shoulder
The view through the window of the diving centre onto the Caribbean Sea
The next thing that Helen had to do was to study the theory of diving which is important because without proper care and attention it could be a dangerous sport. She learnt that there is one main golden rule when scuba diving: 1) is to breathe continuously and never hold breath your breath. In other words, just breath normally. There were lots of other important rules that Helen learnt so that she could be a safe diver, for example, that you always dive with a buddy, you need to calculate the times and depths of your dives carefully (as simply, the deeper you dive, the more air you use but you also need to be able to work out the correct nitrogen levels in your body) and when diving that you should never force your ears when trying to equalise.
Ronnie makes it look easy to carry the heavy diving equipment
However, before she could even dive (apart from studying the theory), she had to learn about the SCUBA equipment that a diver uses.
This included:
– a wetsuit
– a comfortable, well fitting mask
– a snorkel (this makes it easier at the surface and saves air in your tank)
– a BCD (a buoyancy control device) like a life jacket which you can inflate at the surface to keep you afloat or deflate to help you descend.
– a Scuba tank filled with air
– a regulator which allows you to breath underwater
– an alternate air source should your buddy run out of air
– a pressure gauge, watch or a diving calculator watch
– a weights belt
– a wrist compass
– And finally your fins or flippers.
Lewis sees the air cylinders and wetsuits
It is important that you look after the equipment carefully by always rinsing it after a dive in fresh water and also having it checked regularly, e.g. Ensure that the air tanks are filled and checked.
Lewis checks out the BCDs
When all the equipment was ready, Ronnie and Helen were ready for the off. Unlike Lewis the Lion, Helen had always loved swimming: she was a real water-baby. However, wearing the diving equipment felt heavy on dry land as they walked from the dive shop, across the sand and into the warm, Caribbean Sea. But no sooner had they got more than waist-deep in the water, the equipment started to feel weightless. With one final buddy check, noting their location and time, Helen and Ronnie were ready to go for their first dive! Helen tried to put into practise all of the theory that she had studied and for the first time as she descended through the water, she felt light, agile and free. She described to Lewis the Lion that it was as if she were opening the door into a different world.
Lewis the Lion imagines all the fish in the sea
Quite simply, Helen told Lewis the Lion that diving was a truly magical experience. There was so much wildlife in such a small space and it was happily swimming right by you! Helen found that underwater exploration was thrilling and could suddenly understand the scenes she’d seen in the children’s films like Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Finding Nemo. Not only was there a vast range of sizes and colours of fish but they also seemed to have different characters too when you looked at their faces. Some seemed to have smiley faces, whilst others looked positively haughty!
At times huge, lonesome fish would swim by like barracudas but then shoals of tiny fish would swim by too. Helen loved it when Ronnie flicked his fingers at they would scatter in time with the pulse. The underwater world was a mass of colour with corals, plants and rocks. Helen loved the big fan-coral which hung onto the rocks and flapped in time with the rhythm of the sea. She thought it looked like a cross section of a lung! There was lots of corals which looked like vibrantly-coloured, bubbled rock. On the rocks were jelly-like tubular plants called anemone. Sometimes, if you looked carefully in the crevices in the rocks, you could see the thin threads of feelers poking out, with beady eyes behind them: a lobster!
Swimming away from the rocks, over the sand, sometimes beautiful shiny multi-coloured shells lay on the ocean’s floor. Sometimes it would look as if the bottom of the sea was covered with a green lawn of tiny green plants and seaweed but you had to be careful not to sink to the bottom altogether as the plants could sting if you got too close.
Helen felt fantastic swimming around in this underwater paradise. Ronnie was surprised at how much air she had left in her tank after her first dives. She was obviously enjoying herself and breathing normally with her breathing equipment as she had been taught.
Lewis pretends to wear flippers and a mask!
One thing is for certain though, diving builds up an appetite so Lewis the Lion was very happy to join Helen and Ronnie for a Mexican snack in the café down the road from the dive shop (Read more about Mexican food in Lewis’ blog on Mexican food and drink).
Lewis and Ronnie enjoy a snack after Helen’s first dive
Helen was really pleased to have fulfilled one of her dreams of diving. What thing do you dream of doing one day? Tell your friend or teacher.
