(慶良間諸島) Kerama Islands

I do not know how to swim, but I wanted to scuba dive. Apparently swimming is not a prerequisite of diving, so off to scuba dive I went.  

Budget: JPY12,000 (~USD)

• JPY12,000. Snorkeling and Introductory Scuba Diving, inclusive of hotel pick up, equipment rental, food/drinks, and guide. Oh, and pictures (digital). 

Visit Date

• March 3, 2017

When to Go
Anytime during the year! Okinawa maintains a nice, almost tropical climate. 

Special Notes

• I used a package from Japanican, which is Seasir. The package is all inclusive, and was very professional. I paid JPY12,000 all in. Super smooth, all I had to bring was swimwear to wear before I put in the wetsuit. 
• It's ok if you cannot swim. There's someone literally holding your hand the entire time. 
• For the full day trip, we stopped at three sections. Two of which are snorkeling tops, one is scuba diving stop. Scuba diving lasts about ten minutes. 
• All this in English. 
• You cannot fly the day before and the day after. If mountains have altitude sickness, apparently there's decompression sickness. 

Itinerary

• February 23. Seasir emailed me asking for. my name, gender, height, weight and foot size (cm)
• March 2. Seasir emailed me about the pick up at my hostel. 
• March 3. 
• 07:35am. Pick up from hostel. They were about 10 minutes late, don't worry about it. They have to pick up other people too. 
• We got into the dive shop, picked up our wetsuits and flippers. We then boarded the boat, I had an intro on what I'm actually doing and instructions on what I'm supposed to do (e.g. how to breathe). We got into the first of the dive spots, some people went diving, I went snorkeling. We got into the second of the dive spots, I went diving, some snorkeling. By the time we got into the third spot, I was too tired and called it a day. 
• 04:34pm. Back at the port!

Off we go!

The upper deck. 

We can freely explore on board. Not much to explore, yes, but still...

aaaand we're there. 

Pretty busy. 

The oxygen tanks, and waiting spot. 

One of the diving spots. 

When diving, we had a rope to hold on to to slowly go down. There's also a lot of stops so that I can practice breathing underwater (NOT EASY), acclimate with the depth, and stop panicking. 

Once we're deep enough, my guide held my hand and off we went. 

Oh, she also handles taking my pictures, the links of which will be sent after the trip. 

Snorkelers also get to go to that cave. 

aaaand we're done!