A Blog in collaboration with RITUAL DIVE, Xlendi Gozo

Hello and welcome to my Fashion, Travel and Lifestyle Blog!

This summer is becoming more and more interesting by the day. I seem to have this intense desire to go beyond my comfort zone, to learn new skills or try new things that were previously not on my consciousness radar. If you’ve been following My Recent Blog Post “Gozo island is always a great idea” together with my pictures and video stories on my Instagram and Facebook pages, you wouldn’t have missed our adventures out to the peaceful and vibrant island of Gozo. Thanks to a collaboration with Arzella Apartments and Front Bar, we are now regular visitors and I promise to share with you best activities, sightseeing spots, things to do and of course the restaurants we are loving in Gozo too!

The blog today is about my very first TRY DIVE with RITUAL DIVE in Xlendi, Gozo. So it was 8.30 am after a morning stroll and morning fitness routine with the family in Xlendi Bay, that we walked into the diving school. We were greeted warmly by both Rachel and Nick, the founders of RITUAL DIVE: We were given a quick tour of their very newly refurbished Diving Centre including the offices and the training pool area, then we were invited into their office to sign the necessary documents to ascertain we were fit enough to participate and after that it was all exciting for us, literally like young kids going to school on the first day.

Neither I nor Marco had ANY CLUE or previous experience with diving so we were very attentive to the Pre-Dive Instructions led by Rachel, one of the founders of the school, after which we very slowly put on the diving gear and walked to the pool area for the action! Here are some lovely photos to show you that we actually did this and so proud too!

IS SCUBA DIVING FOR ME?

Many people are interested in diving, seeing all the beautiful footage on documentaries and underwater photography magazines, but not sure if they want to make the investment in terms of time and money; many are also uncertain about how they will react in an unknown environment. For these reasons, most dive centres will offer an ‘intro dive’ in the sea or their training pool. In our case, we had our first Test Dive with RITUAL in their brand new pool which is situated at their headquarters in Xlendi.

It feels amazing to breath underwater, but also pretty claustrophobic, and when it came to demonstrating the skills right in front of the instructor the first time, it was far more challenging than I expected. The reason is that my body had never experienced this underwater breathing environment before, so I went into a slight anxiety moment for a few minutes, until I spoke to myself and tried to relax my mind …Apparently, this is Normal on the first time! Phew..

We donned our gear and walked into the pool for our confined water dive. There we took our first breath underwater and started to learn some of the basic skills in a safe environment where you could stand up if something went wrong. In this first confined water dive, we went through training techniques that were mentioned in the Pre Dive Lesson. These were techniques to get comfortable with the equipment and how to do things underwater. In this first pool session you cover things like clearing your regulator, switching to your alternate regulator, buoyancy, and clearing water from your mask. We nailed them all!

From this experience, I can say that if you intend to start scuba diving, for the first time you go into the ocean, please do make sure you are comfortable with the skills because you will have to demonstrate them underwater. And the ocean is not perhaps as easy and comfortable to learn in as this lush pool.

It seems some dive operators can be in a rush to get through the pool dive and all the exercises but if you have questions make sure you ask. If you’re not completely comfortable the first time practice more than once. The next time you’ll be demonstrating these skills will be in the ocean and won’t be able to surface for a breath of air easily!

SUCCESS!

So as you can see from these lovely photos, courtesy of RITUAL DIVE, we conquered this TRY DIVE experience with love and great enthusiasm. We dove into this without any pre-conceived expectations and we walked out feeling amazing and happy to have learnt something new with the help of this awesome instructor, Rachel. She is so thorough, and comes with over 10 years of experience, working in the Diving environment teaching in Thailand with Nick, her partner. Together they are building this very professional school with modern branding and a fun social calendar alongside it, which is creating a wonderful community on the island of Gozo.

This was so fun that we will probably go for a First Dive in the Ocean next time we visit Gozo this summer… Will we do it?

Well, you ll have to STAY TUNED to my Blog and Instagram Page to Find Out!

If you already are a well-skilled diver and you wish to get in touch with these guys, here is all the information you need.