Diving: Underwater honeymoon

You’re an adventurist, more than a tourist. You’re attracted to depths. You love diving more than swimming. You enjoy exploring the world under the surface more than just «roasting» yourself on a beach all day. You would like to spend a part of your holiday underwater. You’d maybe even change you honeymoon on the beach for the one in the depths of the Red Sea. I did it, and I took my bride with me.

Everything happened spontaneously. When observed from today’s perspective, the timing was perfect: I proposed to her in summer, we finished a diving course in winter, we got married in spring, and planned our honeymoon and diving for autumn.

SCUBA diving is a real challenge.

Especially if you plan it in detail and follow all the rules.

The honeymoon diving from my perspective:

24 hours: We were combining diving with tourist excursions in Egypt for two weeks. Every other day we dived and conquered the depths of the Red Sea (near Hurghada). What is important to know when you’re making your plan is that you mustn’t dive 24 hours before and after your flight. It’s simply because the changes of the gases from the sea depths to the upper limits of the earth’s atmosphere can result in a direct impact on a diver’s body.

Breathe, even though the water entered you mask: My wife somehow forgot it during her first dive. When we reached the depth of around 12m, after we equalised the pressure in our ears, the water entered her mask. She started panicking. Completely shocked, she looked at me through her mask full with water. It took me some time to calm her down, and remind her that she could still breathe normally, though the water had entered her mask. When you dive, whatever happens, keep breathing.. The diving cylinder full of oxygen is on you back. Also, keep in mind that at 12m or more of depth, your hands and your eyes are your words, and signs (which you learn during the course) to help you «hear» and «speak». Once she got relaxed and started breathing normally, we remembered all the things from the course and easily removed the water from her mask at that depth, and continued diving and having our time.

«Relax your wife», and do not «swallow» the oxygen is a rule of the thumb: Both on the land and in the depths of over 10m, only when your wife is relaxed and in safe hands, can the real adventure begin.... That’s why we dived and enjoyed our time around the coral reef. At one point, the instructor Nemo asked for a «meeting» underwater. When he checked us through, he asked a couple of us to go up to the surface, since we had «swallowed» almost all the oxygen. I don’t know how, but it was only my wife who stayed half an hour longer than the others, to enjoy that magical world, maybe because at that time she weighed only 50kg. She was breathing evenly, unlike the rest of us, with her «tiny» lungs and that’s how she saved up the oxygen in the cylinder! Maybe she was using her gills, I’ve never found it out.

Don’t rush at the depth of over 10m: When you descend to big depths, you think of nothing else but: how to do things slowly, follow your «underwater» partner (and make sure you never leave him/her alone), enjoy every colour of the new world, and breathe. There’s no room to get your thoughts disturbed by a «noise». Down there, you really don’t think of the past, or the future, you’re simply there, diving. That’s why, when you go up to the surface, you’re all in smiles. What a rest! A restart for your head and body.

Photos: When I got back from my honeymoon and started selecting the best photos to print and to show to my relatives, I realised I had more than 700 photos taken while diving, and only 100 general tourist photos... You just can’t refrain from taking them, when you have the rich underwater world before your eyes, and when you’re having fun as if you are watching your favourite TV show “Survival” from your childhood, but this time not on TV.