Location: Tenerife, Canary Islands
And here I am once again tasked with the duty of narrating our life on Argo. My morning duties started early with some exciting talks in the kitchen with my friends Matthew and Teo, and continued with some very polite rounds of wakeups to prepare for the full day ahead. After consuming a delicious breakfast and getting briefed on the activities for the day we hurried to finish prepapring our dive gear and headed to the bus stop, the journey was treacherous and your courageous skipper eperienced the fatigue of carrying all of his dive gear for more than five steps without a single break, something that could be compared to a modern representation of Hercules holding the entire world on his shoulders.
After our crew overcame the challenges of the Spanish public transportation system, they were met with the ultimate reward! A full day of diving in beautiful underwater settings The first dive of your humble narrator was the deep dive for our advanced certification that consisted in diving straight from the shore into the seawall and following its side to enjoy the different kinds of underwater life, amongst some of my favorite sightings there were a huge slippper lobster that was hiding amongst the rocks, a cuttlefish (which escaped Megs sight causing her enormous displasure), a school of Barracuda and many more. During the dive, I had the opportunity to shadow Megs movements and try to improve my buoyancy control, obtaining good results, although still very much lacking when compared to the original. The dive concluded with a backwards swim against the current and towards the coast, an arduous task that proved challenging even for your humble narrator while also being an absolute blast.
After that, our advanced crew returned to dry land and prepared for the next shallow dive. In this dive, I paired up with my buddy Bryson (love you, Bryson), and we absolutely locked in, staying always at the head of the group and being constantly aware of our surroundings and even managing to spot camouflaging organisms like octopi and scorpionfish.
Our day trip then concluded with packing our dive gear and walking back to Argo. On the boat, we did some chores and had classes, and we sat all together for dinner and prepared for my squeeze question, What was your favorite moment with your previous watch team?. The question came up to me after we received the announcements of our new watch teams, and most of us got reassigned to a different one. Everyone seemed really engaged in the conversation, and I appreciated how not many people ended up talking about the same event, which goes to show just how much fun we had on our teams. That is also what inspired me for the title of this blog, a personal farewell to the good times we had on watc,h while also looking forward to the future and to the many adventures that we will continue to have together.
Lots of love from the whole crew of Argo to all the relatives and friends who will read our blog
Gianluca