Scuba Diving

This past weekend I travelled down to Kenting, a town and National Park at the southern-most part of Taiwan, to finish up my open water scuba diving certification! I completed the classroom portion here in Taipei, but due to scheduling conflicts and the change in weather on the North coast, the water was too cold to comfortably dive in by the time I needed to do the dives in the ocean. Since we wanted to make the most of the weekend, the 7 of us - our instructor, 4 students, and 2 other divers along for the trip - met downtown just a bit after midnight and piled into a big van to make the 6 hour drive south. We only stopped once, but the road was so bumpy and jiggly that none of us got much sleep. When we arrived at sunrise in Kenting, we pulled over at a beach to eat some cereal and wait for the dive shop to open so we could rent some extra equipment. We also checked into our room, which was dorm style with 7 single mattresses lined up in a row. We got the equipment and headed off to the beach to start the dives!
The first dive was wonderful! We had to swim out in between some rocks to get into the open water. We practiced some skills and then got to look around a bit underwater. Once we were done, we swam ashore (underwater) and then got out onto the rocky beach. There was a Taiwanese family picnicking and they seemed quite shocked to see foreigner after foreigner emerging from the ocean with all this gear on! They followed us up to where our van was parked, and seeing that some of us were really cold, offered us some nice hot tea. Yet another example of how friendly Taiwanese really are. Then we did our next dive and I saw a huge(~3ft long) sea snake! I didn't learn until after I got out of the water that their venom is 10 times more poisonous than a cobra's!! But they are not considered very dangerous because their mouths are too small to bite anything except fingers...!
After we finished with our dives for the day, we showered and headed down the main street to see the stores and find a good place to eat. Amongst all the street shops selling flip-flops, board shorts, squids on sticks, and various carnival style games we found a suitable restaurant and had a nice meal (although extremely spicy!)
The next morning we headed off for our 2nd set of dives in a unique location: right next to a nuclear power plant! We suited up and headed into the water...this time we saw even more fish than before (including yellow and black angelfish, blue, white, and yellow striped butterfly fish, and a clown fish) and near the end of our last dive we saw a huge cuttlefish! The creature looks more like a squid than a fish, and is a master of disguise. It can change to reflect it's surroundings so quickly and drastically that I had no idea what it was for the first few minutes. It was really cool to see these sea creatures and plants that I have only ever seen on film or in pictures before; I can't wait to see what Kenzie and I come across when we go diving in Bali over Christmas!
After we showered again and packed up, we hit the road for Taipei around 6pm. We stopped for a brief dinner and at most of the rest stops because our van kept giving ominous beeps to alert us that the water level in the radiator was low; we had to jump out every so often and pour more water in... We arrived back in Taipei a little before 2AM Monday morning. Just in time to scooter home and get a few hours rest before another week with the kiddos! It was a really great trip and made me quite excited about going diving, not just around Taiwan but especially in Bali!