This year, I wanted to try Freediving.

While in Thailand in January, I did my first course with my friend Petra in Koh Tao with Apnea Total. I couldn’t complete a second course out there as I had some middle ear problems. In June I went to Malta to finish it up the second course with the affiliated centre Apnea Total Malta.

(photo: Petra Söör)

I suppose wild places don’t always have horizons.

I’m not quite sure about it – down there. There’s a lot happening in the techniques of breathing/ holding, equalising and descending. Too much for me to hold easily at the moment. But I am wondering – I’m curious about that deep blue place, both expansive and so intimately and oppressively close. I get left alone with myself under the water.

I’m fascinated too about what happens to the human body in diving – the mammalian dive reflex, and the aquatic ape theory. There’s a paradox of familiarity and otherness down there… and maybe I’ll never understand it…

I would like to spend more time down there though…

(photos: Apnea Total Malta instructor Arturo Hernández)