Today in our dive center, Haliotis Porto, DDI dive center nº 20-037, we had a Try Scuba Diving, not an ordinary PADI Discovery Scuba Diving, which we made hundreds times before, but a DDI Try Scuba Diving. We were going to do it for the first time in an autonomous way, all by ourselves, DDI Scuba Divers Instructors. Our dive center is a recently created branch in Oporto, from our motherhouse, the PADI 5 star dive center, Haliotis. 

http://www.haliotis.pt/

By the morning we felt that this day it will not be an ordinary day. In the afternoon we were going to have eleven disabled divers performing a DDI Try Scuba Diving. The candidates had different handicaps: we had people with cerebral palsy and people with different cognitive impairments. 

Our minds were a little bit anxious and when we reach at the swimming pool and we face the candidates and theirs auxiliary persons and we felt that we were going to have a beautiful day and it started to sound in our ears the famous U2 music, beautiful day. We began with the briefings and immediately we felt the huge will of some participants to get in the water. We knew this day for them was going to be a beautiful day also. And during the try scuba diving we started to hear words from the divers such as “ this is fantastic “, “ what an amazing feeling “, “ this is marvellous “, “ this is one of happiest day of my life “, “I want to repeat please “, “ I really did it “ and our eyes become full of tears and we started to feel this day it was indeed, as scuba instructors, one of ours happiest days of ours lives. We felt in the pool through diving we were all equals and there in the water we made some kind of magic and we made all the people impairments disappear. And when the try scuba diving was over we had ours hearts full of happiness and yes this was indeed a eautiful day for all. 

Some words of acknowledgement, first of all to the participants of this DDI Try Scuba Diving, they were all superb eople and thanks to rely on us and to the all the persons from the ANS (Associação de Apoio ao Deficiente Nuno Silveira). pecial thanks for my friend and Tek Diver Manuel Silveira and his family remarkable work, supporting disabled people in Portugal. Many thanks for all the people from the family Haliotis Portugal. Special thanks for DDI Portugal, in the name of our dearest friend Paulo Guerreiro. And a very special thanks to our friend divemaster Cátia Monteiro and to Cláudia Almeida, Fátima Vasconcelos and thanks God for made us divers…

Regards

Carlos Soares, Mariana Vasconcelos e Mário Vasconcelos