I’m not a strong swimmer. I took some swimming classes over the last few years to learn at least the basics, but please don’t throw me in the ocean, because I probably won’t survive! It’s one of my biggest fears. Since I don’t fully trust my swimming skills, scuba diving was a scary idea for me.

At the same time, it was something I really wanted to do. I wanted to face this fear a little and experience something new: seeing the corals and the fish up close.

When we were planning the Indonesia trip, scuba diving was on our must-do list. We had never done it before. We even thought about trying it first in Hawaii, but decided to save it for Indonesia.

Labuan Bajo, close to the Komodo dragons, is one of the best places to do it.

Choosing a dive shop

When you know nothing about scuba diving, it’s hard to choose a dive shop. You don’t want it to be too expensive, but you are also putting your life in their hands, so it has to be good. I did some research, found around five places with good reviews and went with Scuba Republic, one of the best-rated in town. We booked by email and paid by credit card when we got there.

As first-timers, we signed up for the Discover Scuba Diving course, which includes two dives, for 2.8M IDR per person, plus a 275k IDR park fee per person.

I was also worried about motion sickness, since we get seasick really easily, as we found out on the Alaska trip. This time we came prepared with meclizine, a 24-hour motion sickness medicine that we bought in Japan, because it isn’t available here in Canada.

The afternoon before, we checked in at the dive shop and tried on the wetsuits and the rest of the gear, so everything would be ready in the right sizes the next morning. One of the instructors, Leo, speaks Portuguese. He is German, has family in Colombia and lived in Natal, Brazil, for a year, so it was fun to chat in Portuguese so far from home.

The first dive

We dived on September 21. That morning, we woke up early, met the team and headed to the boat.

Yellow and white Scuba Republic dive boat docked in the Labuan Bajo harbour

Our dive boat for the day, docked in Labuan Bajo.

There were around 15 people on board, all of them diving. We were the only ones doing the course, so my wife and I had our own instructor, Rafa, who was really nice and very patient.

All the dive sites were inside Komodo National Park, and as beginners we only went down to around 12 metres. It took around an hour to get to the first one, and they served us a good breakfast on the way.

Row of air tanks on the dive boat deck with the islands of Komodo National Park in the background

Air tanks lined up on the way to the first dive site.

Just putting on the wetsuit and the air tank was already hard. Before the first dive, I was a bit scared: we had to jump into the water, and I kept thinking I wouldn’t be able to breathe.

Me in a wetsuit on the dive boat, getting ready for the first dive

Suited up and trying to look calm before the first dive.

The first dive was tough because we were really bad at it. We learned that you control your buoyancy mostly with your breathing: you breathe out to go deeper, and if you breathe in too much, you go up.

That was our main problem, because we were still getting used to breathing through the regulator. We got anxious, and since we weren’t breathing well, we breathed in too much and kept floating up when we shouldn’t. At one point I went up, and Rafa had to hold me. Then my wife didn’t see us, panicked and started going up as well. Poor Rafa had a hard time trying to help two scared people who couldn’t really control themselves in the water. We could see the stress on his face.

When we got out after 40 minutes, we didn’t want to do another one. But the second dive was part of the course, so we decided to give it a try.

The second dive

The second dive site was a bit further away. The other divers did their first two dives at The Cauldron, also called Shotgun, a site with strong currents that is only for experienced divers. After dropping them off, the boat took us to a calmer spot closer to where we did our first one, since we were still learning.

I’m not sure what happened, but the second dive was completely different from the first, and it really surprised us. We had much better control, could go down and even enjoy the fish. There was only one moment when I started to go up, and after that, everything felt comfortable and easy. It was like we weren’t the same people from the first dive.

Lunch and a third dive

Between the second and third dives, we had lunch on the boat. It was really good, but I wasn’t feeling 100% and couldn’t eat much. I was a little seasick, and the medicine was keeping it under control but making me a bit drowsy.

Something nice I noticed was that the bad feeling went away as soon as I got into the water, and when I came back out, I felt almost completely fine.

The second dive was so good that I decided to pay for an extra one. I wanted to make the most of it, and I also didn’t want to stay on a boat that was rocking a lot.

The third dive was at Sebayur Kecil, a calm, sloping reef, and it was as good as the second, if not even better. I saw a lot of colourful fish, corals, clownfish, sharks and even a turtle up close, after only seeing turtle flippers in the waves in Hawaii.

Sea turtle resting on a colourful coral reef

Finally, a turtle up close, and not just its flippers.

It was a whole new world down there, and it was amazing to see how beautiful and colourful the fish are. There were so many schools of fish swimming together over the coral reefs, just like in documentaries.

School of fish swimming over a coral reef in Komodo National Park

Schools of fish over the reef, just like in documentaries.

Some of the sharks were resting on the bottom, while others were swimming around. A few people from our boat even saw a manta ray, but I missed it.

Manta ray swimming over the sandy bottom

The manta ray I missed, seen by others on our boat.

Unfortunately, we had no way to film underwater, and they don’t allow or recommend it during the course anyway. Thankfully, some people on our boat shared their underwater videos with us. The images here are screenshots from those videos, so a big thank you to them, especially Francesco and Jauris.

Wide field of branching coral stretching into the blue

A whole new world down there.

After the third dive, we headed back to town, and that was the end of the day.

Final thoughts

Even though the first dive was really stressful, the day was amazing. It became the number one experience of our Indonesia trip, ahead of seeing wild orangutans in Sumatra, because it was so new to us and so beautiful down there. Our progress from the first dive to the second was the biggest surprise.

The next day we did a boat tour in Komodo National Park with two snorkelling stops. I saw manta rays and sharks, but after diving, snorkelling felt a lot less exciting.

I even thought about doing more dives and getting certified. We registered for it, but to finish I would need to do more dives within six months, which isn’t going to happen. I know there are some dive spots around Vancouver, but the water is way too cold for me.

Now I’m curious about other places in Indonesia that are supposed to be even better, and I’d love to dive the Great Barrier Reef in Australia someday.

A funny thing is that every clownfish we saw underwater reminded us of Finding Nemo, so after the trip we ended up watching the movies again.

Cheers.