There are No Strangers in Diving
Trip Start
Aug 30, 2009
1
214
244
Trip End
Dec 25, 2009
Where I stayed
Puerto Galera, Mindoro, Philippines
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Like most sports where there is a specialty factor: equipment, knowledge, education, once you are a part of it, you are a part of the community of that sport. As such, you can go anywhere, find another person involved in the same sport, and you immediately have "family", someone to talk to about the sport, someone to share tales with about the sport, someone to do it with. Diving is like that. When you go to a place that specializes in the sport, it is instant friendship with everyone around you because they are all there for the same reason.
This week leading up to the Christmas holidays is rather slow for most of the dive shops here in Puerto Galera. There aren't as many boats going out in the morning and sometimes we’re the only boat going out in the later morning or early afternoon. Next week it gets busy again as the holiday divers start arriving. So we’ve had just four divers this week. Two gentlemen from Japan that did not know each other before arriving here and one gentleman from Italy and me, from the States. The three men are all Nitrox divers which I am not but they are more than happy to dive with regular tanks and go with me. When they use Nitrox and go to a different site than they are always eager to hear what I have seen and tell me their experiences too. We are all so happy with the experience here and we’ve all exchanged emails, shared photos, and become facebook friends.
These past two weeks I’ve made a lot of friends from around the world and we all love diving. I’ve met people from Australia, Germany, Italy, England, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Switzerland, and the States. We’ve all had different levels of expertise, skill, knowledge, and experience. None of the people I’ve met have fallen into the snob category. They have all become friends and diving buddies. There really are no strangers when you come diving. The undersea world welcomes everyone who wants to come and see it and share it and help take care of it. We are all here to do just that and loving it.
There are many different types of divers though. You start at the most basic level and go from there. You can advance past Open Water Diver to Wreck, Advanced Open Water, Nitrox, Advanced Nitrox, Decompression diver, Trimix, Advanced Trimix, rebreather, etc. etc. Anyone with these qualifications have spent a good deal of time and money to get them. Now, while there are not strangers in diving, there certainly are snobs. The snobs are the ones that do the following: dive deeper, get every qualification and certification that is possible to get, go to every out of the way place that has extreme diving, spend all their money on the latest and most up to date gear, and look down their noses at anyone who doesn’t do all of the above. Luckily the snobs are not great in number so it still means most divers you meet at a dive resort are incredibly friendly and just love to talk diving, share experiences, and go diving.
