Scuba Diving

One of the things I really enjoyed when I was stationed in Northwest Florida was scuba diving. Every time you go diving, it's an adventure because you don't know what you're going to see or what the conditions will be like. Some days, you can have great visibility i.e. you can see for great distances while other days, you're lucky if you can see 10 feet in front of you. Sadly, because of the cold water and distances to Ocean City, I haven't scuba dived in Maryland. I've taken a couple courses and I dived in a quarry in Virginia but, I haven't scuba dived in the Atlantic.

One really neat aspect of the cruise I'll be going is that I'll be able to go scuba diving. I've heard the visibility is incredible in the Caribbean. It should be a lot of fun but, I have run into one problem. All the dive shops down there require you have done 2 dives within the last year or two. I haven't dived since I went on my trip to Australia. I did 2 dives on the Great Barrier Reef then. So, I've been trying to figure out how I could do a couple check dives to make sure I still know what I'm doing diving wise. I figured out that the best option was to do the check dives in San Juan just before the cruise. It's the easiest option though I then had the problem of finding a dive shop in San Juan. I finally found one. So, things are looking up that way. The cruise promises to be another first because of the diving. For the first time, I'll be traveling with my diving gear. In preparation for that, I looked up the rules on what I could take on the airplane. Can I bring a diving knife? What are the weight restrictions? What other things am I allowed to bring? Are there any additional fees? It'll be interesting in that way. The lessons I learn from this may help me on future trips.