While we had the time the older two girls thought it would be good to do the Open Water Junior Dive Course. In our area of southern Goa there was only one dive shop. I also contacted the 2 Dive shops in northern Goa but they showed minimal interest. Shanti Divers in Canacona replied with an extensive response and showed lots of interest. So we met with Gabor and the girls began their course thru Scuba Schools International (SSI). MC is a PADI Rescue Diver and I am a PADI Divemaster so SSI was pretty new to us…and we were impressed with Gabor and SSI.
Gabor made it clear that local Goa diving is pretty poor. Visibility of 1-2 metres at best so we had hoped to take an hour boat trip to Netrani Island to do their last 2 qualifying dives….oh the best laid plans of mice and men ( and women)….MC and I taught the girls their course work and we travelled one hour from Cavelossim to Canacona for the first pool session. The girls both got 90+ on their written exams….
Since we would have a second pool session, 2 beach dives from Canacona and then the Netrani Island trip we thought it best to move down closer to the dive shop. The Netrani trip was to leave the dive shop at 5 am so adding the extra hour from Cavelossim, it made real sense to move south…
The kids did all their shore dives with poor visibity BUT we had to cancel Netrani due to red tide and jellyfish….now the girls still need to do an SSI referral and finish up with another dive school. To get to Johannesburg we knew we had to fly thru somewhere and the Seychelles were quite high on the list and the girls could finish up their dives there. Then we had a sweet offer from a friend of Marie-Christine’s in Abu Dhabi..a place to stay! So kill a few days in Goa then off to Abu Dhabi. Rent a car there and take 5days in Oman, finish their course and some diving ourselves! Stay tuned!
