Our third day in Santo started with a beautiful sunrise seen from the beach in front of our rooms. Lydie and Julie missed it, as they were still sleeping a bit.

Today’s big activity was more scuba! It was time for our first two open water dives. Both would be at depths of 12 meters—just shy of 40 feet.

After a quick breakfast in the restaurant, we met with Mick, Yvanah, and George to gather equipment and head to the boat. Once onboard, we traveled another 45 minutes to reach the dive site. At this point, Julie started to get nervous. She does not love water. But Mick explained that as long as you’re breathing, everything else can be worked out. Yvanah also gave Julie a hug. We then all geared up and one-by-one rolled backwards off the boat into the water.

Once in the water, Mick worked closely with Julie, holding her hand for the first part of the dive. Soon, Julie felt comfortable enough to start to swim on her own. Despite her doubts, she did great!

Lydie and Cassie were behind us, working with George and Yvanah. We glanced back and saw that Yvanah and Cassie were surfacing. We didn’t know why but had to keep focusing on our own diving training. Meanwhile, George kept working with Lydie. Lydie later said the dive was a B- for her. She was cold and a little confused about what happened with Cassie, particularly since Cassie was Lydie’s partner and one of the basic rules of diving is “Don’t leave your buddy.” But Lydie still did great on all of the skill checks.

At the end of our first dive, we learned what had happened with Cassie. The pressure from descending to the water was causing her intense abdominal pain and nausea. We’d known that this was a possibility, as Cassie has had some abdominal pain recently. Unfortunately, this meant that her day of diving was over. Indeed, she felt wretched even when she was on the boat. Even worse, while Cassie was waiting for us to finish our dive, she took off her wetsuit to help with her nausea, exposing skin that had no sunscreen, and she got horribly sunburned.

We took the boat to our second dive site, where we waited for about an hour for some of the dissolved nitrogen to leave our blood. We chatted and had a snack of lime juice and banana bread. As we munched, we saw a sea turtle and got a glimpse of an eagle ray. Then Julie, Lydie, and I put our gear back on (with new tanks of course), and rolled back into the water for our second dive. It went great! We saw lots of corals, fish, and other marine critters. Mick pointed out to us an inch-long colorful nudibranch. Lydie said she had a lot more fun, and Julie gained even more confidence. For my part, I enjoyed every minute of both dives.

With scuba done for the day, we headed back to the lodge in the boat. We helped clean up the gear a bit, showered, and had a late lunch at the restaurant. We decided to spend the rest of the day relaxing. The dives had left us tired, with a salty, bittersweet taste in our mouths. Julie had challenged herself and come out on top. The day was also a win for Lydie. We’d given her scuba lessons as a Christmas present in 2019, but those plans had been dashed by covid. We were excited for her to finally get something she’d wanted for so long.

But we were also heartbroken for Cassie, who’d been leading the charge in the online scuba training, finishing first and scoring higher than the rest of us. Plus, she’s probably our biggest risk taker, so being sidelined by something out of her control felt somehow wrong. She was ready, willing, but just not physically able. But if you’re going to be disappointed, this was a great place to do it. We had plenty more fun planned for Santo, so we focused on the positive the best we could.

-Will