Saturday, July 21, 2012

Splashes and squirts

Yesterday was one of the most moving experiences at STN since I've been here. Recently due to the dismal summer swells I have stumbled across a new found passion.... Cave diving. I've gone diving and spear fishing a few times in my life, but not too many. As a general rule of thumb if there's waves I will always choose surfing over diving... that was until the surf was completely flat for months and finally my hand was forced. And it. Is. so. Fun!!! So basically you take a big breath, you swim down into a cave and then you come out the other side, either up into another cave or out into the open water. Once you get far enough down and your looking through the tunnel you can see the silouttes of fish everywhere because of the way the light reflects. The funny thing about it is that even though most of the time you can see the light on the other side it can be deceivingly long. The other day when I went for the first time, I powered through the first few caves and was feeling pretty confident. Then we went for the big one. The thing was there was a few of us following each other sort of like a train. I was forth in line. Problem was the guy at the front could obviously hold his breath a lot longer than me cause he was taking his sweet time. I get to the part of the cave where it starts to open up, starting to run out of breath and I realise I'm only half way through the cave. Out of pure instinct I push my friend out of the way and power my way past another one or two guys finally making it to the surface gasping for breath. It freaked me out so much a little poo come out. Our local friend Kawika pops up last laughing his guts out at the antics he just saw from behind. Lets just say that was the last cave I did for the day. So, yeah, Shark's Cove on the north shore is epic. I've gone 3 times so far and getting better at equalising and holding my breath and all that technical stuff. So if you've ever wondered how to hold your breath longer underwater, here's a few tips. http://freediving.shark.nu/2007/03/06/top-10-on-how-to-hold-your-breath-longer/ These are some photos, none of them are mine, but it gives you some idea.

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