A Day in the Life of a Dive Bum

Location: Nassau, Bahamas

(And a note to my mother: you should probably skip the first paragraph)

I woke up at 6:30 this morning to make sure I had time to figure out breakfast and find the bus stop to get to the opposite side of the island for diving. Breakfast consisted of a couple slices of bread because that's what the hotel's continental breakfast had and I needed a free meal (I've come to the sad realization that 90% of my money will likely be spent on food and tips). The bus was to pick me up by the Government Building, which is conveniently half a block away. There is no bus stop there. There is a busy street with minivans (The Bahamians' version of busses) rushing by driving people to work. There is also a two-square-foot patch of sidewalk in front of the gate leading up to the government building. The rest of the building is surrounded by wall followed immediately by crazy island traffic. So I wedged myself on the two-square-foot patch of sidewalk and wondered what was supposed to happen. I watched in terror as minivans slowed down just enough for the people on them to jump off and hurry on to their daily business. And then the Stuart's Cove bus (minivan) rounded the corner and I waved at it and it slowed down and I jumped on and thank goodness they had been expecting me because I felt like such a sketch person jumping onto a minivan that hadn't even come to a complete stop for me.

The lines on the roads here are zig-zags quite literally. I have yet to see straight road lines. The driving is just as chaotic. They drive on the opposite side of the road and there are no speed limits or traffic lights and if someone if front of you is going slower than your driver's liking, they swerve into incoming traffic to go around. This is how we drove around the entire coast to the opposite side of the island.

As I was standing in line to check in for my dive, the girl behind me tugged on the yellow bandana tied to my bag and asked if I was also with Semester at Sea. I replied excitedly that I was and she introduced herself and another girl. Once on the dive boat I found that there was a fourth SAS girl with us as well.

I was all set to go diving save for a strap for my underwater camera. The gift shop was no help but there was a camera center for tourists wishing to purchase pictures of themselves on their grand adventures. I walked in and the boy working the front desk was kind enough to dig up a lanyard for me. Everyone here is so friendly and helpful. And it's not just in hopes of making some sort of profit off of naïve tourists either. I tried to tip the guy for his help and he refused to accept it.

The boat driver, photographer, instructor, dive master, and everyone else were all gorgeous Australian dive bums. Perfect bodies. Heartbreaking accents. Carefree personalities. I want to be a dive bum when I grow up.

Our first site was the Pumpkin Patch. The Pumpkin Patch is a wall. There is a reef that drops thousands of feet to the depths of the ocean floors. Completely spectacular. The only thing I remember about it though is the shark. Swimming along, out past the wall, was a reef shark, minding his own business and refusing to come say hello. To everyone who told me I was going to get eaten by a shark, you were sorely mistaken. I apparently am not very tempting bait. The shark didn't even notice us but just kept swimming along, out beyond the wall.

The second sight was that of the two wrecks used to film the James Bond movies. The first, an artificial airplane built to look like a wreck, was used in Thunderball, and the second, a shipwreck, was used in Never Say Never Again. There's something really haunting about wrecks; I swore I could here some eerie music playing in the background, but when I stopped to listen, the only thing there was the sound of my own breathing. Inhale. Exhale.

Mostly people only do two-tank dives and so we headed back to the shop to drop everyone off and switch out boats. I had 45 minutes to grab lunch and then found my way onto the next boat. On this trip there were no Semester at Sea people. In fact it was all guys. In fact two girls passing by the boat stopped to tell me how brave I was for going scuba diving… My third site of the day was the plane wreck and ship wreck Hollywood sunk to film the movie Into The Blue. (I actually watched this before leaving and it was pretty stupid. But I do recommend seeing it purely for the sake of seeing how spectacular the Bahamian waters really are).

Our last dive site was supposed to be another shipwreck. Apparently the buoy marking the site disappeared though and we accidentally ended up at some unknown reef instead. It was a beautiful find though. I literally saw fish of every color of the rainbow and then some.

I borrowed my uncle's dive camera before leaving and everyone I ran into, staff and visitors, kept commenting on what a cool camera it was. Everything is digital these days, and people who have dive cameras really just have dive cases for their digital cameras. Not that there is anything wrong with this. But everyone seemed enthralled by the concept of film and thought this was the coolest camera ever. By the end of the day everyone was calling me photographer. I never used the thing before this morning and would not be surprised if the pictures all come out black (due to my photographer skills, not because of the camera). It was still fun though.