№50 — First Open Water dive
Last year, Silia and I completed our PADI Open Water dive certificate. As time becomes more valuable than money, we decided to do the course and everything at home in Austria, rather than in an exotic locations as most other people do. Unfortunately, this comes with the downside of learning how to dive in extremely cold water. This week, we retourned to the lake of our initial training dive to do our first ever open water dive — no class, no nothing, only the divemaster and us.
Similar to last year, the water was again murky and cold and the weather rainy. So no change there. However, this year we were able to concentrate on the fish very well — if there’d be any. I must admit, the variety of fish you can see in your typical Austrian lake is quite limited. Some trout there, some char there, and on special occasions, you do see a pike. Actually, on the second dive of the day I saw several. Even though, they are nothing compared to marine predator fish such as a shark, pikes are quite interesting and fascinating to watch in their natural habitat. Still, I am looking forward to the reef dives in a few weeks in Zanzibar.
With one objective achieved — not needing a check dive on Zanzibar — there was only one other objective open: redeeming Silia’s voucher for my own personal diving mask. After playing around with a few masks and trying one of them during the two dives, I settled on a TUSA Freedom Elite mask. It fits my face perfectly, works with a bit of beard and comes in a variety of colors, even though I settled for the boring black / transparent combination. Combined with a new snorkel — a simple Mares snorkel — I am now ready for our trip to Tanzania and the beautiful diving locations there.
