Scuba Diving in Santa Marta

Another town -- another group of entertaining traveling / local friends -- another expensive hobby -- and most importantly, another GREAT ADVENTURE!! I've spent the last 5 days in Santa Marta, a small coastal town on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, enjoying the time with my scuba instructors -- Luis, Rosa, and Rodrigo, and new traveling friends -- Fabio (a true Italian), Renault (a liberal-minded Belgian), and Eduardo (a Colombian native); quite a mix!

The town of Santa Marta is a nice change of pace from the bigger cities of Cartagena, Bogota, and Medellin. Housing app. 700,000 people, Santa Marta is largely driven by tourism, and famous for offering some of the cheapest scuba diving certifiication courses in the world. ...but one thing never changes, Latina music and dancing dominates the social and dancing scene! At this point in the trip, I can see along with most of these songs, though I must admit that I have little understanding of what they are actually singing about; no worries, I've learned to speak the global language of dance -- HA!

I have spent the majority of the day time in Santa Marta involved in Scuba lessons, aimed at obtaining a Scuba certification. After spending the initial day in a closed pool, we spent the next 3 days off the coast of Parque Tayrona enjoying the life of buseo, or scuba diving. We performed two 40 minute dives a day at app. 18m (55-60 ft) depth, though I must admit that I skipped out on the last dive of the third day, as the building pressure in my head had finally reached a peak. With my head history, I was not about to push the limits. The instructors were all fantastic, and spoke sufficient english for my benefit.

The pictures above do some justice to the surrounding landscape, but I wish I had access to a waterproof digitial camera so that I could more clearly illustrate the truly impressive underwater world of the Colombian Caribbean shore. I doubt there is any way my words can do it justice. The endless coral and wide variety of colorful fish are absolutely breathtaking. The highlight for me was seeing an app. 6 ft eel rise halfway out of its coral cavern to sneak a peak at the passing visitors. I was probably too close for mother's comfort, but one of the many things that you learn during the certification class is that most sea creatures are harmless to humans, and only attack out of self-defense. The life underwater is quite surreal. The entire world changes, and you communicate only with hand signals and trust your equipment and the people around you. You feel like you are in the middle of a saltwater fish tank, and you're one of the actors! This is an experience that I must try again in the near future.

I passed the test yesterday, so my scuba adventure will hopefully continue along the Brazilian coast if time permits.

Back to Cartagena on Wednesday or Thursday, and then off to Brazil (the last stop of my trip) on Friday night, where I will meet up with Chad on Saturday morning.

Chad, are you ready for this kid?!?!?!