All posts tagged: diving

How to Possess Your Travels

Most people can’t help buy souvenirs and take photographs while on vacation. These two activities provide the simplest way remember the journey taken and take a piece of it home. Yet do they really enhance our experience? In an earlier post, I wrote how the impulse to document our lives with photos increases when we travel to beautiful places. The connection between buying souvenirs and taking photographs became clear to me as I sailed to the Manchones Reef on a small dive boat in Isla Mujeres, Mexico off the coast of Cancun. Not long ago, it was a tiny fisherman’s island. As Cancun turned into the decaying resort-town it is today, the island’s sand streets also gave way to paved roads and shabby hotels. Nevertheless, Isla Mujeres still remains a haven of calm in comparison to the degenerated concrete that is Cancun. So I jumped on the ferry and sailed straight to the island as soon as my flight landed. The plan was to get over my jetlag while relaxing on the beach. The only thing I wanted to “do” while over …

America the Inspirational: Dangers of Returning Home

I almost flaked on my Advanced Open Water diving course in Taganga at the last minute. I do that sometimes. I get scared of finishing things and run away. I had already done six breathtaking dives and to complete the course I had one requirement left: the 30-meter deep water dive. The night before the dreaded deed, I read the chapter on deep diving from the PADI booklet because I also do that. My homework, that is. PADI had elaborated on quite an extensive amount of possible things that could get me killed from this really unnecessary activity that is breathing under water with fish and other aquatic life. After all I had spent all my life not diving to 30 meters as a happy and thriving individual. I was scared. “Do I have to?” I asked my instructor in the morning. By looking at my face you would think that it’s not pretty coral but rotting fish that awaited me under 30 meters. Thankfully, Tomas glanced at the death page I was pointing at …

Over Land in Parque Tayrona, Under Water in Taganga

If I were to believe the rumors I heard about Taganga, I was about to arrive in Colombia’s version of Ko Phi Phi—a once-charming island in the Andaman Sea filled with 20-something backpackers who roam the island’s trash-filled streets as they suck cheap alcohol from buckets. Needless to say, I was not happy in Ko Phi Phi. A small fishing village just 15 km from Santa Marta, Taganga is also getting a bad reputation. Unsustainable tourism, mainly the “Middle Eastern” kind as one tripadvisor reviewer wrote, had changed this beautiful cove for the worse. I was especially apprehensive about staying in Taganga since we had just spent two peaceful nights in Parque Tayrona, sleeping outside in hammocks with the sounds of the Caribbean as a lullaby. For the past two days, I had been starting my mornings with a walk on the Arrecifes Beach, which stretched for kilometers without another soul in sight. For the first time since my arrival in South America, I didn’t have to answer whatsapp messages from members of my family who seemingly …

Pictures, Memories, and Lots of Fish: Diving in Koh Tao

Last October I completed a diving course with ScubaShack in Koh Tao, Thailand. The four-day course which was offered for a bargain price of 8,500 Baht certified me as a PADI licensed Open Water Diver and equipped me with a lovely little booklet in which to record the colorful fish I shall get to see in my future dives. The last day of the course was of course the highlight: two 18-meter dives in Chumphon Pinnacle and Hin Pee Wee. In anticipation of our first dive that morning, my friends Levent and Seda, and our instructor Claus boarded the dive boat at the unbearable hour of 05:45 am, thinking: “Why this Thai torture? Aren’t we on vacation?” ScubaShack is one of the earliest risers among tens of diving schools on the island famous for licensing the highest number of new divers. They torment their students with a 05:00 am wake-up call so that they may relish the wondrous magic of underwater Koh Tao, undisturbed by the hundreds of other divers who arrive at the very late hour …