On Monday Malene went to Abades along with Trigger, Pearl, Nemo, Bruce and Melissa to lead her first couple of dives, so it was a big day for her. She gave a more or less perfect brief and the dives went really well, even though she was going way too fast on the first one. This is a very common mistake, because you're so obsessed of navigating, that you completely forget that you have a group of recreational divers behind you. On the second dive, however, she paced herself very well and she pointed a lot of interesting things out, including a beautiful octopus, so altogether it was very rewarding for her.
Meanwhile, Theiss went to Yellow Mountain together with Cassandra, Village, Dory, Will and Fruzsina, a Hungarian/Danish girl, who joined us this week for some great diving together with her boyfriend Johannes. And as always, the dive site of Yellow Mountain didn't let us down on this terrific day. We plumbed in as usual on what was going to be one of the most awesome dives, Theiss has done in Tenerife. Will led the small group of divers on the Swim-Through route, and once we hit "the main attraction", an amazing sight hit us: a big school of barracudas were circling the top of the swim-through rock, and with the sun in the background it was the perfect stage for Will's photographic skills to onfold. Buoyed (metaphorically speaking, obviously) by this amazing experience, we went along and as a very nice bonus a couple of octopi and a common stingray even crossed our "path" as well! The next dive to and around Alien Rock was also very, very pleasant, but even though we did see another octopus and a striped trumpetfish, the first dive was completely overshadowed by the second one.
On Tuesday, both of us went to Yellow Mountain, where Fruzsina and Pearl did the first part of the Peak Performance Buoyancy dive conducted by Will. Meanwhile, Theiss led Malene, Dory and Bruce on a lovely jolly dive going to the swim-through, admitted in the hope of getting a glimpse of another (or the same) school of barracudas, which obviously was a bit to much to expect. And true enough, the barracudas were gone, but that didn't stop us from having yet another wonderful dive. Among the classics of the local aquatic life, we saw a school of needlefish circling the surface just on the other side of the swim-through, an octopus, a baby eagle ray, red backed cleaner shrimp and an annulated brittle star. Actually, we were so preoccupied by exploring and enjoying our ourselves that we only just managed to do our safety stop and get on the boat in time. A decent sized cuttlefish crossed our path in the end of the dive, and that just wrapped it all up. Afterwards, we were observing the second part of the Peak Performance Buoyancy.
In the afternoon, it was hotel pool time, so we packed up all our stuff and headed to Hotel. Will and Theiss was once again in the pool, the latter one acting as a substitue for Alice. The high season is upon us, and we can really feel that when we go to the pool.
Last Wednesday, where Catherine and Andrew along with their two children, Phoebe and Inigo did their DSD experience with us. Phoebe and Catherine had a week or so earlier done the Free Try Dive with us at the Hotel, and they really got the taste for it then, so they decided to bring the rest of the family. They were joined on the boat with Theiss, Nemo, Dory, Will and Pete. Due to some pretty rough afternoon conditions, a little bit of seasickness unfortunately hit the little family, but despite that they seemed to have a very good time.
At this point of the week, everything was running smoothly, but then, on this day, a lot of silly rookie mistakes were made, and they snowballed during the day causing a lot of extra, unnecessary work for ourselves at the end, so we had a very long debrief in order for this not to happen again.
Luckily for her, Malene was off until 7 p.m., because she was finally doing her night dive, this time from the shore of Abades. She has built up a lot of confidence since her last try failed, so she was very excited, and a little bit nervous, for this experience. Will was leading his father, Bill, who's joined us for this week to do his Rescue Diver and some specialities, Nemo, Bruce and a couple of interns from another dive center, Chris and Cassy. The first dive they did was just a "normal" day light dive, with the following being the actual night dive. On the first dive they saw a fangtooth moray, whis was really cool. It seems to us that the black moray is much more frequent, so it's always wicked to spot the yellow cousin. On the following dive, simply the experience of diving in the dark was the main experience even though they did see some very nice things, including a golden spotted snake eel and a cuttlefish.
On Thursday we got to stay in until 2 pm, because we were going to the marina, to do the confined part of the Rescue Course: Malene as an actual participant and Theiss as an observer/stuge. It's a very enjoyable course, so everyone had a lot of fun while doing it. But once again, during some stages of the day it seemed like everyone of the interns had left their brains back home resulting in a lot of mistakes being made and a lot of things forgotten, like the tool box.
On Friday we were both off, so we decided to go to Las Américas to stroll around and shop a little bit.
The following day, Malene was off to Las Eras along with Johannes, Fruzsina, Bill, Nemo and Melissa. Due to a rough surf and swell, they decided only to do one of the planned two dives.
The local trigger fishes acted as crazy as the ocean on this day being very offensive and curious, which was a lot of fun nonetheless for the little group.
Theiss started out in the morning by going into the pool together with Cassandra and Bruce to observe Will conducting some of the confined parts of the Open Water Diver course. The OWD student was George (Giorgios), a Greek fellah, who's joined us to do his entry level certification. He was a natural and did very well on his pool skills, so that was a joy to watch.
In the afternoon we went to the Hotel, and we were once again the center of all the attention in and around the pool during our 1 hour session. Some of the interest seemed very genuine, but as always it's impossible to tell whether or not some of the participants actually decides to join us for some diving.
Sunday turned the streak of bad days around, so it was nice to get the week wrapped up in a good manner nonetheless. Theiss was in at 6 a.m. to be on boat cover for Pete, Will, Bill, Village and Dory for their night dive at Poco Naufragio. Afterwards, we were joined by Malene, Nemo and Bruce to do the open water scenario for the ongoing rescue course. It's very amusing to be a part, because the course puts the students on the edge and it's actually pretty physically demanding.
In the afternoon we went to the pool to run through the skill set together with Nemo, Dory and Village. It's been a long time since we've done them, so we both felt a little bit rusty, but we managed to introduce most of the underwater skills for the new ones in a neat manner. All three of them did well, and we're sure that they will pick it up sooner rather than later.
Afterwards, we chillaxed in the shop doing some daily jobs and proposed some upbeat song tracks for the new car CDs. So all things considered, we got the week well overwith and had a nice conclusion to it after all.
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