Today´s Bastille Day, the French national holiday. Well, let me tell you: it´s not really big in Mexico. Might have something to do with the fact that Cinco de Mayo is a Mexican national holiday celebrating the victory of Mexico over the French :-)

Anyway, to celebrate I went to the closest thing I could find to a French restaurant, an Italian one, Ambar. It turned out to be fantastic. I got a table in the back garden, lighted with kerozene lamps and candles, with soft Italian electronica playing in the background. The lobster lasagna and the tiramisu were both great. I´m glad I´ve discovered this restaurant, because I can´t say I´m developing a fondness for Mexican cuisine.

I got the first stage of my regulator fixed. Thankfully, dive repair shops are not what´s missing on the island. I went back in the water today as an assistant in training with two students doing their final dives for certifications. It´s a father and son team, Larry and Brian, from the Bay Area. A small world. I was able to get them some help and did some nice, demonstration quality, skills: mask clearing and second stage retrieval, serving as the example to emulate. We´ll dive again tomorrow to complete their training.

I got a sense of the Divemaster Mystique today. There´s this aura of omniscience that surrounds the Divemaster, conferred solely by the title. Divers instinctively rever "their" Divemaster (even when he´s in training). The training material explains that this will happen and suggegsts this is an opportunity for the Divemaster to be an intermediary with the instructor, who supposedly can be felt as more distant by the students. There could be some of that, but I think there´s more going on: when given the opportunity to ask advice to the instructor or the Divemaster, the students turned to the Divemaster. As Gabriel told me jokingly later, we should introduce ourselves as the Instructor and the Assistant, to avoid confusion :-) That makes it even more important for the Divemaster to be a good role model, since divers will instinctively copy the good or bad habits of "their" Divemaster. The pressure is on :-)