The other night I ran into Ilya, Aaron, Dave and Mark on my way back to the hotel (to use the water closet). Lucky for me they were on their way to the shooting range, so I decided to tag along. We roll up to a really fancy hotel down the road thinking we went to the wrong place, but surprisingly enough there was a shooting range in the basement. We stocked up on 50 .022 mm (?) rounds each, shooting a baretta of some sort (i think), and Mark split his .365 Desert Eagle with us. We stand in front of our targets and load our clips into the guns.
*pop*
*pop*
*pop*
we shoot off a few rounds as Mark is briefed on how to shoot the Desert Eagle… and then
*KABOOM*
The whole rooms shakes as we all turn to Mark shooting what appears to be a hand cannon. That Desert Eagle makes our Barettas look like BB guns. Soon it was my turn to fire the thing. I nervously hold the gun in my hands, not really knowing what kind of recoil I should expect. I envisioned myself being knocked in the face by the blowback. With a gentle squeeze of the trigger I shot the round into the target. At least I think i hit the target. I was so shaken by the recoil and the target was obscured by the muzzle flash that I couldn’t really see where I hit. 5 Rounds later and I was done. For my first time shooting a real gun I think I did pretty well. I got mostly headshots and “A” rated chest shots, and came very close to a few bullseyes on the smaller targets. That was some great fun we had and I’m sure I’ll go again to fire my Beretta p92.
Later that night we met up with the rest of the crew and strolled down the beach to a resturant simply called “kosher” (at least to my knowledge). We were greated with terrible service and were even denied appetizers at the start of the meal. Finally we got some pitas and humous ordered and it was pretty fantastic.

The next day was day 1 of my open water course. We started off by suiting up and jumping in the water. 40 minutes and 12 meters later we emerge from the water. I had thought that I would at least have to learn something before diving, but apparently I diddn’t need to. We swam around some amazing looking coral sights. Saw many Lionfish, jellyfish, some weird looking camoflauge fish that looked like a rock, a pufferfish and a real neat looking spotted ray… and many more. After the dive I was tought some dive theory stuff such as hand siginals, how to breathe properly, dynamics of buoyency and water/air pressure stuffs.

After that was done with I met up with Aaron, Dave, Ilya and Mark. They snorkeled while I did my homework on the beach and then we went back to their hotel for some sauna beers. Finding the sauna itself was probably the most difficult part of the trip so far.
“its right next to the snackbar by the pool” says the lady at the front desk.
We scour the area a few times and couldn’t find a single sauna! Finally the security guard comes out, probably after watching us run around in bathing suits for the past 20 minutes, and he shows us the way. It wasn’t exactly next to the snack bar… It was more like it was around the fence and into the next hotel, down an unmarked staircase and through a shady looking basement to the corner of a room. Finally. We enjoy our sweating with a warm beer or two and then head back to the room only to find out that they locked us in the back yard of the next hotel with a chain and padlock. We manage to find our way out individually and meet back at the room.

We relax for a bit then it was off to Cosa De Brasil (i think thats what it was called). A real nice resturant where you order 14 different kinds of meat and can eat as much as you want. It was pretty delicious and VERY filling, I think I only made it to 7 different kinds of meats before I had to call it quits. It was also my first time eating chicken hearts <3 and bbq goose. Fearing that I would slip into a coma before finishing my diving homework I head right home after the meal and power through my homework.
The next day of diving is somewhat different. I learned how to better controll my buoyency and some emergency techniques like using my secondary respirator if my buddy runs out of air. The most difficult was breathing underwater without my mask on. I inhaled alot of water up my nose, but eventually got the hang of it. Tomorrow should be more of the same, just so I get comfortable with underwater emergencies.

There isn’t much to do around here now that all my friends are gone and I’ve seen everything I wanted to here. Maybe now I’ll get to spend some quality time reading Swamp Thing (finally) and sleeping on the beach for 14 hours at a time.

ima shelcha