An invitation to go scuba diving off the Cayman Islands was too tempting to resist. Scuba-diving, I thought. Sure didn't I grow up by the sea? Didn't I have salt water coursing through my veins? It would all come naturally to me. Hah. Then I got the diving manual and a terror of the deep took root.
The three Cayman islands are tucked in behind Cuba in the Caribbean Sea. We step off the plane, on the Grand Cayman, after almost 11 hours, into the warm air. As we drive towards the Hyatt Hotel on Seven Mile Beach just outside the capital, I hardly notice the white sand or the turquoise water lapping the shore. Terms like decompression sickness, contaminated air, lung-over-expansion injuries, paralysis and unconsciousness, recompression chambers and residual nitrogen rise up to terrorise me.
As guests of the Cayman Islands Department of Tourism, we are directed to our luxurious rooms. Tomorrow we are to dive. Later that evening, as the sun went down, we swim in the pool at the hotel, which features in the Tom Cruise film, The Firm.
For centuries they have hidden gold bullion and treasure in the Cayman Islands, home of Ansbacher accounts and modernday pirates. There are plenty of oiley-looking characters wearing gold chains lounging around the pool on our first evening. Ever since Columbus discovered the three islands in 1503, a variety of settlers from shipwrecked sailors to deserters from Cromwell's army, have settled here.
At last the dreaded moment arrives. It is time to go diving. The gang assembles and we drive further along the sea-road to Red Sail Sports, which employs 32 diving instructors. There are about 180 diving instructors on the island, since diving is a big tourist activity here, not to mention snorkelling, windsurfing, parasailing, jetskiing, dinghy sailing and deep sea sailing. Renee Knight is to be our diving instructor. After being kitted out, we drive to Sunset House for the dive.
Four weeks of training back at home are about to be tested in open water under a clear blue sky. I have been put through my diving paces at Flagship Scuba Diving in Dublin by Brett Jones, a New Zealander, who told me reassuringly that he'd had a regulator in his mouth (for breathing underwater) from the age of eight.
We don the gear, feel the fear and line up along the rock to do a "giant stride entry". Once in the water, we pair up with our "buddies".
Renee is going to be my diving buddy. We each do the drill, give the diving signal for OK and begin our descent. I clutch my miraculous medal. Phew! As the sound of breathing under water continues, you wonder if Darth Vader of Star Wars, is close by. Renee takes my hand as we glide deeper into the water, venting air from our BCDs (buoyancy control-device jackets) and equalising all the way. She squeezes my hand as a brilliantly-coloured blue chromis fish swims by. Sunlight filters down as we go to 12 metres/40 feet. A tiny yellowtail snapper comes up to have a look at us.
Renee gives my hand another squeeze and it is then that I see a great silver creature circling about us. It has its wall eye trained on us all the time. It swims slowly and we watch in amazement. A shark. But we'd been warned about what to do. They are like wild dogs, we'd been told. Keep them in view. Do not swim towards them, watch them and see what they do and then exit the water slowly without attracting their attention, the manual advises. "Chances are, it's just passing through," it says.
I noticed Renee holding a little knife in her hand. What courage, she's preparing to protect us, I thought to myself. I held her hand tightly. My heart was in my mouth (it fought for space with my regulator).
Later I found out that this large fish was a tarpon and not a shark. But at 40 feet down, such a detail seems almost irrelevant. Slowly it circled and then swam out of our field of vision into the murky distance. Phew again!
At this point Minty, another diving colleague, takes my other hand. Renee, Minty and myself glide slowly towards the bottom, like ballet dancers in a pas de trois. Seamless and silent. We continue our slow discovery of the ocean floor. We see some queen triggerfish, stoplight parrot fish and sergeant majors. Brilliant yellows, navys, blues, greens and reds - tiny fish pass by in twos, threes and twelves. The coral is lilac in colour and delicate like lace. After what feels like five minutes, Renee signals that we would begin our ascent. We'd been down for 40 minutes.
After two dives, we complete our diver's log books. And how lovely it is to savour a bottle of Stingray beer afterwards. We are all buddies and euphoric.
The next day is not so relaxing. One diver in our group panics while underwater, surfaced coughing spluttering and green in the face and is sent to the doctor by the diving instructor to be checked out, but is later given the all-clear.
But it is the storm that takes my breath away. There is electricity in the air as we sway to a reggae beat late one night on the beach by the side of an open bar with a tropical storm raging overhead - before the rain starts. Sheet and fork lightning crease through the sky. The palm trees whoosh over and back as the handsome locals weave their way in and out among the visitors and the band beats out a rhythm on its steel drums. "Blow winds and crack your cheeks." "No shirt, no shoes, no problem," reads a sign over the bar. The sky lights up the sea and one hour later the heavens open and we are all soaked.
It is still blowy the next day when we meet Ashton Ebanks who is going to take us to "stingray city" out in the far waters of North Sound. He measures us for flippers and BCDs. We travel in his boat under a glowering sky. The boat shudders to a stop and we prepare to go snorkelling. Solomom is in first, he bobs around like a seal in the water. "Yes, Sully wants to learn to scuba dive," his father explains.
A baby shark comes over for some food from Ashton. The tourists, flippers going like the clappers, try to press in around to get a better look. Everyone has a water-proof camera in tow. It's like feeding time at the zoo. Some are introduced to a green moray eel. Then it's time to visit the stingray commune over in a shallower part of the bay. Here they swarm around (the stingrays, that is), rubbing up against us, hoovering along our thighs, looking for food. "It feels like a wet mushroom," says one snorkeller. The fish are so tame that they eat from your hand. Ashton takes one and lifts it slightly out of the water. "You want to have a go?" he asks. This intrepid snorkelling tourist declines.
Before our trip comes to an end, we pick up a few more interesting facts about the islands' history at Pedro St James. This is the oldest known stone structure on the islands. At this centre in a multimedia presentation, visitors are taken on an entertaining trip through the last 200 years. "Some of them came free and some of them came slaves," a narrator tells us about the settlers on the islands. In an attempt to establish independence, a legislative assembly was set up in this house and "hence the birthplace of democracy in the Cayman Islands". Today it is a British Crown Colony.
What with diving, snorkelling, swimming . . . we didn't get a chance to check out those much-vaunted offshore-banking facilities. Maybe next time.