Lost with a new buddy

Just a week or so into my long holiday (remember I’d quit my job) Pam had some friends over from the UK. Being the generous soul I am ;-) I offered to show them around whilst Pam was at work. Of course it keeps me busy also. Carol and Lesley whom I’d never met fancied a trip to the East Coast at Fujairah. The beach there is lovely and they have a nice hotel where you can pay to use the facilities, pool etc. There is also a dive centre and Carol wanted to go diving, well how could I refuse?! So I picked the girls up at some ungodly hour and headed over the mountains. This was extra fun in my shinny new Tang, and fortunately the girls liked speed also.

Le Merdien Al Aqah Beach Resort Fujairah

Carol and I went diving and Lesley (a non-diver) found a nice spot by the pool with her book. This was the first time I’d dived without his nibs so was a bit nervous; though Carol and I got on really well you place a fair bit of trust in your dive buddy. My nerves were unfounded though, as we were new buddies we were both very careful of each others whereabouts in the water. This made for a great and very safe first dive. This extra caution came in very useful during the second dive as the visibility was shocking; we couldn’t even see the coral reef we were diving. It was so bad in fact that we lost the dive guide and the other two divers, fortunately we didn’t loose each other and after five minutes searching for the guide we surfaced. These are the times you realise how easy and quickly you can become disorientated in poor vis, the guide and the other two divers were so far from us at the surface it was scary. Big okay signs were given so we knew all was well and we swam for a relieved reunion. As the vis was so bad no one was keen to go down again, so we signalled the boat to come collect us. The day was fun and the first dive was great, the second one taught me another valuable lesson about the dangers of scuba diving.