Taking the Plunge,
and Loving It,
in the Caymans
Some people's lives are changed by diving. Others dive once and never try again. I hopped into a dive boat on the Hyatt Regency's beach, thinking I would fall into the second category.
Photo Credit: Bob Spicer on Pixaby
My group--five dive students and Aad, our Dutch dive instructor--was the last of four groups to dive off the boat. One would-be diver from each group surfaced immediately and climbed back onto the vessel. "It's just not my thing," one man said. A woman came up with an ear ache. "All five in my group are going down!" Aad said, grinning. With the exception of Jay,
a young Navy pilot, we were all jittery. "Are we the most panicky group you've ever had?"
I asked Aad. "One of them, yeah," he said.
The Hyatt's dive brochure featured two female divers who looked to be in their 70s. How rough could it be? The average age on my boat appeared to be 30 years of age, with a few
12- to 14-year-olds in tow. (Divers must be at least 12 years old.)
"This is safer than flying in an airplane," Aad kept saying. He warned us that the scariest part would be just after we hit the water, and the waves jostled us. Once under the water, we had two things to remember: to keep breathing and to "equalize" our ears. (The latter is done by squeezing one's nose through the mask and blowing, which forces air through the ears.)
I paddled to the edge of the dive boat in my flippers. Setting my eyes on the horizon, I took one giant step and plunged. The five of us dipped under, holding onto a rope that would
take us 40 feet below the surface.
Aad went back up to help a woman who wanted to turn back, and four of us were left hanging on the rope just beneath the surface. I wasn't sure where Aad had gone.
I turned to my dive buddy (we each had a partner), but there was no hand signalto say, "What's going on?" In a two-hour course at the Hyatt pool, we had learned hand signals for "Are you OK? I'm OK,""go up," "go down," "stop" and "something's wrong" (followed by pointing
to the wronged area, such as the ear).
Aad reappeared and we started down the rope, equalizing our ears every few feet. At the sandy bottom, another woman panicked.
We had different equipment than we had practiced with at the pool, and her regulator didn't feel right. She gavethe "go up" signal, and three of us were left hanging on therope at the bottom of the sea. Aad returned, and we finally set off over a coral reef. Paper-thin, big
lipped Angel fishglided up to us. They nibbled cantaloupe from our hands, looking at us
with their big eyes. It was like being on another planet, with no sound but the bubbles from
my regulator.
Suddenly, we were back at the rope leading to our boat. A half hour had seemed like 10 minutes. As I broke through the water's surface, I knew I wanted to dive again, although I
wasn't ready to follow those who have packed up and moved to the islands. (Adela White, for one, left her television journalism job in Houston so she could live--and dive--in the Cayman Islands. She is now the sales and marketing manager for Hyatt's dive company,
Red Sail Sports.)
That night my group celebrated at the Lone Star Bar & Grill, a cheerful dive-master hangout voted by Newsweek readers as one of the top 100 bars in the world. Located just outside the Hyatt's front gates, the bar is a good place to chat with divemasters over local Stingray beer and plan the next dive. And the dive after that.
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