I tried diving on a trip in Belize,
and re-discovered genuine happiness !

I’m not particularly fit: overweight, smoke,
don’t exercise regularly.
Yet, underwater, it’s magic !

Given how comfortable I was,
the instructor suggested I pass the full open-water certification. There was a small problem though: it was the end of our trip and we only had 3 days left …
Yet, I found motivation and energy that I thought I was incapable of: crammed the dvd, textbook and classroom material for the written test well into the night (and got a perfect score), got up at 6 a.m. to attend my `shallow-water’ training, until the morning before our departure, where I completed my open water check-out dives.
My proudest achievement for 2005, by far !!!

And a rewarding one too: this year, exactly one year after I obtained my certification, we went on a month-long diving trip
and passed our advanced-open-water-certification, which was a LOT OF FUN ! Can’t wait to go diving again !

So if diving is on your wish list: JUST DO IT !!!
As long as you’re comfortable in the water ie. you can swim and you don’t panick, it’s easy, fun,
does not require rocket-science knowledge and is very safe at the ``recreational level” , as opposed to, say, deep technical diving, which is another beast altoghether, closer to beeing a cosmonaut than a recreational scuba diver.