When we first came here to Bali for our PADI Divemaster course Amed we thought that it would have a party nightlife. But upon arriving in Amed, about 3 hours by car from the airport in Denpasar, it had a completely different life and environment than the city. The small fishing village consisted of many places to stay, eat, dive, hike, and boat trips to other places outside of Bali.
When we first arrived to Two Fish Divers’ dive store inside Surya Rainbow Villas, we were greeted with a welcome drink, and a welcoming introduction of the Villa from the receptionist Hanny. Not to long after, we were greeted by Cedric and Arnaud, the two PADI instructors, at Two Fish Divers who were our PADI Instructors.
The first couple days when we arrived, the resort did not have much people diving, so we did a lot of practice for the divemaster 24 skill circuit for open water. We practiced it a couple times and then we did a run through of the skills as if we were instructors showing them to open water students. The instructors played problematic students so that we would know what to encounter on new open water students for practice.
In the last 13 days, we have covered so many skills (24 water skills, rescue scenarios), topics (RDP tables, decompression theory, dive physiology and physics, nitrox theory), exercises (mapping, emergency assistance plan, equipment setup, deep dive scenarios, and project aware ideas), and all the stamina test. I never thought that we would be able to cover most of the divemaster program under 2 weeks. Of course, nothing is perfect yet, because that would take some time with repetition and constant practice.
We recently just started doing our TDI sidemount course this week. We are preparing for the technical diving courses (Intro to tech, Advance Nitrox, and decompression procedures) that we will be doing later in the divemaster internship.
Aside from the busy side of the internship, we do have some time to fun dive and take pictures of underwater sea critters. Most of the diving here is muck diving and that is perfect for photographers who like macro-photography. Amed has so many wonderful small critters hiding underneath the sandy sea bottom. Two Fish Divers have two excellent dive guides when it comes to muck diving. Baron and Bayu are like walking encyclopedia when it comes to the knowledge of the creature’s behavior, habitat, food they eat, and classifying their family name.
Feel free to look through Nathan’s Photos here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10212030187923846.1073741843.1048226302&type=1&l=7cd59abb50
