As some of you who visit here regularly know, I have just recently gotten back into diving. And if you don’t follow regularly and are interested, you can read about it here. Anyway, I have wanted to go on a live-aboard for as long as I have been diving. My dream is actually to go to the Galapagos Islands and live on a boat for a week and dive and dive and dive. But this was a good start.

As excited as I was to be going on a live-aboard for a couple of days, I was also nervous. I was going by myself and didn’t know anyone and while I’ve been diving more recently, it had still been since October.

I spent a lot of the trip out on the speedboat (you take a speedboat out to the live-aboard that just stays in the islands for the duration of diving season) just people watching and trying to figure out how I was going to talk to people. I mean, I know how to talk, but I am not a huge fan of meeting new people. I like knowing new people, but meeting them sometimes scares the crap out of me. Welcome to my insecurities.

Well, somehow I managed, once we are on the boat. And once the first dive was done and we all had this shared experience to talk about, it was like we were old friends. I’ve decided that the best way to vacation by oneself is to do some kind of activity that will give you that shared experience, because it’s like instant friends…at least on that level.

There were moments that weren’t so great as I was dealing with my imperfect breathing and buoyancy. I don’t like feeling like I’m struggling. Anyway, I got over that (and got better with each dive). So, all in all, the trip was awesome and I had so much fun and I could happily live on a boat for days and days as long as diving was involved. Plus, I met a couple who lives about 10 minutes from me in Tokyo. He’s French and she’s Japanese (who is more comfortable speaking French than English) which is seriously so random, but totally cool. Now we just have to get our schedules to work so we can hang out here.