“If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home.” James Michener

Remember, when you step off the plane in another country, you are a guest. As a guest, you want to be on your best behavior. You want to represent your country and your group well. So make a concerted effort to adapt to the ways of the country you are in. Don’t fret over the differences; appreciate them.

• Familiarize yourself with local customs, culture and taboos.
• Find out what the appropriate kind of attire is when outside the resort. For example, bare legs and bare arms are offensive in some cultures and in some countries against the law. Wearing a hat while visiting a Fijian village is taken as disrespect for the chief.
• Learn a few words and phrases. Hello, thank you, please, yes, no, good-bye, good day. Thank you and hello in the native tongue will reward you with a return smile.
• Do not take pictures of the locals without asking permission. Even if you don’t speak the language, you can ask with hand gestures easily enough.
• Don’t wear T-shirts with religious or political logos or slogans. Do we have to explain why?
• Support the local economy by buying native crafts as souvenirs.
• Be patient, speak softly, be courteous.

We see it on every trip: divers getting angry with other divers because of a picture! The dissent usually results from someone “hogging” a subject or ruining a shot. We’ve seen pushing and shoving underwater, rude hand gestures, temper tantrums and cursing in regulators.

There are several people who travel with us on just about every trip. We all have cameras. We all want to get pictures. We understand that this is not a competition. We are diving to have fun. We try not get in the way of someone taking a picture, and we share. We will summon others over to see what we found and take pictures, too. We get along.

• If you see a photographer pointing his camera at something, chances are, he or she is setting up a shot. If you see a flash, it means the strobe has fired and the picture has been taken. Chances are, the photographer is going to take another. And another. (It’s digital.) And another. Stay away.
• When moving off, do be extra careful not to stir up the bottom. Don’t fin forward toward the subject; ascend a few feet slowly and move away from it. We carry a poker, a 12” stick (Cara’s is stainless with a wrist lanyard, Joe’s is a wooden chopstick) that allows us to push off without moving our fins or touching the reef with our hands.
• The sound of your regulator exhaust can blow another’s shot. Don’t swim below the subject.  Your bubbles will rise and get in the picture.
• Don’t line up behind, “waiting your turn.” That can be quite annoying. Go find some other subjects to photograph till you see the other diver swim away; then it’s your turn.
• Do unto other divers as you would have them do unto you.

I’d like to share a story with you. We were in Mabul, Borneo, and had booked the super special dusk dive, timed so that we could view the mandarin fish courting. We were positioned around the coral head, waiting. And then suddenly the light had faded just right and the fish were jumping up out of the coral. Timing of the shutter release was critical. Just as I had them in my finder, an oblivious dive buddy swam directly over me. And as she swam past, I couldn’t help but notice that she’d somehow hooked my regulator hose onto her fin and was dragging my air supply away with her! Well, needless to say, I didn’t get the shot. But I still have the friend.

NEW at Joe Liburdi’s Dive & Photo, a trio of Armor lightweight gear bags, ideal for travel.

The new Cressi-sub TravelLight BCD has been specifically designed for divers who travel by plane and are looking to beat the overweight fees.

More than nine out of ten travelers get jet lag. We usually think of it as fatigue but the symptoms associated with it are numerous: insomnia, dehydration, anxiety, irritability, nausea, poor coordination, inability to concentrate.

Before commercial jet travel, there was no jet lag. People didn’t go anywhere fast enough. The first reference to the symptoms associated with rapid movement across time zones was 1953 when John Foster Dulles flew to Egypt for a meeting on the Aswan Dam. It was reported that he wasn’t working on all cylinders.

The symptoms are not really caused by changing time zones. They are caused by a disruption in the body’s sleeping/waking cycles, the circadian rhythms, what we commonly call body clock. In every 24-hour period, light and dark cues from your eyes stimulate the secretion of hormones that help regulate your body’s functions. So when you fly across many time zones and your sleep/awake and light/dark periods are changed, your body clock goes haywire. Hence, jet lag.

Tips:

• Get lots of rest before the trip
• Consult your doctor about a sleeping aid, such as Ambien. (There is some evidence that east to west is less disruptive than west to east because it is easier to delay sleep several hours than to force yourself to sleep hours ahead of schedule. Thus, the need for a sleeping aid.)
• Drink lots of water during the trip
• Do not drink alcohol or caffeine
• Try to schedule a stopover en route. When we fly Singapore Air and have connecting flights in Singapore, we pre-book rooms at the transit hotel. For $35 we get a five-hour nap stretched out on crisp, clean sheets and a long hot shower
• When you arrive at your destination, reset your watch to local time. Reset your routines to reset your body clock
• Don’t dive the day you arrive. There is a correlation between jet lag and decompression sickness. Go to www.diversalertnetwork.org. Look for Diving Medicine, Frequently Asked Questions, Diving After Flying
• On the return journey, spend a day or two at a hotel in a city and see some sights.
• There are homeopathic remedies that claim to counteract the effects of jet lag. You can research these online.

Online resources:

• TravDoc, the Travel Medicine Consultaion Service, at www.travdoc.com
• www.acefitness.org — search box: jet lag exercises
• www.cdc.gov — search box: jet lag

• US State Department - Travel warnings, passports, visas, tips for traveling abroad, etc.
• CDC Travelers' Health - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Information on vaccines, medications, and other measures necessary to prevent illness
• Travel Health Online - "Country profiles from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe"
• CNN Weather
• ConvertIt.com - To convert a wide range of measurements, time and currency
• Intellicast - World Local Weather
• Maps.com - "The world's largest map store"
• Fodors.com - "Create your own mini guides"
• Official Travel Information - "Links to official tourism organizations worldwide"
• Tourism Offices Worldwide - "Your guide to official tourism information"
• Citysearch.com - "Where to go and what to do"
• Oanda.com - "For cheat sheets to simplify currency conversion worldwide"
• The World Clock - "For current local times around the world"
• Rand McNally - To order maps or to get customized detailed directions for driving
• Magellans.com - A source of travel supplies

• Make sure your passport expiration date is six months from your trip return date.
• Make sure you have three blank pages in your passport. Some countries, like Indonesia, affix a full-page visa sticker. No blank page, no enter the country. 
• Get DAN insurance for emergency medical expenses, evacuation, chamber and other unexpected events. Some resorts/dive operations require it.
• Buy travel insurance. If you become ill, miss a connection due to weather, or have to cancel or cut short your trip, travel insurance will reimburse your costs. DAN now offers travel insurance.
• Check the airline’s current policy re:baggage limitations and dimensions. Don’t assume they are what you they were last time you flew that airline.
• Purchase flood insurance for your photo equipment. DAN offers that too.

Call Joe or Carl for more information. 949-476-8500

You have all the essentials, such as mask, snorkel, fins, BCD, regulator, gauges, but do you have the accessories you will need?  Do you have a night light? A dry bag? A safety sausage? Perhaps you want to upgrade your signaling device to a DiveAlert.

Do you have the important spares, such as O-rings, mouthpiece, extra mask, mask strap, batteries. We have a wall full of must-have, should-have, and I-never-thought-of-this-before accessories.

Come see our Trident Wall

Buy 1 Trident accessory, get the second one of equal or lesser value at 50% off! Offer good till August 31.

To a rapt audience, Joe stressed two points: budget and features.

1. Determine your budget. You can get a quality camera and housing package from $400 to $900. This does not include external strobe.
2. Choose a compact point-and-shoot camera with the following features:
• Small, compact, lightweight, easy to handle
• 8 megapixel of resolution or better
• Program mode, adjustable ISO, adjustable white balance, image stabilization, large LCD display and RAW/JPEG format
• A quality lens with optical zoom,an aperture range from f/2.8/f3.5 to f/11 or higher, aMACRO mode, and a zoom range with at least a 3X zoom

All three cameras are compact, rugged, lightweight. All camera controls are fully functional through the housings. All are priced right! And remember, with any photo purchase, you get a free one-on-one photo lesson with Joe.

For details, please visit www.JLDiveandphoto.com, or call Carl at 949-476-8500.

Most people travel with us because they want to go where we’re going. Some travel with us because they like traveling with us. We thank those people with all our hearts.

Of course, there are many other sensible reasons for traveling with us or allowing us to arrange your travel for you. You may think booking a trip yourself over the internet will be cheaper. Not necessarily so. As a tour organizer we have access to special rates and bulk-buying discounts not generally available to the public.

Besides, price isn’t everything. There will always be cheaper flights, cheaper hotels, cheaper dive operators. More important than cheap is quality. As a dive travel specialist we look for the most reliable providers and deliver the best experience. We can help you get better value by working upgrades and other perks into the packages we put together.

We save you stress, hassle, time. We do the research and make the arrangements. Get to the airport, we have people waiting to load your luggage and transport you to the hotel. Want to take a tour? We set it up. Need an overnight stay for connecting flights? Your room will be ready. If a problem arises, we fix it.

There is no substitute for experience. Joe has been a tour guide for 38 years. He’s been to destinations that aren’t even there anymore!