Claire's Birthday

Sunday 15th January 2017

Club la Santa, Lanzarote

Today did not go quite according to the planned schedule, although we fitted the important things in. The dive school must have been having a lie in (or possibly have been out on an early dive) so we couldn't book in for the morning session. But we managed to book in for the 1:30pm pool dive introduction session.

Claire had woken up feeling a bit rough with the start of a cold so we decided to take it easy and have a drive over to the Decathlon shop we'd spotted on our way from the airport. It was only about half an hour's drive, but unfortunately it wasn't open on Sunday! We were a bit miffed as we were both after some cheap cycling gloves (for kayaking) and some trackie bottoms for slobbing round in the apartment. We headed over to another sports shop, which according to Google would be open, but it wasn't. We did however stumble across a supermarket where we stocked up on cheap breakfast and lunch food, so the trip wasn't completely wasted.

After lunch we ambled down to the dive school. We were the only two students, and our instructor knew that Claire had previously been a scuba diving instructor, so was focussing all her attention on me. We had a quick theory session before kitting up in wetsuits, big tanks, and lead weights, and then headed over to one of the 50m swimming pools.
I was a little bit nervous about the diving in case I couldn't do it, which I think Claire would have viewed as a quite serious girlfriend failure. I thought I would probably be ok, as I'm fine with swimming and wearing rubber masks to help me breathe, just not at the same time previously.

I did nearly have an underwater panic soon after getting in the pool, when I felt like I desperately needed to breathe in but couldn't fit any more air in. I managed to suppress the urge to swim to the surface and take my regulator out of my mouth, and realised that the air was going in to my lungs much quicker than it was coming out. I was alright after that, once I spent more time breathing out than in. Claire informs me that whilst all this thinking about panicking was going on, our instructor sneaked an extra lead weight into my dive vest pocket as I was far too buoyant (probably down to all that air in my lungs). I had no knowledge of this until it fell out later when I did a handstand.

We spent an hour under water, swimming around in different positions, playing catch with a weighted rocket toy, and practising what to do if our regulator or mask gets water inside it. And I was waving at swimmers above us and making them laugh.

After surviving my pool dive, we booked onto a half day sea dive on Tuesday morning, where we are hoping to see some octopus, squid, angel sharks (not man eaters I'm told), and various other fish. I'm also hoping for dolphins and sea turtles, although Claire thinks this is a bit over optimistic.

We then returned to the pool, minus our dive kit, and spent half an hour swimming. We've got a front crawl lesson first thing tomorrow and wanted to get to grips with the pool temperature and double-the-normal-size beforehand.
We were freezing after our swim, but felt a lot better after hot showers.

This evening we walked into the nearby village of La Santa and had a whole sea bass and a bottle of wine between us. Our waiter claimed to be called Tony Montana, which is either a remarkable coincidence, or he thinks that we have never watched Scarface. I just thought he had a cool name until Claire kicked me under the table. "Tony" was quite entertaining, and the menu turned into a lucky dip due to the language barrier ("Tony's" translation being a bit sketchy, and me getting a bit confused and trying to converse in French (which is only marginally less poor than my Spanish).

We're back at the apartment now, where Claire seems to be feeling a bit sorry for herself. Hopefully she will be on the mend tomorrow, if not then we might be giving the yoga and relaxation classes a try.

Still no photos, sorry!