Jon & Mike - AIDA 1 Star Review

Awesome Intro to Freediving

My name is Jon, and I am writing-in (blogging?) because Josie ran such a great course for freediving that I wanted to share my experience.  If you think even for a minute that you may want to freedive, you have to check out one of her courses.

This was my second time to TCI, and this year, I wanted to get into scuba diving.  So I did all the PADI prep work before the trip, and while I did, I started reading about freediving and became more and more interested.

I’m kind of a traditionalist in a lot of things that I do, so there was an immediate appeal to the idea of diving comfortably, on a single breath, and without being strapped to a ton of equipment.  I Googled “Freediving Turks and Caicos” and found that Josie has the url (freediveturksandcaicos.com)! Providenciales is not the biggest island, so what luck that I could try my hand at freediving too.

Got in touch with Josie and she was super-helpful in getting me set up for a course, and very accommodating for a family-on-vacation schedule.  I did the Aida 1 course with my friend Mike, as our families were staying together. 

Josie is both a truly professional instructor and awesome personality which made the whole experience a lot of fun.  Josie met us at our place in Sapodilla Bay which was really convenient.  We learned how to breathe properly to prepare for an apnea, and following that did a static apnea (breath hold in water without moving).  I surpassed my expectations of how long I could hold my breath and this was definitely was a confidence boost for the open water session to come. Josie also taught us the correct way to practice this with a buddy and necessary safety techniques.  

We did the open water part of the course at Coral Gardens which had a cool reef on the way out. This part of the course allowed us to practice descending an apnea line (rope that goes straight down from the surface), first without finning and then with.  Josie did a great job demonstrating the not-so-intuitive techniques, never hesitating to show us one more time - I needed more than a few demonstrations of the old “duck dive”.  She always made sure that we were executing proper safe recovery, which I am grateful will be part of my diving habits.

We had a lot of fun getting started in this very cool sport.  If this interests you at all, you really need to check it out and sign up for a course.

Josie - Thanks again, and can’t wait to take it to the next level when we come back!



We also have a Flukes & Flippers website as well as a dedicated Freediving website.  There's also a Facebook page set up, and we're currently thinking of what silliness can be got up to with the power of the Instagram and that little bird.