Today was my second, and last day of diving. Luckily this time our dive started at 2:30 and was only about 20 minutes away from the hostel by bike. After the dive from the day before I was extremely exhausted and got to sleep in, which was very nice.
I had a late breakfast/brunch and started my trip to Mission Bay, where Sea World is located. The Navy is huge here in San Diego and they have large training facilities all over the city. One of the highlights in the so called ‘Wreck Alley’ is the HMCS Yukon, a Canadian destroyer, a 110 x 12 meter ship from WW2, sunk for recreational and Navy diving. It is known worldwide and people travel from far away to be able to see it.
After a short briefing on land we boarded the ship, the 12 people in my class along with some local divers and a group from Sweden. I definitely prefer diving from a boat to going in from the shore. Scuba equipment is extremely heavy, as you are carrying a steel tank on your back and additional weights to keep you from floating to the surface. Just getting out into the water is so exhausting, you don’t really have that much energy left for the actual dive. When diving from a boat, you just gear up a few minutes before simply hopping off the boat and into the depths of the ocean.
It took us approximately 20 minutes to get to the location of the wreck and we had 2 dives scheduled for that day. One of them was the Deep Dive, where we went down pretty close to the wreck and spent some time at the bottom, which was at 32 metres depth. Our instructor, Jay, had a padlock and a combination for us to solve underwater. The deeper you get underwater, the harder it is to focus. Some of the people who managed to open the padlock within seconds on the surface before were now struggling with it. I was surprised when the lock popped open on my second try!
Our second dive, about one hour and a few bowls of hot soup later, was the actual Wreck Dive. Swimming along this huge boat, which was sunken in 2000 and therefore covered in corals and mushroom-like looking underwater plants was incredible. The true colours of the coral algae were only visible with the help of our underwater flashlights, turning them from shades of grey into the most amazing pink and blue tones.
We headed back in after this dive and Jay was complimenting on my great progress throughout the dives. Before we all went home we got together to fill in our logbooks and we all got our Advanced Open Water Certificates! It was a great overall experience diving in a completely new environment with unfamiliar people. I know that this is going to be a hobby that I will want to continue for a long time and it can take you to some of the coolest places in the world.
I biked home, exhausted from another day of nonstop action, grabbed some tacos at Roberto’s Taqueria and sunk into my comfortable bed in San Diego for my last night there.
calitripping 
Congratulations on passing the course!! Very impressive. 32m-mam, that’s deep diving!!