Finding Nemo...all over

Only 12 hours before I set foot on the African continent for the first time, the Belgian dive center "Blue Paradise" already picked us up for our first day of diving.

For practical reasons I didn't start my course yet on the first day but I could enjoy already 2 dives with Jan and a dive master/dive guide. This ended up being quite usefull for me as I soon experienced that diving is something you need to keep doing regularly. It all comes back soon but the first dive was still rather difficult for me due to my lack of experience. Before diving I thought sinking was one of the scary threads of diving (and not getting air), but it's actually more challenging to go down and to stay down! We all have a natural tendency to float and with a wetsuit and a tank full of air on your back, you are bound to float for sure. So my first dive was a jojo of going up and down much more than I actually wanted, needing more help than I wanted and starting to doubt a bit of what I had got myself into on this vacation. But the 2nd dive was already better and some forgotten principles like getting air out of your BCD when going up (how contradictory does that sound for the first time huh...but you need to compensate the expanding air in your tank and BCD...so very logical in the end!) got refreshed.

From the first dive onwards we already saw a lot of the fauna and flora below the Red Sea. The next time Nemo's dad is looking for his son, he should come to the Red Sea. Nemo was all over the place, as were many many butterfly fish, goldfish, goatfish, angelfish, etc...A very inspiring colorful and interesting new world!