March Fletch and I have found ourselves a wonderful little island paradise: Mana Island, Fiji. Mana is Fijian for “magic,” and it is indeed magic; it never rains here. The island is a long, narrow stretch of sand, with a ridge of hills down the middle to protect us from whatever storms might try to approach from the north. Our south side is protected by a gorgeous reef that is home to not even half of the dive sites we frequent. There are no roads here, and thus no need for transportation. There really isn’t even any need for shoes.
In Roatan we used to spear lionfish. Half of you are probably reading that sentence again, wondering why someone who loves the ocean as much as I do would ever spear something as beautiful as a lionfish. The first time I ever posted a picture of a lionfish at the end of my spear on social media, I received a slew of concerted comments asking why I was killing Nemo. The other half of you may already know that lionfish are invasive in the Caribbean, and are destroying the reefs there. Lionfish don’t belong in the Caribbean, but were introduced
This is the sequel to my original story: Freediving. One year ago I took a freediving course at a wonderful school here on Koh Tao call Apnea Total. I absolutely loved the idea of freediving and couldn't wait to lean some breath-holding tricks. The course ended up being much more of a mental hurdle to overcome then physical one. The school was closing for slow season after our course ended and so we never got the opportunity to do any additional training until just recently. Work has been pretty slow lately so I decided to take advantage of the break and
Fletch and I decided to take a free diving course. That means ditching all that heavy bulky scuba gear and diving on a breath of air. (Don't get me wrong, I still love scuba, but you've got to admit it's pretty cool to be able to ditch the gear). It's a lot like yoga, mind over matter and mostly about the breath control. Very relaxing. Our instructor was this hunky Australian dude covered in tribal tats and piercings. He had a very hyper personality but a simultaneously zen-like demeanor, talking a mile a minute about how cool freediving is one moment, and
I do have at least one more good story from Roatan. The week after the IDC I was in a bit of a funk trying to figure out what to do with myself. My entire life up until that point had been planned out until some point in the future. College after high school, divemaster insternship after college, IDC after divemaster, but suddenly the IE was over and that was the end of my plans. My entire future suddenly became a blank slate. And with all the nonsense that I already alluded to that was going on, I finally decided