I recently taught an Advanced Nitrox Course with Alvaro and had Tanja assisting, who later passed her IANTD Advanced Nitrox Instructor Crossover.
As both of them are cave divers we could split the training nicely up between diving in the ocean out of Akumal and diving in a deep sinkhole south of Tulum.
I really enjoy teaching, its by far one of my favorite things to do, ESPECIALLY if I have two so incredible motivated people in a course. Both of them already entering the course with top basic skills and a great foundation to built upon.
Alvaro was working during the course which only gave us the afternoons to dive and do theory but it all worked out great at the end. We are so incredible lucky here in the Yucatan and are blessed with tons of different diving opportunities without a closing time. As well as a team of instructors that will do their best to built a course around the schedule of the student. Having the mornings off also gave Tanja and myself some time to review standards and daily schedules as well as doing some necessary reading to optimally prepare her for the Instructor Crossover.
During our dives in the ocean we were incredibly lucky to see to enormous turtles which seemed to like us, in fact it felt as if they liked us a bit too much as one almost crushed into me and the other one bit Alvaro in the hip while he was deploying his SMB =)
The definite highlight though were of course the dives in Kaan Luum. I don’t know anybody that dove there without a deep feeling of awe!
Alvaro definitely enjoyed it and was especially fascinated by the ability to calculate his decompression (following 100% the VPM code of V-Planner) in his head in less then a minute.
After the course I spent another four days with Tanja alone where we went through fitness tests, theory presentations, various exams, skill demonstration, dive supervision, emergency scenarios, rescue drills, briefings, de-briefings amongst other things.
At the end an exhausting ten days but worth every minute with a great end result! I am happy and proud of both of their accomplishments!
On another note, our shop down in Tulum is looking better by the minute, go and check out the latest photos at www.protectulum.com
cheers
P