Mama Mia!

For our third day of diving, we again planned on two sites. The first was Mama Viña, an old shrimp boat that was taken out of service in 1995 and deliberately sunk to create an artificial reef. This started out as possibly the best dive of the trip, but ended up being the worst.

Our dive master Claudio was really laying it on thick in the briefing. The currents down at the wreck are very strong, he said. You have to get down to the bottom very quickly; hopefully no one will have trouble clearing their ears as we descend. You have to stay close. We're going to swim through the wreck, and as soon as you exit, make sure you get back down in the shadow of the boat. Be very mindful of where you put your hands; you don't want to cut yourself on anything, and there is fire coral growing on the wreck. And the wreck is down at 90 feet, so remember what we did on the deep dive and switch air at the safety stop if you need to.

Yikes! I was thinking. But my boyfriend pointed out -- and correctly so -- that Claudio had really made all of our previous dives sound more intimidating than they'd actually turned out to be (turtle dive excepted, maybe). Just keep calm about it.

So down we went. And I was really doing great, I thought. I'd had a little trouble equalizing my ears here and there on past dives, but not this time. And I was getting down really fast! We were down to the ocean floor at 90 feet seemingly faster than I'd managed to get to half that depth on our other dives. I was actually so jazzed about how well it was going that I actually did not see the ship until we were practically on top it. Not that there were any problems with visibility or anything. I was just didn't happen to look to my left until, boom, there it was:

We swam up nice and close to it and started circling, looking into windows as we pass along side:

There were a lot of divers there. Before this, we'd only encountered one other small scuba group of four in all five of our previous dives. Yet now, there are at least three groups of that size besides ours. But I'm really not thinking too much about that; I'm too busy trying to swim right behind the dive master to stay out of the current.

We come up over the deck so that we can get a look down inside hatches and such:

...and then we start to swim back up the other side. Here I noticed for the first time that the current was indeed as strong as advertised. I do have a little bit of trouble, getting pushed into the side of the ship when I don't mean to be, but generally things are still going alright.

We come back around to where we started, and this time we're going to swim through the ship.

I was kind of nervous about this part, I must say. I'd skipped out on swimming through the underwater arch the day before, and this was considerably more cramped. Plus, all that talk about fire coral and sharp edges had me mentally prepped for some kind of twisted version of the game Operation. Don't touch the sides, or you'll get zapped!

But the only way "out" was through, so I checked my air (1500; half a tank left), and in I went. It was totally worth it. We passed through two adjoining rooms, the first light and open...

...and the second dark and spooky:

But then we emerged on the other side of the wreck, and the fun quickly came to an end. As I mentioned earlier, there were other dive groups in the area. By this point, they'd practically doubled, and there were probably around two dozen people besides us circling the wreck. And not a single one of them was showing any consideration to anyone else.

Once again, my boyfriend's camera, dutifully snapping pictures every five seconds, happened to catch the perfect moment:

That's me on the left. The jerk in the bandana is some random diver who cut inside and underneath me for no reason. I was pushed up and left to avoid him, and this put me immediately into the full current
churning past the ship. I start swimming with everything I've got, but between all the effort and the fact that I'm both freaked out and ticked off, it takes a lot more air than I realize. I manage to get back in close to both my boyfriend and the dive master, but then I look at my gauge: 500?!

In the only two minutes, maybe three, since I've last checked my air, I've managed to use fully one-third of the tank, and now I'm well past the point where I should have started heading back up. I signal this to the dive master, and he immediately gathers the group. All... five of us? My brother-in-law is nowhere to be seen.

We're now out well away from the wreck, looking at a swarm of other divers, but everyone seems to be paired off. There's no one that should belong to us. I'm trying to breathe evenly, but between the "holy crap, how did I get down to 500?" and the "what happened to my brother-in-law?", I'm not doing a very good job of it. We're 80 feet down, and now I'm at 400.

We start going up, and when my air reaches 300, the dive master forces his alternate into my hand.

Yes, I realize. I should just focus on my own issue here and not keep looking around everywhere for someone who has been on a hell of a lot more dives than I probably ever will.

I switch to the dive master's air, idly wondering how much he has left and wishing I could get a look at his gauge. Then finally I just sort of "give up" and relax. I'm quite literally tethered to him now anyway; there's almost certainly nothing I could have done before, and there surely isn't now. So just calm down and "enjoy" the ride.

When we finally reach about the halfway point between the floor and the surface, I start looking up for the octo tank. To my instant relief, I see my brother-in-law already there, switched over to the second air source. I want to get there too; I don't want to be sucking down our dive master's air any longer than necessary. But at a rate of no more than one foot up per second, the tank is still a long way away. Fortunately, being tethered to the dive master kept me from bolting for the octo and heading up faster than I should have.

Finally, an agonizingly long time later, we reach the octo, and I switch air for the second time. Then my brother-in-law and I just hang there for our safety stop.

By this time we're done with this dive, I've used basically all my air, who knows how much of the dive master's, and my brother-in-law and I have gone through half the spare tank between us. Meanwhile, my boyfriend is still doing just fine with a third of his tank left, while my friend and his wife are just chillin'-- you know, no big deal.

We finally came back to the surface, but in the moment I think I was far more focused on being mad at the random diver who caused it all than really thinking about what had happened to me. My brother-in-law had had a similar experience, it turned out; some other careless diver had swam in under him, exhaled a huge cloud of bubbles, and driven him up into the current. He exhausted a bunch of air trying to get back down before concluding that his dive was over; he'd go hang out at "the octo bar" and wait for the rest of us.

We went on a second dive after that, a reef called Sabalos. I honestly can't remember much about it. From my friend's dive computer, I know we went down about 45 feet, for about 40 minutes. I also remember that I was fairly calm and reasonably in control. For once, I wasn't the lowest one on air at the end of the dive. (My boyfriend and I were "tied" this time, both using two-thirds of our tank.) But I don't remember a single thing we did or saw on the Sabalos dive, probably because my mind was still back on the shipwreck.

Much later, after we'd gotten back to the hotel, it finally hit me just how tense I'd found the whole experience. I ended up being pretty low on energy, depressed all afternoon and up until dinner. Fortunately, my boyfriend was great about everything, both while it was happening and while I was pointlessly freaking out about it after the fact. He got me back to the point where I was ready for the next day's crazy dive adventure.