Day: 110
Location: Fernando de Norohna
Tour Guides: Atlantis Diving Centre
Temperature: 27
Fernando de Noronha is a hidden gem. It is a volcanic island that shoots up from the ocean floor. Not many people know of its existence. And I’m glad that it’s that way. Noronha is 26 sq km and 360km off the north east of Brazil. It is nearer to Liberia in Africa than it is to Sao Paulo! It is inhabited by approximately 2,000 Brazilians and at any given one time no more than 420 tourists are allowed on it. To get there you have to take a jet plane for an hour. You can’t get there any other way. On entry you have to pay a hefty enough tax for each day you spend there. I ended up paying 30 euros in total. The island has some unique characteristics in its culture which you can detect straight away when you arrive: the taxis are sand buggies, the police hang out in burmudas and ray-bans on beaches speckled with coconuts and most of the locals have one form or other of a sea animal tattooed on their body. The main attractions are the multitude of gorgeous beaches, the ultra friendly natives and the wild life that hog its coastlines. The island has changed hands on more than one occasion. At first it was owned by the Portuguese explorers of the sixteenth century. It then exchanged hands from the Spanish, to the English to the French and then back to Brazil. It was a hide away for pirates, a penal colony, a navy base for the US during world war two and as of the late 1980s it was officially made a protected marine national park. Now diving is the fruitful waters is the primary attraction. People come from all over the world to experience it and very few go home disappointed. It’s commonly accepted that Noronha has the best diving in Brazil and some say if you didn’t dive there on your visit you really didn’t visit the island. I agree.
When I arrived I checked out as quickly as I could what marine activities I could do. After a couple of hours sussing out the local tour operators, the prices and the content and location of some of the tours on offer I decided that this was the ideal place for me to try get my basic diving (PADI, www.padi.com) certificate. PADI is a certificate that allows you dive to a maximum of 18 meters in all the most popular dive sites in the world. The course takes in 3 theory classes, four dives and a written test. I was very fortunate to come across an excellent tour company called Atlantis and more importantly a brilliant guide. A beautiful young Korean/Brazilain instructor called Sandra. Not only was she very competent and knowledgeable about the myriad details involved in diving she was patient and made me feel assured at all times. And she always had the most beautiful smile on her face. The vagabond salutes her. The course started with getting to know the equipment: first stage, regulator, octopus, equaliser, weight belt, purge button, buoyancy control device (BCD) backpack, cylinder, din-valves, fins, pressure gauge, wet suit, face mask, and much more. Next was a trip into low water to get used to breathing and exhaling into the mouth piece. As part of the course you have to learn how to control your buoyancy which sounds easy but its not. The basic concept is to be able to descend, ascend and hover in the water in a controlled relaxed fashion. The primary way of doing this is by pressing one button on your BCD which inflates your jacket with air to bring you up, another button, which deflates it and helps bring you down and then by exhaling or inhaling air in your lungs to make them increase or decrease the air volume in your body. It takes a little while to master this and at the start you keep pressing the two buttons on your BCD but after a few hours you start to get the hang of it. After learning some of the basics on the first day I got a chance to take my first dive at about 12m which was on a 25m ship wreck just off the port. I thoroughly enjoyed inspecting the massive anchor and looking at the disassembled rusting hull of the boat. Fortunately, on my first dive I got to see a turtle. Unfortunately, he had been spiked by a local fisherman’s hook. It was caught in his mouth and in his back stream the line hung in the water like the tail of a barracuda. My instructor went down and tried to help him but he was a little nervous and instead of accepting her help decided to swim off into the blue. On my second day I did some emergency exercises: learning how to exchange oxygen, emergency ascents, putting on the weight belt in water and putting on the BCD while on the surface. Little tricky but I managed to master it fairly quickly. At the end of the exercise I took my second dive down along a coral reef. It was my first time coming across a multitude of sting rays and the first time that I have come in contact with a wild shark. On this occasion it was a mid sized 1.5 meter reef shark. Innocuous enough but believe me when they start swimming towards your hard jumps a beat. A magnanimous creature. The water was an explosion off colours. I saw flat fish that had silver bodies and pink fins. I saw big fat green and brown speckled fish with razor sharp teeth. There was one cool little fish which was one of my personal favourites that looked like he had a squashed rainbow on his tiny back. Then there were dangerous looking guys, one that looked like a samurai sword with various sized sharp teeth in his mouth. I kept away from him as much as I could. When I told the dogs about him later Brutos reassured me that if he had attacked that he would have leapt from the dive boat, as quick as you can say I’ve found Nemo, and come to my safety. When I prodded Eusebius about it he said he would have let one of the instructors know that I was in difficulty and a professional would have come to my assistance. In the end I didn’t need any help and I simply continued the 45 minute dive studying reef, being mesmerised by fish and hovering through, over and in algae. That night I had a class on breathing at depth. It took in modules on: air, contaminated air, oxygen, nitrogen narcosis, decompression air, redissolution, etc. Diving is a highly technical sport. And the main things I’ve learned about it is always be Eusebi-esqe: conservative, take your time, anal about detail and be prepared. The last dive the following day was magnificent. Sandra kept the best to last and brought me deeper into about 17m water. We explored black caves, undulating caverns filled with fish and tiny tunnel, vents and holes that left little or no margin of error for entry. Very different to the other dives I had done and much more technical. My favourite part was floating through the dark valleys, brushing aside some of the fish and seeing the deep blue abyss in front of you. The whole experience had a massive salty taste of more. I was instantly addicted. Unfortunately, my flight was the next day and one of the golden rules of diving is never dive 12 hours before a flight, so that was sadly the end of the diving on Noronha. That night I say my theory test. And I’m glad to report I passed. I now have my basic PADI certificate. I went out that night and celebrated with a little dancing and a few beers. It now means that when I get to the barrier reef, New Caledonia and some of the beautiful dive sites in Thailand, Sri-Lanka and India I can be captivated and mesmerised once again by the beauty of the many mysterious, tantalizing and truly beautiful animals that inhabit our wonderful oceans.
Note: We met the king of the island. A 40 year old drunk called Lombra. Everybody knew him. His day consisted of drinking tins of Skol beer the minute he got up, copious amounts of rock diving, marijuana smoking, snorkelling pissed, jumping, skipping and dancing. One of the best entertainers I have ever met. He’d make a surly mother superior with a heart, throat, foot, and tooth problem laugh. A special person. Brutos loved him and took a few snaps for the archives.
