How do you know someone is a Divemaster? They will probably tell you. Well... I’m now a Divemaster! It’s been ten weeks of blood, sweat and tears, but I made it. And there wasn’t really a lot of blood and tears involved. Mostly sweat. And lots of laughs and good times. Time has flown by.The highlights of the course have definitely been the live aboards and diving in the Komodo National park. There are so many things I can now cross off my list of “things to see”. Frogfish, leaf scorpionfish, dragonet, new nudibranchs and flatworms, pygmy seahorses and of course the manta rays. You do get really spoiled diving here. Another highlight of the trips is the people you meet. The liveaboard trips gather together a random group of people who all have one thing in common, and that’s diving. Age, social status and nationality of the people all lose their meaning once you get on board. You meet and spend quite some time with people you’d never come across otherwise in everyday life.
Right before I finished my course I got some time off and decided to make a little overnight trip to one of the islands that surround Labuan Bajo. The destination was Seraya Kecil and it turned out to be a real island paradise. With nothing to do but to snorkel, eat, chill on the beach and do some minor trekking it was the perfect place for a relaxing mini vacation. And the snorkelling just out of the beach was really nice. Some cool little pipefish, a beautiful juvenile barramundi, lots of anemones with different clown fishes and all the usual stuff. In the evening as we climbed up to a hill to see the sunset we saw black tip reef sharks swimming in the shallows. Too bad we didn’t snorkel that side of the island.
As my Komodo Divemaster course has been coming to an end I’ve done some serious thinking about what to do next and whether diving will stay in my life as a hobby or should I try to make a living out of it. And well as I said in my last blog entry, I really don’t miss bartending, so why not give it a go. But as much as I like it here, I want to gain more experience in some easier waters. I’ve done some 45 dives in the Komodo National park and the more I dived there, the more I started to respect the dangers that you can come across there. The currents can be tricky and someone can really get hurt if the guide doesn’t know what they’re doing and doesn’t have control over the group. My flights are already booked and if everything goes well, in November I’ll be taking people diving in the Similan Islands in Thailand. Hope to see you there
Our Komodo Divemaster Program is unlike any other...intensive, safety conscious and hard work!
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