Diving in Hikkaduwa, Sri Lanka

[J.] We were planning to do some dives while being in Hikkaduwa, Sri Lanka before starting to explore the culture and national parks inland. We chose to do the dives with the Poseidon dive station, mainly because of all the good online reviews and their convenient location directly at the beach. The crew and divemasters were very nice and helpful and put a lot of emphasis on standard diving procedures, for example checking on us in detail while we were busy asembling the dive equipment.
The first two dives were wrack dives and fairly relaxed. The underwater life is not as rich and diverse as for example in Thailand, but there is still plenty to see.
The two dives the next day were fairly similar, but I could not believe how unlucky we were after having finished the second dive. It was a fairly shallow dive, not deeper than 14 meters. I was back at the boat for maybe 20 seconds, just got my equipment off and was watching two other divers getting out of the water when someone on the boat shouted "Whale shark, whale shark"! My head was spinning around, trying to get an idea about the direction where to watch and at the same time looking for my fins and mask. The whale shark was directly next to the boat (apparently) and all I managed to see was a blurry, undefined shadow in the water, not more. They could have told me anything, I would have not been able to identify what water creature it has been. Aaaaaargh! The whale shark disappeared quickly, no chances for me of getting back into the water (mask still out of reach). My husband actually jumped back into the water but could not see it as well. .. Our divemaster was the only one from our group seeing the whale shark and he told me later that on average they see them once a month and then generally in deeper water. Nooooooo!
I mean, we were diving in Mosambique to see the whale sharks without any luck (but were rewarded with manta rays and a big turtle) only to miss one here in Sri Lanka by maybe a minute. I could not believe it... One day later, another diver was telling me that she has also seen the whale shark and my first impulsive thought was "Bleah, I dont like you", but she was actually very nice ;)

We started the rescue diver certification the next day which meant back to the class room for a full day and then two consequent practical diving days thereafter.
The first practical lessons were in very shallow water where everyone could still stand. The most difficult situations are around panicking divers and during one of my exercises the simulating panicked divemaster pushed out my regulator when I came too close. They told us later that during another rescue diver course, one divemaster was pushing out the regulator of a student, taking off his mask as well and climbed onto him holding him under water for quite some time. This student was feeling sick for 2 days afterwards! Shjoe... thats learning the really hard way!
The second day of practical lessons included a surface rescue of a tired/panicked diver as well as a search for a lost diver, finding him unconscious under water, surfacing him and providing rescue breaths every 5 seconds while taking off his and your own equipment and swimming to the boat at the same time. We were fairly unlucky with the weather conditions, quite high waves (approx. 1.5 to 2 meters?) and poor underwater visibility (< 5 meters).
I was swallowing so much water during the first lesson, I almost felt like asking for help myself ;)
The second exercise does not sound that difficult, but providing the rescue breaths while counting loudly to 5 in between, making sure no water is getting onto the victims face and doing all the other things is actually more difficult than I expected. I got the counting mixed up (1, 3, 4,...) or could not find the strap releases I normal know exactly where they are. It was a mission, haha!
Three of us students (out of four) were fighting sea sickness or the first signs of it, so I guess in the end the course instructor was feeling a bit for us, and overlooking some small errors we made during these exercises ;)
We were also watched by a turtle who stuck her head out of the water for quite some time. For me, that made up for the bad luck with the whale shark to a large extent.

We all passed the course and with that, husband and I can successfully tick off one more point that was on our list for 2015 (getting the rescue diver certificate). We made it just in time...