Scuba Diving: The Wonder Of Traveling Beneath The Waves With J.F.Penn

Travel is about curiosity, the desire to discover new places and experience the extraordinary. It is often about pushing boundaries, extending our comfort zone to the point of challenge and beyond in the hope of discovering something new about ourselves and the world. In today’s episode, I’m talking about scuba diving and the wonder of traveling beneath the waves and even if you’re not a diver yourself, I hope you find it interesting. Why I learned to scuba dive I love the ocean and being near the water. We didn’t live by the sea growing up but I learned to swim young and even enjoyed competing at my school — until puberty hit when my body changed, my confidence dissipated and I started wearing thick glasses for short-sightedness. From then on, I avoided swimming but since I was always a quiet, bookish child, I preferred to read or study rather than do sport anyway. But I still loved the ocean and so, in my late teens, I did a sailing course and wore my glasses strapped against my head with one of those rubber bands around the back. Super sexy! When I took them off to clean the salt off at a break, one of the boys sat on them and broke the arms. I actually had to tape them up with plasters and I still remember the shame of it. That experience led to me getting contact lenses at aged 19, which I’ve worn ever since — and also rekindled my determination to get back into the water. Fast forward to the year 2000. I was 25, working in London, burned out by the workload as I talked about in Episode 3: Why I Travel. I relaxed by drinking and although I went to the gym, I certainly didn’t do anything that would be considered physically fun. So when I left my job, I wanted to do something completely different. I wanted to experience the world in a new way. I wanted to change my life and do something that I’d never done before. I wanted a physical challenge and a new form of fun. I flew to Perth in Western Australia in May 2000 and booked a PADI Open Water course. You can learn to dive closer to home, but I was down under for a year out and learning to dive was how I intended to start living differently. The night before the course, I went to the markets in Fremantle and listened to a band playing Bob Dylan and Cat Stevens covers and drank VB (Victoria Bitter beer) and got a henna tattoo, even though the next day I knew it would wash away. It was somehow the first step in a new me. I wanted to mark my skin, and I wasn’t about to get a real tattoo because I’m Gen X and it was still relatively frowned upon back then, not to mention a stupid idea before going scuba diving! That first morning, we put on our wetsuits and entered the swimming pool, sinking underwater while breathing on a regulator for the first time. I’m pretty sure they get newbies under as fast as possible to weed out those who can’t hack it or have ear issues. Some people just can’t equalize and a couple of people dropped out that first day. I was scared but determined to make it through the course. My heart pounded the whole time, I got a headache really quickly, and it was cold in that pool despite the thick wetsuits. Down south in Western Australia is not that warm, especially in May when I learned to dive, autumn in the southern hemisphere. People assume Australia is all beaches and sun but Perth has a temperate climate, which is why there are so many Brits there. Back to the pool, and the full-body 3mm wetsuit felt tight on my body which of course, it needs to be to keep you warm but it’s also constricting if you’re not used to wearing one. If you learn to dive in tropical waters, you’ll probably just wear a shorty or a light stinger suit but I appreciated learning in more difficult conditions because if you get used to it, then diving in the tropics is easy-peasy.