Having been diving since the age of ten, it has been a passion of mine for a very long time and I’ve always known that I wanted to see my diving education through to the very end. Now, fresh out of A levels and just turned eighteen, I decided to fly to the other side of the world from the (oddly) sunny England to the lovely islands of Indonesia, specifically Bunaken and Lembeh off Sulawesi, to do my Divemaster course.
I arrived on Friday afternoon in Bunaken having traveled for around twenty hours on very little sleep. As shattered as I was, everyone was lovely and I felt welcome straight away. As well as the guests, I also met the two Divemasters who had just qualified, Sylvie and Joep, who were both lovely and really helped me get to know my way around.
Over the weekend I did some fun dives and started studying from my Divemaster manual. Also, on Saturday we went out and did a snorkelling clean-up which I found very interesting. While occasionally the work was a bit disgusting, I felt like we’d done something really good for the environment and a turtle even swam by Kasey (a guest) and I to say thank you!
On Monday, I met Tina and Nigel and had my DM introduction. Since then, I’ve been studying lots and nearly completed my DM manual and done the first part of my exam. I’ve also assisted Dion on the confined water dives three to five for guests Keiko and Nicolas. Karoline, the other DMT, has also been helping me practice my dive briefings and we have done some skills together, along with the equipment exchange which we found particularly interesting.
I’ve also just done my hundredth dive which was an exciting milestone for me, though from what I’ve heard, I broke tradition as I didn’t do it naked (sorry!). I shall write again in a week with more updates from Bunaken before I move to Lembeh.