Last time, my 7 days of intensive training did not allow for much sightseeing. I did not visit the best caves or the largest saloons, or the airbells or the most pristine cave formations. In fact, as standard procedure, instructors take you to "sacrifice" caves, places where most training is done. And where you can see significant damage wrecked upon the cave by newbies...

I spent a lot of time with my eyes closed or the mask flooded, doing drills: Lost diver. Lost Line. Lost Gas supply. You know, it never happens until it happens, and then it's your life on the line (or off the line, if you allow me the pun). So you got do it over and over again til it becomes second nature.

In spite of all the focus on training, I did have some moments of striking visual wonder, like when a peaky rock outcrop that speared the halocline from below, created a mesmerizing "trompe l'oeil", making you feel that you were seeing a mountain island being lapped by a choppy sea. The "choppy sea" was no more than the fresh water running a little current over deeper standing salt water. Seen from above, the feeling of soaring over this landscape was nothing like I ever felt on open ocean diving throughout the years.

But still, I wouldn't say that the "feeling" of adventure comes from these sensory experiences, but rather from the unknown. From "What comes to you".

If these feelings of adventure were not enough, the fact that the knowledge required to cave dive is highly structured, just increased my interest. I was hooked.

I am at home with strict and rigid requirements. Not that I am in the army or anything like that, but my professional life sometimes strays in that direction. Thus, the need for formal procedures in an overhead environment, from where there is no immediate escape, made all the sense to me. They are all simple things if you do them out of context. After all where is the difficulty of laying line from a spool with a stretched instead of a bent arm? Of avoiding crossing a line from below? of leaving "bread crumbles" when you have to take a directional decision?

The difficulty comes from operating in an environment of restricted sensorial input and altered mechanics. Underwater even a simple gesture can become a challenging task. Difficult to understand, when you're moving about on the surface, but all too clear if you're underwater, with limited vision, having to maintain body attitude at the risk of silting out your immediate vicinity, trying to perform one of those simple tasks.

Cutting short a long story, the procedures for cave diving are almost ritualesque. And for some reason, I took a lot of pleasure out of being able to perform in an environment where simple "no-second thought" tasks for "ambulated" humans, become an art form to be learned once you're submerged.

One last comment, if I may. Virtually everybody I bored with my story, made the same comment about my venture sounding too claustrophobic.

To be frank, I myself had some doubts. My sinus are (mal)formed in such a way that I get a blocked nose frequently while sleeping. I'm convinced that this is the reason why I get vicious nightmares about having to negotiate tight, constricting passages to go places... Can't describe it any other way, but, it's just like that and believe me, it's no dream. It's a full blown nightmare. And a month doesn't go by that I won't awake all sweaty stuck between a rock and a hard place.

By the way, I also suffer from vertigo. And I could get sea sick on the Queen Mary sailing on a flat lake. In my youth I would wait for the underground, off the platform, for fearing of falling onto the track.

In a nutshell, not the best profile to become a cave diver. So I was aprehensive when my instructor started to describe one dive plan that involved negotiating restrictions. Restrictions in cave diving parlance can be major or minor. The latter allow a diver carrying back mounted tanks to pass, while the former require a side or no mount configuration. In a no mount configuration you have to push the tanks in front to you. How's that for you claustrophobics out there? Anyway, either the restrictions were really really minor, or it made no bad impression in me at all. Quite the contrary. It all added to the mistery. One of the places I passed had a ceiling low enough to be bumping tanks. It was formed like a freatic sheet sculptured by a river, landscaped with beautiful columns that created a surreal atmosphere. It felt... well, adventurous, for lack of a better word.

So these are my excuses. I had to return soon. And when a week with a couple of holidays came up, I took the opportunity.

Hopefully I'll be able to document the next 5 days with some pictures to give friends a taste of what this is all about. I promise not to be so verbose. After all this a damn blog not a bloody novel, right?