After such a crap night’s sleep neither of us are looking forward to a full on day today 🙁 It’s amazing what you don´t notice till it affects you. What were we thinking, no windows, no insect screens. In fact the bathroom is also the same – across the corridor is the sink, out in plain view, then there´s two rooms, one a toilet and the other a cold water shower. Both with lovely carved fret work above the doors producing huge big gaps open to the elements. Hhmm…

We have a chat with the girl (Ina) on the desk, she´s German, to see if they can block up the holes/gaps. “Not possible! Maybe a fan, but maybe we should move somewhere else that’s got aircon!!” is her reply. It´s pretty cheap right enough $10 each a night, and we´re in a new room, part of their expansion, so we´re really wanting a solution that allows us to stay put….
Maybe we´ll just dwell on it for today, see if she comes up with a fan, that´ll at least help with the heat.

No time to lose, brekkie and off for our 2nd dive day. Today we´re doing some dive skills in the water off the dockside by the dive school, our 1st confined water dive. Bernice is pretty nervous, we did a try-dive in Croatia once so she knows she can do it, but she is still worried about the breathing underwater, and terrified at the thought of removing her regulator/mask under the water as part of the training today. We have the following skills to do today:
• Put kit together and checks necessary whilst doing so.
• BWRAF – buddy kit check before entering water. B = BCD the inflator control for your jacket. W = weights, check they´re on and on correctly. R = releases, check all quick releases on buddy including their tank are secure but free. A = air, check your buddies air supply and air sources. F = final ok
• How to equalise (clearing your ears like you would on a plane to stop pressure build up) as you descend
• Staying calm and breathing normally threw regulator
• Removing your regulator/air source to learn how to find and regain it again
• Fill mask with water and then purge it by blowing out of your nose to clear it again
• Removing mask completely and then re-fitting it and clearing it
• Hand signals for communication while under water
All went well. We didn´t drown although Bernice took a while to get the hang blowing out of her nose to clear the mask … but big credits to her for sticking with it until she got the hang of things 🙂

Back at SBTS we have a lunch of left overs then its straight into our second Spanish lesson. This time it is upstairs out back by our room which should mean peace and quiet and no interruptions … except that the guy in the plot next door is hammering and banging away putting a new wriggly tin roof on his house!!

At the end of the lesson, Ina comes up trumps with a massive industrial sized fan – we are a bit worried as to whether the electrics are up to it as they have been a bit flakey!! We also spend some time rigging our individual mossie nets into a single double one over the bed to keep the monsters at bay.

Happy that we are set up for a better nights sleep we Skype with Huw´s Mum & Dad as we´d missed them the previous evening. We´d had an email through from Nate and Donna saying they would be over this evening and suggesting we go to a Mexican restaurant “Gringo´s” for dinner. Trouble is they do not have a mobile and so when they don´t show we are at a loss what to do. After an hour of hanging about looking for them, including a trip to the restaurant to make sure they are not there, we get a message saying they got held up in Bastimentos and so won´t be over – we delay Mexican until tomorrow.

So we downgrade our dinner plans and make a tinned tuna and veg pasta dish after a trip to the local supermarket. Two skirmishes are required before we can eat: the first is to get the electrics/gas working so that we can use to stove and then there is the constant battle with all the fruit flies that seem to live in the kitchen (which is also open plan i.e. no walls). The wee monsters mean that we are not keen on spending much time cooking! Over dinner we have a chat with some new arrivals Liz from Chile but living in Rio) and Rafael (and another dude whose name we miss!!) from Rio Brazil. They are good fun and tell us we have to go to Brazil … so we add it to the wish list 😉 Also, we have a chat with Ida the Aussie who is working out of China getting clothes made wholesale in Chinese factories for the family business.

After what feels like another long day we are too tired for blogging etc and go off to bed.