Scuba Diving in Taganga

Taganga has several affordable dive schools, so I thought: why not get scuba certified while I'm here?

My teacher's name is Carlos, and he looks like Yul Brynner with piercings, or like how I imagine Quinn from the Sookie Stackhouse novels looks (only not as tall). Anyway, on the first day of lessons, the other student and I watched an inane PADI video, got our gear, walked down to the beach, hopped in a boat, and motored to a nearby cove where Carlos gave us the run-down on our BCD's, tanks, and regulators (mount up!), as well as info on hand signals and some exercises we'd be doing under water. Then we just walked into the ocean and submerged! No confined water dives for us. Take that, PADI video!

Carlos would demonstrate an exercise, then have us do it. I found it striking how the sign language entered my head just like spoken language. "What's your air pressure?" "1,500." "You two, swim together." "This fish is dangerous." But sometimes, when I wanted to express things that we didn't have signs for, I felt like I was in my very own "Hush" episode of Buffy.

For each dive, after the exercises, we'd cruise around, exploring. It's an unfathomable world down there. Coral like purple brains. Coral like Cheerios. Tiny, bright yellow fish no bigger than my fingernail. A long, wrinkly tube of a fish. A super spindly crab that reminded me of a stick bug. A camouflaged fish that apparently sports a dangerous, spiny mohawk when angered. My fave: three-inch azure fish.

I held a sea horse, petted an octopus, and caught a puffer fish.

So much life and color! Eels, black with neon green accents, slithering among coral. A surprisingly hard and cartilagey leopard-spotted fish that Carlos let us hold during the night dive. A papaya-flesh-colored octopus. Iridescent green and blue fish as large as a dinner plate.

The night dive was especially cool. Shortly after 6:30pm (the sun sets at 6:00), we motored out in a small, Chuck Norris stealth boat. The sea was completely black, and all we had for light under water was a flashlight each. The animals are much slower and more docile at night; I caught two puffer fish and held them as they puffed up -- a feat that had eluded me during the daytime dives. Carlos found and caught a puffer fish that was huge -- easily the size of an 18-month-old child, unpuffed.

Sea urchins come out at night from their daytime resting spots under coral. Eels, too, seemed more active. One fish that seemed pink during the day was red at night, I think because I was shining a light directly on it, so the full color specturm hit its scales, not just the redless, filtered light of daytime.

At one point we all rested on a sandy patch of ocean floor, turned off our flashlights, and batted the water, churning up neon green sparks of phosphorescence.

I leave you with this video, which I wish I could have set to the song "Under the Sea," but WMV files suck.