The Deeps of Malawi

We had intended to only spend two nights in Nkhata Bay, Malawi. But then we happened to go to the dive centre to check the internet, ate some ‘magic’ cake and were signing our lives away on a 5 day scuba diving course. Erm right. Monday dawned and we headed into the class room with 9 other people and sat down to learn about all the different ways we could die scuba diving. I have to say I was a little apprehensive when I finally donned my equipment and waddled into the lake. Slowly sinking under the water whilst still breathing (my brain was a little confused), but it was amazing! Imagine bright blue and yellow fish, bright blue and white fish, huge mouth breeders that swallow their babies to keep them safe. Rocks that you can swim through and cat fish the length of your leg that flit in and out of the shadows. And then there’s the sheer feeling of floating. Hanging upside down to see the black fish that themselves turn upside down to mirror the rock. Using purely breath to float in a meditation position ‘the cosmic jimmy.’ After five days and six dives, Rob and I were by no means ready to finish diving. The advanced course had to be done. We had one day off to stay as dry as possible and then we were back in the deeps.

This time the emphasis was on giving us skills – we improved our buoyancy, took all our equipment off under water, swam around put it on again and played around. Imagine me on the bottom of the lake, removing my flippers, picking up a large rock and running full kilter along the bottom. If fish had expressions Disney style, they would have shown great surprise as I ran straight at them. Rob had to keep clearing his mask from laughing at me disappearing and reappearing with bigger and bigger rocks, leaping into back flips as I ran.

Day two saw us diving to depths of 30m before we headed out armed with compasses to try to navigate shapes under water. Now I know that only the bad blame their tools but I honestly believe that there was something wrong with my compass. Rob managed somehow to bring us right back to the anchor line every single time where as I ended up all over the place. Indeed so intent was I in glaring at the compass and only the compass I managed to find myself at the surface (quite a surprise) and even right under the boat when convinced I was miles away.

Having seen the film ‘Into the Blue,’ it seems Rob had been inspired to become a bounty seeker and through out the first course had surfaced regularly with wooden spoons, money and sightings of sunken boats and anchors. Day three therefore was a dream come true when we were told our mission was to find and recover a large anchor using a lift bag. Our team sank below the surface and clutching a rope found our bearing. Slowly we swam along the contour, looking under rock, above and below  keeping our depth and timing correct when suddenly a large tug from Rob alerted me to the fact that he had seen the anchor. Kieran miss read this tug as meaning times up, turn around and sank his heels into the sand firmly refusing to move. Eventually he realised what was going on and we all surrounded the anchor. I did honestly feel like an explorer when I strapped the lift bag to the top of the anchor and Rob slowly filled it with air. Whilst the others clung to the anchor to slow its ascent I was in charge of releasing air from the bag so that it didn’t shoot upwards. I may be thinking of a career change J

Our last dive was the pinnacle of the two weeks. We met at 6PM, once again donned our equipment and set out into the inky black waters just as the moon was rising. The silence was surreal, the blackness imposing. We fell backwards off the boat with a nervous flutter in our hearts and I shone my torch around expecting to see a deserted lake. How wrong I was. Dolphin fish (not dolphins, just large blue fish) surrounded us and used our lights to seek out their pray. The sounds of jaws snapping on unsuspecting sleeping fish filled our ears. These fish stayed with us for the duration of our dive allowing us to touch them and flitting between us like dogs on a walk. The sleeping fish woke when poked, or just as we approached to zoom disconcertedly into the nearest diver. The whole experience was absolutely amazing.