After we passed our PADI Open water certificate in the murky waters of Sarasota, we decided that our first real dive should be in the most unreal environment there is – the Epcot DiveQuest experience, i.e. diving in the Disney World aquarium. Our instructor had talked about it with some other divers and it sounded like a fantastically quintessential American experience so we booked our tickets and headed over to Orlando. Luckily Conor also has a friend who lives close to Disney World so we got free lodging! (Gracias Adolfo y Andreina!)

Our dive was scheduled for 5:30 in the afternoon and we arrived a little early to take a look around Epcot from the outside; the DiveQuest tour does not include entrance into the park. (Did you know that Epcot stands for “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow”? The future is not looking good…) Unfortunately there wasn’t much to see besides the wginormous golf ball and the monorail that links the different parks: Disney Hollywood Studios, Disney World, Epcot, etc. When our dive master picked us up, we got a look behind the scenes of the aquarium or “off stage” as they call it at Disney. Everything that the tourists get to see is called “on stage”, everything else is “off stage”. Even better, anyone who works at Disney World is called a cast member, not staff or employee.

We walked past the tanks used to pump around the water from the tank for cleaning. 21 million gallon of salt water, which gets cleaned several times a day – every 39 minutes a complete cycle. Then we saw the kitchen where the food for the aquarium inhabitants is prepared and which gets fully sterilized 4 times a day, making it without doubt the cleanest kitchen on all of Disney’s properties. Does lack a stove though.

After we had signed away our rights, life and first-born and promised that we would NOT touch the sea turtles under any circumstances or get too close to the dolphin enclosure (the former because it is a protected species and the latter because it will treat you as a toy – in either case biting will be involved) we changed into our wet suites and booties and were led up to the top of the tank. From there it looks like you’re just entering any old pool until a sea turtle suddenly sticks its head out of the water.

Our dive master warned us to be careful on our descent so that we wouldn’t accidentally hit a shark or something. Of course the first thing I did when I went down was hit a shark, almost. Very accidentally. The lazy beast silently floated past my head, with a look of contempt that seemed to say “I hate those stupid divers. Always in my way. I am swimming here. If only I were hungry, I’d take a bite our of this one right now.” After that fun and welcoming opener, the dive master took us on a little tour of the tank to orientate us and let us know which areas were off limits: anything closer than 3 metres to the dolphin enclosure and a little area in front of one of the aquarium windows because that’s where the “Finding Nemo” hologram show gets played and the kids would probably not appreciate it when Nemo suddenly gets gobbled up by a diver and *gasp* comes out on the other end or something equally horrifying. After our orientation tour, we were free to roam on our own for half an hour.

Over the next 30 min we swam with manta rays, tiger sharks and the aforementioned giant sea turtles. There were also a couple of groupers that looked to weigh around 300 kg each. Giants! We got to play with the ‘audience’ on the other side of the glass and entertained families eating their dinner at the Coral aquarium restaurant. Then we completed our circle and did the whole thing again. And again. And again. Yep, we were in an aquarium and the boredom started to creep in. After a while we dropped into the same circular route as the sharks, all thinking “THERE IS NOWHERE TO GO!”

Image blatantly stolen from the Intertubes

This is how the audience outside the aquarium sees the divers. (And that guy is in the forbidden “Finding Nemo” zone! How dare he upset those poor kids?!)

Wait, but where are the pictures of you guys diving? Ah well, that’s a problem – there aren’t any. The DiveQuest people make a video of the dive which you can purchase at the end of the experience for the bargain price of $35. But they don’t take any still pictures unfortunately. (Now that I think about it, I should have mentioned that in our debriefing questionnaire.) So you’ll just have to take our word for it: we looked like pros and had the audience in stitches with our funny antics under the sea.

Two more names haven been added to the PADI list of “Open Water Certified Divers” this weekend – we passed our test! We took the whole course online over the past few weeks and then did three days of confined and open water dives here in Sarasota to finish our certificate.

We pretty much got private lessons from our instructor Jeff at the Florida Underwater Sports dive center. On our confined water dives – at the Sarasota Country Club pool, swanky! – we started out with another couple but he was constantly droning on about how he couldn’t clear his ears way-back-when during his first scuba dive experience and she had too much on her plate already to really focus on what was happening – she also had her knitting, photography and cooking classes and there was just so much happening but she really wanted to go diving on that cruise in October because it would just be so neat! It wasn’t a big surprise when they left after the first confined water dive…

We learned how to assemble our gear (wearing an aluminuium tank full of air? MUCH heavier than I thought), how to clear our masks underwater, buddy breath (i.e. use your buddy’s second regulator for emergencies), inflate/deflate our vests, taking off our gear underwater and putting it back on. All together we spent about five hours at the pool that day to complete our mandatory confined water dives. Last time I was that tired was after my first day of snowboarding. But apparently that wasn’t enough, we also both got sunburns that should last a few days.

Saturday we moved on to our open water dives. On the beach the conditions seemed perfect: 32 C air temperature, 29 C water temperature and no strong waves. But then we got into the water and things went a bit downhill. Visibility was about 2 m and everyone was excited about it! (From now on the first thing we’ll be checking at any new dive site will be the visibility.) There were also smacks of jelly fish welcoming us to the warm gulf waters. With the low visibility there was little warning and they’d just appear out of nowhere floating in the current so we got our fair share of stings. Useful though – we learned how to put them on an express elevator to the surface: “shoot” them with your second regulator.

Dive three and four on the next day passed in a similar fashion. Feling more comfortable in the water helped us enjoy the dives more this time. And in retrospect we are actually happy to have learned in such a tough environment as it will make future clear water dives seem that much simpler and more beautiful.

So now that we’re certified divers we have to continue diving of course. There’s plenty of great diving here in Florida but there’s probably only one place (in the world?) that screams FLORIDA, USA quite as loudly as the one we picked for our first ‘alone dive’. Yes, we’re going diving at Walt Disney World! It’s called the Epcot DiveQuest and according to all the reviews we read online it really is an amazing dive. It’s inside a humongous saltwater tank (21.5 million liters) at Epcot’s aquarium and we’ll get to swim with literally thousands of different sea creatures, including sea turtles, dolphins and sharks. We’ll let you know how it goes!

Miami is about food for us because we’re staying with Conor’s cousin Fernando who is an excellent cook and loves to eat. In the last few days we’ve had fresh shrimp cooked in a tomato onion broth, soft-shell crab (thanks to Luis and Lacey who brought them fresh from northern Florida), rabbit paella and a barbecue. There’s also an overabundance of fresh avocados at the house because the avocado tree in the backyard has gone into production overdrive. Not just in terms of numbers but also in size:

As you might imagine, they are the best avocados ever – sweet, soft and creamy.

Idoia has also been making lots of sweet stuff like tres leches, banana cake and birthday coffee cake for Luken (not a special Sugar Lab creation unfortunately).

Today we’re off to Sarasota to finally get our PADI Open Water dive certificate. It’ll be great fun but we’re sure gonna miss the cooking…

That's how you peel a tomato, okay?!