Palau, Day 4: Conquering Fears

This morning started like the others: up early and to the dive shop for breakfast and then to prepare gear for today's dives. Unlike the other two days, today we were doing three dives instead of the usual two! The first dive was to a place called Blue Holes. Anyone who knows me, knows that I am claustrophobic, and when we arrived at the site and were first briefed about what we were about to do, I must admit, I was not the happiest of campers. I was only told the names of the places we were visiting today before we left the dive shop, not told what they actually were... Blue Holes, is essentially a dive site with four small holes that you can descend and reach an underwater cavern, which then has an exit which takes you along a wall of coral and pretty things. The problem for me, of course, was the diving through the small holes into a smothering-like cavern to reach the exit and the feeling of sheer panic that was sure to come with it. Well, I decided to give it a try (I need to log as many dives as I can so I can go on a diving trip next year). I didn't take any pictures of the small hole we went through, nor do I have any pictures of the cavern itself. I was too busy trying not to 1.) die, 2.) have a panic attack which would have surely lead to my death, and 3.) shit myself. Thankfully, I avoided all three. Once we reached the exit, we were treated to a nice wall of coral, pretty fishes, a hawksbill turtle, a moray eel and the occasional shark.









The second dive was nearby and was called Blue Corner. Sounds pretty, right? Well, again, this was one of those situations where the name is misleading. The "corner" is actually a plateau of a deep drop off where the current is SO ridiculously strong that you have to use a reef hook (see yesterday's blog for my previous reef hook encounter) in order to stay in place long enough to see the "activity" around you. What "activity" might you ask? Well, sharks looking for food, of course! Again, being strapped down unable to move while sharks circle you, at first did not seem like the best of ideas. Oh, and also, I should mention that once you use your hook to keep you in place, you have to put air in your vest so you rise up and aren't doing any damage to the reef. Sounds smart, right? Well, the only bad thing about that is that if your hook comes undone, you shoot to the surface like a rocket and get decompression sickness (the bends). Fun times! Of course, if you want to see what all there is under the sea, you've got to take these chances, and I did, and boy am I glad I did... Here is a short video of some sharks and how close they were to me:

And here are some pictures I took while being sitting shark bait:






Once we unhooked (after letting air out of the vest so we didn't shoot up like human balloons), the current flew us over the plateau. After a couple of second I realized I was right on top of a hawksbill turtle. I took some pictures, and a video.

After the second dive, we had lunch, and then returned to the dive shop, because not everyone was doing the third dive of the day: Chandelier Cave. Now, this one the name made me cringe when I heard it, so I asked about it in the morning, and the dive instructor told me that it had a very large opening and that once inside it was a huge cavern where you could see old stalactites and all sorts of crazy shit. That didn't sound too too bad to me, so I decided I would give it a shot. It was definitely scary, and not exactly as described. There are actually four "chambers" of the cave and in each one, you would come up and be in a small pocket of air where you could see the stalactites. Little did I know that all the divers would be coming up into the same small space at the same time to have a look. And, to make matters worse, it was high tide when we went, which made the area where there was actually air even smaller than usual. I was not a big fan of this dive, but
I was able to face a fear head-on and conquered it. Here are a couple of pictures from the cave.









After having such an emotionally trying day today, I will be glad for the "day off" tomorrow. We have a land tour of the island and leave for Yap late tomorrow night (early Sunday morning). The lesson I learned today is that if you let your fears dictate what you do or do not do, then you never get the chance to fully take control of your own life. So live already!



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Location:Koror, Palau