My first time getting drunk................... honest :-)

You sure missed a lot of fun this week!
This time it’s not for me to say that I achieved a lot (except for the fact that I had my 100th dive), but the boys sure did achieve a lot!
The boys also did their 100m tow and their 800m snorkel (well Dennis and Andreas did their 800 meter, Mahmoud did 200)
They did their skill circuit and the kit exchange (if you have been reading my blogs, you know what I’m talking about when I say kit exchange).

Oh, oh, and we had an amazing night out!
Well, let me tell you about my week.

So, Monday Andreas and I had a day at the shop while Alice was diving with Dennis, Mahmoud and 3 customers  So Andreas was cleaning the windows of the jeep while I hovered the jeep (and I learned what hovering is, apparently you don’t need to be a wizard) after cleaning the car I timed Andreas his 800 meter swim.

Oh, Tuesday! I had two amazing dives. Melissa took me, Andreas, Mahmoud and a Dutch person to Abades Point and Abades Beach. At the first dive I saw 3 Cuttle fish, I sure love Cuttle fish. The second dive Andreas was leading and he did very well. I saw a Fangtooth Moray Eel, a Black Moray Eel, Cardinal fish and I hope you sit down while reading this because this is going to be so amazing! I saw an Angel shark!!!
The Angel shark was so beautiful. Unfortunately it was gone before Melissa had the chance to make a good picture so nobody really believed us, but who cares, I saw an Angel shark!

I timed Mahmoud and Dennis for their 400m swim and then Mahmoud again for an 800m again. Then I took Dennis and Mahmoud to the pool for a pool session to look at their skills, they’re taking it really serious and it’s great to see how good they are doing.
I hope they are ready for their skills with Pete tomorrow, and I hope they’ll get a great score.

All right, let me tell you about Saturday. We started this day with 2 SANTA dives, they were a lot of fun and I can’t wait to see the pictures!

And the first Santa dive with Dennis being my buddy was my 100th dive! And after the Santa dives the boys did their 100m tow and Dennis and Andreas did their 800m snorkel.

In the evening we all went out again to celebrate that Alice is a PADI instructor and that I’m a PADI Divemaster,

So this was part 2. Oh Mama, I was so drunk. I have never ever been drunk in my life, I don’t even drink.
And because I felt safe surrounded by Pete, Melissa, Alice and the 2 boys Dennis and Andreas, I thought why not. We had an amazing time and we had a lot of fun.
I can say that it sure was an experience. I remember the most crazy things and Dennis and Andreas told me a lot more funny things that happened that night.

The next morning after being so drunk, Melissa came to check on me to see if I was ok, and actually, I was mighty fine. (from all the stories I’ve heard about being drunk I expected a major hangover.) That’s how nice Melissa is.

Well, that was my awesome week

New Dive sites in Tenerife :-)

Week 6! It is not even my favourite number but what a week it was!

Packed with diving and not just normal fun recreational diving, but fun new experiences!

First two dives of the week were Santa dives :)

I had never ever thought of diving in a costume and if I ever had I would have never thought it would be with a full Santa costume on a boat with 7 other Santas singing Feliz Navidad on their way to yellow mountain waving to other speed boats riding their way back to the marina.
And it was fun and the mood was great, can't wait to see the pictures of all the Santas underwater. Unfortunately I did not manage to keep anything from the costume to keep as a souvenir, but I guess the pics will do just fine.

The following day was just a very short day at the shop. Everyone went to San blas after the santa dives to properly celebrate Alice's new instruction certification and I heard it was so much fun.

We all showed up at 2:00 pm in the shop the next day for our kit set up and pre dive safety check skills, I scored 5 in the first but had to repeat the other one another day because I did it too fast. I practiced it a couple of times though this week and I will definitely do much better next time.

Pete and Melissa took off for their holidays on Monday.

We headed to Abades for 3 dives.  Dennis led the first dive by taking us to a different route where Andreas somehow managed to see a severely disguised octopus that was even hiding under a rock.

Then, we saw a big cuttle fish sleeping and burying itself under the sand. There were lots of lizard fish, scorpion fish and the very territorial blue damsel fish.
I was leading the second dive Where we went to the small caves up north and saw the cardinal fish and I loved the anemones
Lydia was leading our last 40 min dive.

The day ended with a great debrief, everyone was happy for a smooth, easygoing and fun day.

I woke up the next morning getting myself ready to dive in las eras. the first time I ever been there was on my first day of my internship.
The horizon was just so beautiful with the sun shining above us.
We found some cuttlefish, Andreas found yet another hiding octopus then we reached a current but we managed to swim our way through it.

On the third dive though we found the pipeline in the first 5 mins. The visibility was excellent and it was nothing like I had imagined really, was just a medium sized pipeline in the middle of huge blocks of concrete placed next to each other and it spread for as far as I could see for the whole duration of the dive. Was an exceptionally great experience as you just glide effortlessly guided by the pipeline just beneath you. And between each concrete block and the next you find something great, loads of scorpion fish of different sizes, lots of morays (black and brown) there was an amazing moray that was so curious and kept getting so close could almost touch my mask's glass.

We found out that we are going to El Puertito during the debrief after Las Eras diving experience.
We were all so excited for doing another project aware dive and hopefully see the turtles if we were lucky.
We were supposed to collect as many rubbish as we can from the shallow waters where the turtles live, it was for the sake of the environment, the turtles and the future of the dive site.

You would be amazed of how much rubbish you could find, it's just a sad thing that we are the enemies of our own environment. Many people forget that without the ocean there would be no life as we know it on planet earth.
After one hour of collecting rubbish and playing with turtles we came out with 4 sacks completely filled with rubbish.

This was apparently very inspiring for all the locals sitting on that cafeteria down the beach to find 5 divers very early in the morning coming out of the water with bags full of garbage.
They even asked me why we do that and an answer as simple as to clean the beach and have a good impact on the environment put a simple yet genuine smile on their faces and a rewarding feeling for myself.
On the third dive we were followed by the turtles, swimming right next to us for at least 50 metres then going and coming back to check us out every now and again. Could have never asked for more :)

We wanted to discover a new dive site.

It turned out to be a very nice dive site. There is a lot of octopus there and many huge starfish and a few cuttlefish. It's not that deep,  the deepest I guess was 10 metres where the cool rock formations were.
We even took some fun pics sitting there next to each other all the interns. We ended the day by snorkeling in the rain and doing some fish ID.

All in all this week was one of my most favorite weeks, everything was running smooth and everything was easy and we all had a lot of fun. Looking forward for the next week!

Sharks, Drinks and Mountains

Boom! I haven't had a lot of dives this week, but the ones I had was some of the most awesome dives ever!

I had a couple of days off, more of that later, first onto the actual dives of this week.

My first dive this week was at Abades. It was just Mahmoud, Dennis, Lydia and me.
I spend my whole morning in our balcony under a blanket, eating doughnuts  spilling coffee and pumping cigarettes. Then we went to the shop, prepared our kits and went to Abades.
There was nearly no visibility at all and we were to lead one dive each. I know I've been at Abades a couple of times before, but I've never really figured the site out.



Anyway, we went there and it actually went well. When we descended the visibility was somewhere in between zero and nothing, but I of course used my enormous wisdom of tides, waves, surf and surge to figure out that if we went into the reefs the visibility would be better.

To my surprise it worked and we had a great dive. We saw three Cuttlefish at the same time. All entangled in each other and swimming around. Pretty cool.
Of course after swimming around all over the place with me being really confused about our position, but me playing it cool, we actually surfaced two or three meters from the place where we descended. Nice one.

On our third dive, which Mahmoud was leading, we were down a bit longer so we spent the last five or six minutes just playing around. It was probably like seeing a couple of children seeing a scuba-kit for the first time. Just until we saw some other divers heading our way.
Mahmoud was quick to signal and write on his slate that we needed to look pro.
In those minutes no diver in the world has ever looked and acted that professional under water as we did.

Then we had some days of and after that a new dive at Abades. This time with a Dutch customer replacing Dennis. You could say a lot about this dive, but really everything would be nothing compared to the one and single fact that I SAW AN ANGEL SHARK!!!

I saw a freaking shark! Not just far away or out of the corner of my eye, I saw the shark swimming and we all started following it to see more of it.
Unfortunately no one got a really good picture of it and therefore of course no one will actually believe it because everyone will be too jealous to recognize it. anyway. I SAW A SHARK!
All in all that dive was pretty awesome 'cause we didn't just see an ANGEL SHARK!
We also saw Cuttlefish, Morays  Cardinal fish, Octopus, Pearly Razor fish, Scorpion fish, Atlantic Wrasse and much much more.

When that is said, the first dive we had that day was actually pretty cool too. We swam along the shore from Abades Beach, which I've never tried before, and I kinda liked the new site. At this single dive we managed to see five Cuttle fish which of course is always a good thing.

This week I also passed my PADI Divemaster exam which was a relief and I did my 400 meter stamina test. That went pretty well. I guess I've never been the best swimmer in the world and when I first got here and did the practise 400 meter swim my time was without doubt one of the worst ones Dive & Sea has ever seen 15-something for swimming 400 meters... Yeah I know, pretty bad.
Well at least I improved and my final time was 9 minutes and 30 seconds so that is not all bad.



Now we just need the other stamina test and the skills in the pool, then I'm a PADI Divemaster.........  Yeah and well some more dives, but still.

This week I also had a couple of days off. The first evening after work I spend with my buddy Dennis, making Los Christianos and Playa De Las Americas a dangerous place to be. I can't remember the last time I had such a serious night out. Name a bar in Las Americas and we've been there. As I recall it, we ended up taking a taxi to Adeje or something to find ourself in at a very large and very local salsa disco. For two people who've studied Spanish for three years each, it is incredible how little Spanish they speak what must have been between two and six hundred beers. We had a great time and ended up sleeping in the sofas in our balcony.
Next day (gladly after our hangover) we all went out to dinner back in Adeje. I really enjoyed that and it was nice seeing everybody off work for one evening.

The day after that Dennis, Lydia, Mahmoud and me cocked-up big time. at one o clock we decided to climb a mountain we've been looking at for quite some time. Unfortunately instead of taking a bus, we decided on walking there. Well to make a very long story short, we got there around five thirty and after walking for five and a half hour we would give up at the foot of the mountain even though the sun was about to go down.
We decided to climb the mountain as fast as possible and the run down. Well of course skilled mountaineers like us made it to the top, but only to see the sun go down and us standing on the top of a huge mountain in complete darkness.
It took us more than 4 hours to find just a somewhat safe path down, only after hanging in darkness on a vertical cliff side with nothing to hold onto but a small rock, a flimsy branch or a cactus.
When we finally got down we were in the middle of nowhere with cuts and bruises and had to walk to the nearest ghost town called El Roque, just to find everything closed.

No need to say that Pete and Melissa wasn't glad to see us in the shop without any sleep next morning.
Let's never do that again, not in the dark anyway.

Well that's all for this week so
May the force be with you young padawan

New Dive sites in Tenerife...... well for me anyway :-)

I was surprised when we went on a different path on our second dive in yellow mountain. We went west instead of east to a place called Swim Through. It is actually called swim through because we swam through a cave like structure only very shallow and wide open so that you can swim through it to the other side. It was the first time I have ever done anything like that and I really liked it so much. This time I was buddy with Dennis. We were following the group from behind making sure everything is ok and everyone is close to Alice as she leads the dive from the front.

The next day we took Gee to Abades where Melissa was leading the dive. It was the first time we go to the shore from the right side instead of the normal left side from the coast. It was such a beautiful dive where we saw a family of cuttle fish and some morays.

The second dive on the other hand was definitely a very significant dive in my life. I had never seen so many creatures in one dive and was the first time I ever saw an Angel Shark. I thought it was a big one but Melissa told me it was still very young, in any case it was very fast and ran away from us contradicting my expectations as  I thought they were very curious creatures. We also saw Black Moray, Fangtooth Moray, an Octopus, a few Cuttle fish and a lot of different fish.



Then comes the thing I enjoy the most in diving. Night diving is amazing I love the nocturnal creatures they are just so beautiful and all the creatures become less shy in the night. I also never knew cuttlefish can glow in the dark after you point the light to them. And you gotta love the planktons!

We ended our week with a very productive day in the shop. Pete made our skill assessment in the pool, I will have to repeat the CESA and the hovering and we also did the kit exchange which I never thought would be such a beautiful experience.
Gives you much confidence and trust with your buddy. We had to change the scuba unit in addition to the mask and fins all underwater with only one functioning regulator while not allowing anything to touch the water. After doing the normal daily jobs in the shop there was still some time left and Pete allowed us to go snorkelling for an hour.

We spent 45 minutes snorkeling, free diving and doing some fish ID which was  the highlight of my closing day.

Avery productive and enjoyable week.

PADI Advanced course and PADI Rescue course!

Well, my third week at Dive and Sea Tenerife. 

This week has brought a lot of different dive, studies and experiences.

For starters I had my first deep dive as part of my PADI Advanced course. great dive with Dennis, Pete and Ann.

We got down to 26 meters where we had to do some different tasks. Putting squares and triangles into a for-the-purpose-shaped box seems easy for my one-year old nephew, but it sure ain't that easy when you're sitting on the bottom of the Atlantic, with a playful Common Ray trying to push you over!

Next dive that day was my navigation dive. We went to Yellow Mountain where we got down with compasses and tried the best we could to do some different swim patterns using our compasses.
Last dive that day was our fish-ID. Great dive. our objective is to go down and try to spot as many different fish as possible. 

We tried to sketch some, and then find the names and such back at the shop. Maybe me and Dennis, my buddy, cheated a bit by just swimming to the nearest reef, splitting a few Sea-Urchins and waiting for the fish to come to us. Luckily for us our plan worked out just fine, and we saw loads and loads of beautiful colours all around us.

The next day was our time to become PADI Advanced divers. 
A day with a night dive and a peak-performance buoyancy dive.

Well beside the obvious physical pain in my body by getting up that early in the morning, it was probably the best dive I've ever had. 

It's a completely unique feeling when you are descenting into dark water with only a flashlight to keep you just a little oriented. Well the most amazing thing of the dive was after a couple of minutes down hanging a few meters off the bottom, when a huge two and a half meter Sting Ray come gliding our of the water. One of the most incredible sights I have ever seen.

After that experience the next dive that day has to have a serious thrill to keep up, but none the less we really enjoyed ourself at the next dive, swimming through hoops under water and trying to establish good buoyancy  Piece of cake if you ask me.

With my PADI Advanced course completed I was going straight on to the PADI Rescue course. At first it took a lot of reading to get ready for exams and stuff, so that we could finally all get onto the fun part by splashing around in the water.

The rescue course is really one of the funniest courses you can take of all the PADI courses. Even picking a non-responsive diver up from the bottom, it really gives a lot of laugh. people passing by stopped just to look at seven crazy people swimming around, half of them giving their best efforts to act like panicked divers, and the other half trying to rescue them to the boat six feet away.

Anyway the course went great and I can now call myself a certified PADI Rescue Diver.

After that the rescue course I had a few days just working in the shop. Cleaning kits, reading and things like that, so I was really thrilled when I went on a dive at Abades again with Melissa, Dennis, Lydia and Mahmoud. We had three dives with Lydia leading and they all went great. 

Just swimming around looking at funny and pretty creatures with no stress at all. Abades Beach is a really chilled place to dive. Just to walk to a beach with sun bathing tourists and disappear into the waves to find a quiet world just outside reach of the regular sun tanners.

Yesterday I had a great dive. Dennis and me were doing our first mapping divers which we need for our PADI Divemaster certification. First we got a really nice tour around Alien Rock together with Pete, where we tried to draw our own maps. 

The next dive we had to find our own way around leading Pete who got lost for the first time at Yellow Mountain and had to rely on his two new favorite interns. But after all we led Pete safely back to his beloved little vessel and he could climb safely aboard. I'd like to say that we tried to calm him down and then sailed the boat back to shore and smoked cigarettes while Pete washed the kits,( Or was this all just a dream!!)

We went to help out at some pool sessions with some new costumers, preparing them to their first dive in three years. all in all it went quiet well and we all went to Yellow Mountain for three dives. 
We had three very good divers. spotted a lot of Cuttlefish and Common Octopus, aside from all the more regular, but still beautiful fish, at Yellow Mountain.

Well I think I'm gonna end my blog for this week, 'cause I'm in the lucky event of having my girlfriend being here to visit me for a few days, so at the moment I feel that I got more important things to do before my next day start tomorrow at seven. For a freaking wreck dive. That sounds pretty cool!

Hasta luego, which is Spanish for see you next week... Or something like that.

Andreas

PADI Divemaster exams and Urchin Killing!

It's is now officially one month here in Dive and Sea Tenerife, time is really flying so fast.
I had some time off this week so i had an opportunity to prepare myself very well on my Divemaster exam. I studied the Divemaster book very well and finished, revised and corrected the knowledge reviews and I also went through the Rescue manual.

It was so much fun having Dennis' and Andreas' girlfriend's around. They came for 3 or 4 days and they also brought Dennis' guitar all the way from Denmark. We were seriously thinking of buying a second hand guitar here in Tenerife so they saved us the hassle..
We spent lovely evenings on their couch in the balcony to the sounds of the guitar and Leah s voice. Just amazing!

There are two parts in the Divemaster exam, I thought I was going to complete the two parts on separate days but I really just wanted to get it over with.
I knew that I passed the Divemaster test with 96% on the first part and 90% on the second part.
So I went back home relaxed with a sense of achievement!
In any case, reading the Divemaster manual in the future will be much more fun!

In the morning we had two project AWARE dives which was something I was really looking forward to since I came to Tenerife.
We will have the opportunity to do at least a couple more project AWARE dives while we are here but the first two was to remove as many sea urchins in yellow mountain as we can.
Sea urchins reproduce very fast and they are a major threat to the local ecosystem as they have no local predators.

To make things more interesting we had a small competition, the one with the most confirmed kills wins a project AWARE t shirt.
Dennis did a great job with a staggering 280 kills.
When we came back to the shop we practiced some skills in the pool and it is always nice to see improvements in the whole team.

The following day was an easy, nice and productive day. It was funny because I was just thinking about that on my way to the shop then the first thing we did to start our day was jumping in the pool in the early morning to have our official timed 400m swim.
It wasn't my best time I did but scored a 4 out of 5. We also practiced some skills in the pool then I started reading the Encyclopedia of Recreational diving which turned out to be very informative and very interesting!

I had very significant checkpoints this week like passing the Divemaster exam, timing our swims and Project Aware dives.
We had interesting times and loads of achievements and now it's time to look forward for a start of a new month, in Dive and Sea Tenerife.