02/19/10

I had always been terrified of being underwater, despite the fact that I am a good swimmer and learned basic lifeguard skills from the Red Cross. So we went to Providencia, or Old Providence, that beautiful little Colombian island off the coast of Nicaragua and I decided to take the course. The ground school and swimming pool sessions went reasonably well. The next day they tossed us in open water and I was oh so close to just walking away forever. Fortunately I did go under and every bit of terror was replaced by curiosity and amazement. SCUBA has become one of my favourite activities. We try to go diving at least once a year.

As of 2008 I have finally acquired a submersible camera. The pix come out quite well. It is a Canon G9 with a Sea&Sea YS-27DX slave strobe. The rig is good to 140 feet. It surprises me that Canon made the already underpowered (for diving purposes) built-in flash basically useless behind the enclosure, but hey, as long as it can be used to trigger a real flash, who cares. Enjoy the pix!

(Some of the links below are also reached from the Travel section.)