Doug and Paisley in SWAZILAND: Certified

Last week I returned from completing my PADI Open Water Scuba Course in Tofo, Mozambique. Mallory, Joe, and I made the ten and a half hour trek to Tofo on a Friday and then participated in the 4-day course before returning the following Wednesday. I have always wanted to learn to scuba dive, but have never wanted to waste 4 days of a vacation in order to complete the course. That’s the beauty of Africa though; all I have is time. Doug has been diving since he was 18; therefore, he stayed behind to work (somebody has to do it). Tofo was paradise. We stayed in a bungalow on the beach, ate a ton of seafood, met some great people, and learned to scuba dive! Pretty much, the only sad part was leaving! Well, that and the 500 Meticash (Mozambiquan currency) bribe that we paid to the police Captain just outside of Xia Xia in order to get my driver’s license back. But, for driving 21 hours in Mozambique, only having to pay one bribe was pretty darn good. Oh, and the small matter of a rat in our dresser (but again, our own fault for using it as a food pantry). We chose to complete our course in Tofo (and not somewhere closer) because Mallory had been there before (and let’s be honest, because of a certain scuba instructor named, Ben). The entire first day was theory and then a culminating test, but on the remaining days we did ‘confined dives’ in the pool in the morning and then ‘open water’ dives in the ocean in the afternoon. The pool dives gave us an opportunity to practice the ‘skills’ that we needed to master in order to be certified in the open water like buddy-breathing, different ascents, clearing and taking off your mask, switching regulators, regulating your buoyancy through breathing, etc. Our instructor was awesome; but, I’m pretty sure that we liked him more than he liked us by the end. We endearingly named him ‘Scuba Dan’ although his official nickname was, ‘Grillman Dan’ (we never got enough beers in him to hear the full story behind that one). For our first two open water dives, we went to a dive site called, Clownfish. Given the perceived ‘safety’ of diving in the pool, Mallory, Joe and I were anxious to see how we’d fare in the ocean. Despite holding hands for the first part of our first dive, we all adjusted quickly and in our own minds, were ‘professionals’ (obviously). The only challenge we faced was sea sickness…a lot of it. On the first day we took turns throwing up over the side of the boat as we endured a neverending ‘surface interval’ (the amount of time that you have to stay on the surface between dives in order to regulate your nitrogen level from the first dive). It was grim. Then, on the second day, we thought that we were much wiser by not eating anything…unfortunately, this just meant heaving stomach bile over the side of the boat, instead. But, I guess that just shows how awesome scuba diving is; we were amped to get back out there, every time, even though we knew it meant endless nausea and vomiting for all three of us! All-in-all, it was a blast. We even swam with a sea turtle! Doug and I are already making plans for a return trip. It really wasn’t fair to go without him since there is diving, surfing, and kite surfing all from the same beach in Tofo (as previously mentioned, ‘Doug Heaven’). The underwater world is pretty cool.
Once we left the mountains of Swaziland and entered Mozambique, the drive to Tofu was completely flat. This was our view for 9+ hours.