Discover Scuba Diving on Nusa Lembongan

PADI Discover Scuba Diving is a guided try-dive, not a course with an exam. An instructor stays within arm's reach the whole time, and you only do what you are comfortable with. It is different from a snorkel trip in one important way: you are breathing compressed air off a regulator and moving through the water column rather than staying at the surface, which is what lets you get properly close to the reef.

If you decide afterwards that you want to get certified, the pool skills and dives you complete here can count toward your PADI Open Water Diver course, as long as you start it within 12 months and your instructor knew that was the plan.

Everything happens at our centre in Jungut Batu, a minute's walk from the beach, using our own 25 x 15 m, 2.4 m deep training pool next to the classrooms. Being a PADI 5 Star Dive Center means the programme runs to the same standard here as anywhere else in the world.

Your session starts on dry land, with your instructor fitting your mask, fins and BCD (the jacket that holds your tank and controls your buoyancy) and walking through each piece of equipment before you get in the water. Nothing is assumed. If you have never even worn a mask before, that is completely normal and exactly what this session is for.

A short safety briefing covers hand signals, what to do if your mask fills with water, and how to equalise the pressure in your ears as you go deeper, all of which you then practise in the shallow end of the pool before doing anything else.

Once you are comfortable with the gear, your instructor runs through the handful of skills every Discover Scuba Diving programme covers: breathing calmly from a regulator, clearing water out of your mask, and basic buoyancy control. You practise standing or kneeling in the shallow end first, then move to open water in the pool once you are settled.

There is no pass or fail here. Instructors repeat a skill as many times as you need before moving on, and the pool is calm, clear and controlled compared to the ocean, which makes it the right place to get used to how the equipment feels and how strange it is, at first, to breathe normally with your face underwater.

From the pool you head out by boat to a sheltered site chosen for the conditions on the day, with your instructor beside you for the entire dive, staying no deeper than 12 metres. Expect to see reef fish and coral close up, and depending on the site, a real chance of a turtle or manta ray drifting past.

Your instructor holds your hand or a strap on your BCD for as much of the dive as you want, adjusts your buoyancy for you if needed, and points out anything worth looking at along the way using simple hand signals you learned in the pool.

If you book the 2-dive option, you get a second ocean dive the same day or the next, which most first-timers say makes a real difference to how relaxed the second dive feels compared to the first, once the initial nerves and unfamiliar sensations have settled.

Feeling anxious before your first dive is normal, and instructors here see it constantly. You can stop at any point, signal your instructor, and either pause where you are or head back to the surface together. Nobody is left to manage a problem alone, and the pace of the whole session is set by you, not a fixed script.

Being a nervous swimmer is also not automatically disqualifying. Because you do not need to swim confidently to take part, and your instructor supports your buoyancy throughout, plenty of people who would not describe themselves as strong swimmers still have a good first dive.

A lot of people who do Discover Scuba Diving end up going further. The full Open Water course is built from three parts: knowledge development, confined water (pool) skills, and open water dives, and because the skills overlap so closely with what you do here, telling your instructor in advance that you might want to continue means your dives can be logged toward that certification instead of starting from scratch.

If you are still deciding, our Discover Scuba Diving vs Open Water guide compares the two side by side, and Do I need to be certified to dive in Bali answers the question most people ask before booking either one.

Bring swimwear, a towel and reef-safe sunscreen. We provide all the diving equipment, so there is nothing specialist to pack. A hat and a bottle of water are worth having for the time you spend on the boat and back at the centre.

See how to get to us if you are coming from elsewhere on Bali or Nusa Penida, and book online to lock in a time. If you tend to get seasick, mention it when you book, since the boat ride out is part of the experience either way.