Huff This!
It has finally happened: we are leaving Taganga! It was decided over beers last night that we will be departing this coastal town for the mountians tomorrow morning. It should be pointed out that we have made this decision pretty much every week for the past 4 weeks, so it should be taken with a grain of salt. But if we do leave then we will be travelling to Bucaramanga, and from there to some small mountian towns, and finally finish things up in Bogota.
The past two weeks here in Taganga have been ridiculously hot and filled with mosquitoes and loud music. We have finally reached our limits of such treatment and have called for an end to it. The days have been too hot to go to the beach, too hot to do anything but lie in a hammock and feel sorry for our unemployed and transient selves. The only reprieve we have found is to go diving and this we have done well. We have just recieved our Nitrox Certification, which means that we can now dive with oxygen blended air.
Normally Scuba divers breathe normal air compressed into cylinders, but a few years ago they started adding extra oxygen to change how long you can stay at certain depths. What limits how long one can stay at a depth can be one of two things: lack of air and too much nitrogen. Obviously only so much air can fit into a cylinder, but the other part, nitrogen, is a little more complicated. When at depth your body absorbs and uses oxygen, it also absorbs nitrogen, but can’t use it. If you break the surface with too much nitrogen in your system you run the risk of getting “the bends” or Decompression Sickness. The farther down you go the more nitrogen you have in your sytem. There are methods used be professionals (like welders and such) to dive really deep for long periods of time, but for recreational divers the only real answer is Nitrox. Obviously if you have more oxygen (up to 40% as opposed to the normal 21%) you have less nitrogen and you can stay at deeper depths for longer periods of time. We now have the ability to use those blends when we dive, oh boy.
We are finding out just how difficult it is to travel with animals as everybody wants us to use their services, but nobody wants our cats. The bus tells us that we will have to put the kittens in the unbelievably hot cargo hold that has no air, but we have “un amarrillo” that says differently.