the Adventure Lifestyle magazine

• • • • black + blue My diving buddies always joked about all the room I left in my dive bag to bring back souvenirs. I made fun of all the gear they dragged on every trip-steel air cylinders, dive computers, buoyancy-compensators, hoses, regulators, depth and pressure gauges and an assortment of heavy belt weights. They schlepped, I rented. All I ever brought with me was the customized eq ui p- ment I regarded as hard to duplicate on foreign shores-my snorkel, my mask, and my dive booties and fins. All the rest, which I regarded as interchangeable, I'd always rent on site . After two decades of diving around the world, the only equipment problem I'd ever had was in a tiny village on the east coast of Egypt where a sti ff onshore breeze had (unbeknownst to any of us) blown much of the compressor's diesel exhaust fumes back into the pipes used to f i ll our tanks. When we took our first breaths it was li ke sucking on a bus exhaust pipe. But since we always test our tanks and regulator on dry land, there was no rea l harm done, just a delay to refi ll the tanks. Then came my trip to Cura~ao, an island off the north coast of Venezuela and one-third of the ABC (Aruba, Bonaire and Cura~ao) triumvirate in the Caribbean. Although Cura~ao is not usually considered one of the world's top 20 dive spots, I'd heard about a good reef in the Cura~ao Underwater Park, so I headed over to the Lions Dive Marina in Willemstad to rent equipment and get on their day- tr i pper dive boat. I was paired with Miguel, a Brazi lian who spoke on ly Portuguese (of which I know not a word). He and I ran through the international diver's hand signals, but that was the extent of our abi l ity to communicate. Ive an un erwa er ence We had ideal diving weather: a brilliant sun in a cloudless sky, water warm enough that I didn't even need to wear skins, and a sea so ca lm I could probably have survived the ride without my scopolamine seasickness patch. After an hour's run along the south coast and out to the reef, my dive partner and I hit the water together. He used the conservative, feet-f irst entry, his mask pressed tightly to his face with one hand as the el er 0 us a a c ue a u e limits ex erience or other hand held his gauges, while I did an ostentatious back roll. We rendezvoused at about 20 feet. Visibi lity was at least 100 feet, but the topography was confusing (especially for a person feeling the disorient ing effects of a scop patch) . The reef wall sloped down at about a 75-degree angle to the bottom, and the bottom sloped both away from the reef and toward the east. The bottom was fea- tureless tan sand, and the same sand coated the base of the reef, making it very hard to judge depth and distance. I pointed down, Miguel gave me the OK sign , and I led the way, holding my nose and clearing frequently to equal- ize the pressure. After about five minutes I checked my depth gauge. It read 60 feet, although the pressure on my sinuses and eardrums felt several atmospheres greater. I looked up for Miguel, and he sti ll seemed to be up at 20 feet-so much for the local buddy system. I figured I'd swim down to about 80 feet, fully equal- ize, and wait for him there, but try as I could, I wasn't able to get down below 60- 65 feet and the pressure on my head was intense. Maybe I was f ighting some sort of upwell ing current? Rolling over on my back to relax for a moment, I saw that the sheath knife strapped to my leg was loose, so I reached over to t ighten the strap. Far above, I saw Miguel vigorously shaking his finger at me in the signal for "don 't touch that" or "danger." Maybe he thought I was plann ing to stab a fish or pry off some cora l? I gave him a "Don't worry" signal to reassure him that I had no such anti-environmental intent, rolled over, and proceeded to try to get down to 80 feet. But try as hard as I could, I cou ldn't get there, although the bottom did seem somewhat closer. But it was hard to be sure in that confusing topography. I looked up to see if my chicken hearted dive buddy had final ly worked up the courage to come down a bit and, sure enough, he and another man were halfway down and pointing toward their depth gauges. I looked at mine: 65 feet. No big deal. I looked at my air supply and was surprised to see I'd already sucked up half a tank, which was rea l ly heavy gulping for 65 feet, but I was in such a peaceful, buzzing, mellow mood that it didn't set off any alarms.

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