Long sleep followed by a late and lazy breakfast as compared to early trials from the spanish inquisition was very nice for a change. The theory is by no means difficult, it just takes time to plow through the reading material. We settled the financial details with the dive shop and headed home, it was slightly raining and I’d decided to leave my ears and sinuses a days rest.

Mapping out what we would do during the rest of the trip until a late lunch was more or less what we did after breakfast. Time really flies when you do nothing at all. Which reminds me, I haven’t thought about work at all today, sweet!

After writing the blog it was time to dress up for New Years, we’d signed up on a evening at Angelinas (which seemed to be where the dive instructors and others also were going) for some nice food, wine and fireworks.

The food was nice, we had perhaps set our expectations a bit too high but it was good value (I guess only the wine would have costed more in Sweden) and we spent some time chatting with another Swedish couple we’ve run into earlier.

After breakfast I started with tests on previous night studies as well as an final exam covering the entire course. Not that surprisingly I managed to pass but I did fill in the wrong answer on the question regarding signaling out of air. After my instructor made sure I actually knew this but only filled out the wrong answer it was time to the final dives as well, lapus lapus first and deep rock for the last one.

For the third open water dive we practiced underwater navigation with compass, emergency ascent and mask/buoyancy skills. We were somewhat deeper this time, 16m, but less troubles with equalizing and it was nice to just swim around and look at things after the tests where done. When going back for lunch we had lunch at our regular breakfast place (on top of the dive shop) since Mirsada hadn’t moved since breakfast.

The only remaining tests for the forth and last dive was surface navigation (with compass) and always-recurring mask-skills so it was more or less a regular dive with the others on the boat. We were a little deeper this time, 18m and with a slightly better visibility than previous dives it was certainly the best so far. We spotted pygmy sea horses (requiring a magnifying glass to see) and a frogfish. It took me a couple of minutes to understand why we where staring at this butt-ugly stone until I saw eye and mouth on the fish.

The rest of the afternoon was quite calm, Mirsada had moved approximately 200 meters in total during the day, that is to the dive shop /breakfast/lunch place and back to the bungalow. We decided to keep the slow pace and finish the night by watching Narnia – Prince Caspian and having an awesome Pizza at Angelina’s.

Just before we were about to turn out the lights a lovely little spider (and by little I mean approximately the size of my fist) scurried in and placed itself on the wall. It however fled mysteriously after I’ve armed myself and swung myself up to the ceiling of the veranda to trying to seal it’s destiny. It felt rather nice to use the mosquito net.

No photos were taken today, so the top image will be a random picture of locals carrying a fresh Dorado fish, enjoy! To get another idea of the size, here’s another photo with Mirsada and Alan in it.

Open Water Dive 2 was scheduled for today after passing the theoretical tests for previous parts. I had some difficulties with my pressure equalization at first, I might have been affected by Mirsadas cold despite my mad immune system skillz. This time there were plenty of exercises such as pretending I lose the regulator or run out of air. At 12 meters below surface this was probably a new depth record for yours truly. As I got up Mike told me I’d like to wash my face since I’d blown out some blood vessels during my brute-force attempts of equalizing, who said brute force wasn’t a valid option when diving?

The afternoon was free, not as in beer but as in watching PADI DVDs and reading the rest of the book. The weather was less cloudy than before so we took a swim at our favorite beach again. After more than enough time in the water for yours truly we took a stroll along one of the other beaches for looking for seashells and I dumped my camera at home. It of course turned out to be an awesome sunset with amazing colors – well at least Mirsada got my full attention for this romantic moment.

We had dinner at Hippocampus again, this time we were thrilled to realize that in the middle of the dinner three guys with a guitar started playing, lovely. After the initial songs they turned out quite nice though, it could have been the drink and beer that slipped down which made it more endurable though. Back at the bungalow I cursed the PADI book for the last time presumably when I found out that there was an additional little booklet which I’d first missed that needed to read as well.