Today was a great day. I went scuba diving for the first time in my life. It cost me 50 Euro, but by most standards, that's cheap.

On the ride down to the coast, the guy next to me turned out to be highly experienced as a diving instructor in the UK Army. He was a veteran of 22 years who had seen action in the Falkland war all the way to the Gulf war. I told him that I was going to panic, and he told me that this would be easy, and I'd get all the instruction that I needed.

Luckily for us, our instructor was Norweigan, not Greek. This made it easier to communicate, and most importantly, he wasn't completely indifferent to us. The air tank, weight belt and all the other equipment weighs a ton. You can barely stand up at first. We walked into the sea from the beach.

When I first got underwater, I thought that I was going to die. It seemed impossible to breathe through the respirator, and I felt like I was choking on too much salt water. I panicked and went straight upto the surface. Willy, our instrutor, got pissed at me for not having the respirator in my mouth properly, but I got myself set, and we went on our way.

I thought that most of the danger would come from jellyfish, electric eels, and other pointy fish. With my mask so tight, I was pretty uncomfortable, and the taste of salt water in my mouth was brutal. It was really cold, and even with the wetsuit, I felt clammy and really wet.

All I could think about was, "I have to get the fuck outta here. I want to quit. I'm never doing this again".

I endured the 30-odd minute dive, as we moved from place to place. I think we weren't too deep, mabye 20-30 feet at most. There were millions of schools of fish, and lots of weeds, but nothing that looked dangerous. Frankly, I spent all my time concentrating on breathing and pinching my nose to help with compression.

When it ended, I felt really strange. I had a headache from dehydration and the pressure, and felt almost high. The UK Army diver told me that I could get certified in Canada, and be on my way. It felt strange for people to expect me to fall in love straight off the bat. But scuba is a great activity-- during the entire 8 hour ferry ride home, I kept thinking about was how amazing the experience was.

Have just returned from a 2 week holiday in wonderful santorini and felt we would recommend the Santorini dive centre for the freindly/chilled dive op that they run. V helpful in all aspects of the diving, equipment is inc in the dive price[we took most of our own} they use a hard boat rather than inflateables which the other dive centres seem to use so easy in and out of the water. Dive instructors and guides are all excellent and we hope to return again next year.

Santorini Dive Centre is the friendliest dive centre in Europe in my opinion. I have dived all over the world (Maldives, Australia, Thailand etc. ) yet I have never been made to feel so at home. The staff are superb (the owner even sorted me out a new certification card with Padi and posted it on to me when I lost my own). Equipment is great and the atmosphere is relaxed. A 5 dive package costs euro 200-which is pretty good value. The diving is the best I have done in the Med-especially a site called Adiavatis Reef (superb vis and great fish). All in all I recommend it highly.

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