Devil Winds and a hedonistic Middle Eastern souk

So this week was the week that Tenerife burned, or at least it felt like it. Devil winds blowing in from the Sahara have almost reduced living in the Golf Del Sur into one constant dash from shade, to fan, to air conditioning and back. Hitting us in the latter part of this week, the rumours, of course so often false, were true. I should have guessed by the grim demeanour and resigned tone of my local bar proprietor.  The only certainty seems to be that it could be worse, coming from another ‘local’ sipping on a mango smoothie this really does not hold much comfort for an active Divemaster intern.

However I digress from the weekly update. This is actually an important time as I approach my halfway point. Four of the more experienced interns are leaving in the next few days and I shall be sad to see them leave. Their support and help in the past four weeks have been completely invaluable. So to Malena, Theiss, Mel and Gerardo… Adieu and safe journey home!

Again this feels like a digression, so onto life as an intern. This week has really enforced a key message from the Rescue Diver Course, to STOP->THINK->ACT. Essentially during a dive and in the preparation I made a mistake that was really silly, that of going for a moderately deep dive with a half full cylinder. Due to this there were a couple of other effects that meant a fellow intern had to stop a dive early and ascend with me. Even now, some days hence, a consistent mental face palm has been in effect.

The annoying thing is that this has overshadowed, at least to an extent, some really positive leaps forward. I gave my first dive briefing (to a customer, Jens, no less), not perfect but still a ‘first’. My pool skills have been improving, surprising myself at how they seem to be coming together. Two other aspects, the Pre-Dive Safety Check and Discover Scuba Diving Kit Assembly, are also coming on well despite my attempts at improvisation. Which occur despite it being specified on a card.

Now…. To the diving. The main highlight this week was a pair of dives at one of our less frequented dive sites, Las Eras. This dive, including a long time customer Marvin, alongside a sheer wall through Tenerife’s underwater volcanic landscape was excellent. Streaked Gurnards, Groupers, Triggerfish, Barracuda, Octopus…. I hope, Dear Reader, you get the point. Part of it was also a drift dive, but mainly it just seemed a different kind of diving compared to what I have experienced so far in Tenerife.

I was also able to observe the Confined elements of the PADI Rescue Diver course for two of our interns. I desperately wanted to be playing the part of an unresponsive diver underwater, as this is Hide-and-Seek with diving equipment. Indeed, it sounds very amusing.

On a final note, a personal observation: On Saturday evening, to celebrate the ‘graduation’ of our interns, Dive and Sea hit Playa Las Americas for hijinks and frivolities. Now for those who do not know, like myself prior to Saturday, this is a fascinating cultural experience. Even now I still have no idea how to describe it accurately, apart from (this being the closest approximation I can manage) a hedonistic Middle Eastern souk with an impressive amount of novelty sunglasses.

Sunburn and Iron Burns !!

I can’t belive I’m more than halfway through my PADI Divemaster internship, it’s been going really quickly and the days are starting to roll into one.
We did two dives on Monday morning, the first one at Poco Naufragio was really good because there was so much to see down there, including a massive arrow crab and big shoals of fish.
We were introduced to the new interns, who have been renamed as characters from Finding Nemo, so we have Nemo, Dory, Bruce, Pearl and Gill.
We took Dory for her first dive of her internship on Tuesday when we had a girl day shore diving at Abades. It was Hannah’s last dive of her internship so we did some underwater filming of us dancing for her video. Dances included the Macarena and Malene’s 5 point descent dance.

I had my first dive with a customer as a buddy on Wednesday morning. I was with Craig, and on the first dive we followed Thiess around Alien Rock and then to the swim through on the second dive. They were both really good dives and it was nice to see that Craig was enjoying himself as well!
I didn’t go diving in the sea on Thursday, I had a pool session in the morning to do some skills practice.

In the evening I went to the supermarket and then ran into Iceland on the way back to grab some chicken for Melissa and it was the strangest thing ever. As soon as I went through the door it was like I’d been transported back to Britain because all the products had prices on in pounds and the staff were British. It was kind of a nice thing to be reminded of home, but also really odd.

We dived twice on Friday and when we were on the boat we saw some fish jumping out of the water which I liked because I’d never seen that before. I had some drinks and a pizza with a few of the other interns in the evening at the Aberdeen which was nice. I had a day off on Saturday which was kind of a good thing after the drinks the night before!
Gerado and Thiess wanted to go snorkelling at yellow mountain, and Malene was planning on sitting on the beach and relaxing, so I went along too, hoping to relax on the beach whilst the boys went out snorkelling. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the most relaxing day off I’ve had because the walk to yellow mountain took hours, we must have been walking for about 3 hours in total that day, in the sweltering heat. I was also not wearing the right shoes- walking to yellow mountain in flip flops is a bad idea. When we got there we were met by some nudists, which was a bit of a shock, but Thiess and Gerado went off and enjoyed their snorkelling whilst I sat in the shade, recovering from the massive expedition it took to get there! It was a good day though, despite the massive trek it took to get there. It was better lying on the sofa and watching the Harry Potter movie, which I was planning on doing.

On Sunday I started the day by burning my arm on the iron, and now I have a dark purple burn which looks pretty bad. Then we went diving at El Puertito to see the turtles, and I saw one, and a baby octopus and a cuttlefish. In the afternoon, me and Gerado helped Melissa clean Eric’s apartment. It wasn’t dirty, but smelled really bad because he left a bag of frozen broccoli in the freezer, and then turned it off, cheers for that Eric!

SKILL WARS......Return to the Pool

A long time ago (only a few days) in a pool far, far, away (downstairs from the Dive Centre)…

Five intrepid and idealistic people (immature interns) undertook their Divemaster Skills Assessment. After it being postponed due to the wrath of Darth Pete (entirely justified), they armed themselves with all the protection possible (a Scuba Review slate and a wetsuit) and waded into this monthly battle of wits.

Remembering the secret words of power (the values of surface skills) and the conventions of single combat (always deflate your BCD before an underwater skill), the first snorkel was drawn at 8.00am after an hour of preparation. The last fine-tuning was made as the Sun hit the chlorine soaked pool and Avicii’s “Wake Me Up” was whistled woefully across the orange wastes of Terraza de la Paz.

Wading into the arena came Darth Pete and Darth Melissa; chills went down the spine of all the interns waiting. This may have been because one of their number was wearing a 3mm Shorty (namely myself).

Up at the shop, hearing the water rippling, the other interns knew the fate of these latest challengers. It was now down to how exaggerated and slow their skills were, would hair be cleared from their mask, and could they exhale for the whole Controlled Emergency Surface Ascent?

As the battle cries began and the speeches ended, Darth Pete fixes his eyes on the first of the interns…

***Fade to black***

However it actually went OK! As a group we did really well and, despite portents of doom, did not have to do any skills again. That is not to say I could have done better but I was pretty happy with the overall result.

With most of the week revolving around this, I have also been fortunate to get some diving in.

I went to a site for the first time, Moon Pools, which was an interesting place. For the supreme positive of the dive, I saw my first Sea-Horse. This was absolutely awesome, as well as casually random. Almost as though our thought processes were:
“What is that?’
“Sea-Horse.”
“Cool.”
“Yep.”
“Wait, that’s A SEA-HORSE!”

Beyond that however we did see a lot of evidence of human interaction with the marine environment. There was a considerable amount of litter, large metal objects, and lost fishing gear around. Most sickening however was a fresh Stingray carcass, thrown back with its tail and wings cut off. A strange dive full of extremes.

I also led my first dive this week, luckily we saw something as I was paranoid that this would be the time where there was nothing to see. However a funky Octopus, Nudibranch, Red-Backed Cleaner Shrimp and little Stingray put me at ease. I was close to not finding the boat at one point but, with an intervention from the aforementioned Darth Pete, got there in the end. Our customer, Charles from Las Vegas, seemed to enjoy himself anyway!

Turtles.....and Tears.......Goodbye Tenerife

My final week in Tenerife was about as fun as it could possibly be.

We went diving basically every day and I got to see turtles more than once it was the bomb.
This week really was a lot of fun though and when I left Monday I was a bit sadder than I thought I was going to be, this summer has been really fun even though parts of it were less than stellar.

I had a really good time and got a lot out of the entire experience. Working as much as we did was a completely new thing for me and I ended up getting really sucked into diving which made every dive so much more fun, especially after all the books and courses were done.

Even though after we got through all the courses the days seemed longer because we had less to do.
At the end of the week we got to spend our beer fine money which was glorious and went out for Malene’s birthday and that was hilarious.
Malene had this really super cool dance move that went through the 5 point descent skill.

All in all I had a great time and they sent me off wanting to come back so that’s good.

Alice wasn’t there though because she was “sick” but it was really probably just because she knew she would burst into tears and didn’t want to embarrass herself :)

Thanks and Goodbye

Eric (Banana Man)

Happy Birthday to me..... :)

The third week of the internship has gone down, and here's a summary of all the exciting experiences, we've had.

On Monday Theiss met in at 10 am; Malene went to Abades with Trigger, Alice, Melissa and Cat, as part of the latter's Advanced course. They all had a couple of good dives, though with a rough entry and exit due to windy conditions, and despite of the not very impressive visibility, they saw a lot of cool stuff including a stingray and Malene enjoyed helping and buddying up with Cat.

Meanwhile, Theiss was helping Eric out with his epic rack-project, and to put it mildly, it turned out to be the most beautiful and solid rack we've ever put our eyes on...

In the afternoon, Malene did the monthly equipment check with Alice, and she enjoyed having a peek at how the equipment, we use every day, actually works and what it consists of.

Theiss went to Abades later that day together with Melissa, Hannah, Eric, Cassandra and Will. The conditions were way better in the afternoon and we had some very recreational recreational dives that both included skipping as well as limboing on a deserted rope stuck in the seabed in the company of the usual suspects of the Tenerifean aquatic life.

The next day we both went on a shore dive again, this time closer to "home":  And the site simply provided all you could wish for. With Alice as the leader we, together with Casandra and Trigger, went along the left side of the small bay that encloses the beach, with the marina wall on the right hand side. Amongst the all-time present fish species, we saw a beautiful sea nettle anemone, black moray eels, a spiny fan-mussel, an annulated brittle star, cuttlefishes, octopuses and a big stingray - simply an abundance of interesting marine life, big as well as small!

In the afternoon, Theiss went to the hotel pool with Alice and Eric. There was a decent amount of interest, but it's always hard to tell whether or not it is serious. Theiss acted out the salesman-role, which he enjoys a lot. At the same time, Malene went to the marina beach once again, this time joined by Will, Trigger, Hannah and Cassandra in the hopes of replicating our excellent morning dives, but alas, that was not the way it was supposed to go. All points of interest from earlier that day weren't that interesting anymore, and all luck seemed to have let them down, so they were bitterly disappointed, especially Hannah and Will, who weren't around for the morning spoils.

Wednesday and Thursday were pretty similar in terms of our activity around the place. The days were packed with exciting fish quizzes, monthly/weekly duties, skill set sessions in the pool, with focus on the spoken skills, stamina tests and we got to familiarize ourselves really well with the content of the stack of magazines on the shop table.

On Friday we went with our snorkel equipment to a small beach nearby together with Cassandra and Trigger to do some urchin stabbing, but the conditions didn't allow that to happen. Instead of just heading home, we decided to conduct a 100% Project AWARE behavior by cleaning up the beach, and we managed to collect a decent amount of rubbish. The beach is situated near a frequented path, and is a popular place to go for moonlight and sunset sightings, so a lot of trash had piled up there.

Friday evening, Nemo and Bruce (aka. Will and Alister), two of the new interns, joined the rest of the crew for a very casual and chillaxing night out at an Indian curry place in San Blas.

The following day it was Malene's birthday, and what a blast it was! She finally went out to see the turtles in El Purtito, together with Melissa, James, Matt, Cassandra and Kathy, and the dives exceeded everyone's expectations. On their second dive while enjoying the gentle company of the "local inhabitants", meaning the beautiful turtles, a simply massive butterfly ray suddenly appeared from the sand just underneath the small group, and the sight was stunning - what a birthday present from Mother Nature!

In the afternoon Theiss went to the hotel pool with Alice and Trigger. The high season is quite clearly picking up and hence there was a lot of positive interest in our free Try Dive offer. It was very busy, and we actually had to disappoint some people, because we simply didn't have the time for everyone to try. Hopefully some of the holiday guests that did get to do it have now got taste for diving, so we hope to see some of them again.

In the evening we gathered in the shop for a piece of cake and a glass of sparkling wine, which was a perfect start to a lovely night out. We started out in a delicious tapas place very originally (and ingeniously) called "Tapas". Afterwards we hit a couple of the many bars in San Blas and ended up having an awesome time in a place called Taboo's for some games of pool, one liter pitchers of beer and a lot of dancing.
The Divemaster skill set was warmly embraced as a rich source of inspiration for an entire list of new dances, and especially the dance of the Five Point Descend might turn out to be the new theme dance of the Dive and Sea Tenerife.

Theiss and Malene

Just what is "Only Fools and Horses"?

On Friday the 28th of June around 6 pm we, the Danish couple Malene and Theiss, two innocent and excited new Dive and Sea Tenerife-interns arrived at Terrazas de la Paz, only to find our new colleagues and employers sitting in the nearest bar, called Big Al's, having a cold beer after what seemingly had been a good day at the office - what a welcome!

Moreover, we were given our mandatory nicknames: Marleen and Boyce, which apparently have their origin in some obscure British television programme.

The next day we had our induction day, conducted by Will. We went through the "Induction Day Presentation Slides"; he then showed us around the place and we were presented with some of the many daily duties. We were immediately taught that all the gear, systems, plans and routines might well enough be idiot proof, but certainly not necessarily intern proof (or, for that matter, as we saw on the EFR practical part, instructor proof, but that's a different story all together...)

The first week on the Dive and Sea Tenerife Internship has been an exciting learning curve for the both of us, with new stuff to learn and remember being "thrown (though, gently and compassionately) in our faces" all the time.

Our very first dives on Tenerife were carried out on Sunday  in sites called Moon Pools and Los Abrigos Steps respectively together with all the other interns and on the instructor front Alice, Pete and Will. Unfortunately, the visibility (or simply, "vis") was not impressive, and the conditions were pretty rough. But on the plus side: it was good getting in the water again and we got to familiarize ourselves with some of the creatures commonly sighted here in Tenerife. These include: the colorful ornate wrasse, the very territorial damsel, the sneaky lizardfish, the excellently camouflaged wide-eyed flounder, the peculiar trumpet and puffer fish together with the elusive parrot fish.

In the afternoon we were introduced by Will to the art of demonstrating the Scuba Review skills, which we enjoyed - there's a lot to work on, but we'll definately get the hang of it sooner rather than later!

Monday Marleen went out to do an awesome dive at the Yellow Mountain site together with Ann and Pete, which was a lot of fun. Among other cool stuff they saw an octopus hiding in a tight crack. Theiss observed DSDs having their first pool session, which is always rewarding seeing people take their first few breaths under water.

Malene went to Las Eras with Paul, Chloe, Ann, Melissa and Will on Tuesday to do her Navigation and Fish ID dives as part of the PADI Advanced course. Unfortunately, they only got to do one dive due to rough conditions. A grim-looking barracuda and lots of fire worms crossed their wet path on a very nice shore dive! On this day, Theiss actually had the day off, but decided to meet in around noon to do his EFR-exams. Later on, we were introduced to the kit set-up for Discover Scuba Diving by Hannah and Eric, which went okay. Nonetheless, it's another thing to practice and improve on.

The next day we did the Deep Dive scenario in Poco Naufragio together with Trigger and Casandra both for the sake of Malene's PADI Advanced Course and for the other three's Divemaster.
We saw a very curious (and threatening) fangtooth moray. Theiss had his monster torch with him and was randomly probing cracks and holes, when this big fellah of a fangtooth put his head out, probably to let us know that we had disturbed him in his morning routines... or something.
Afterwards we hit Yellow Mountain, and during the very nice dive we made our way through the swim-through, which is simply stunning! You basically swim through this narrow overhang, where not much light enters, but as soon as you "hit the other site", you see trumpet fishes, damsel fishes and breams (among a lot of other species) going peacefully along with the rhythm of the underwater community, dictated primarily by the gentle but steady current - a must-experience, if you ever go to Tenerife for diving!

Later that day we did our EFR practical part together with Ann, Trigger and Casandra; it was very intense and dramatic, and it definately peaked when Trigger killed himself during a primary assesment of Malene's electrical shock injuries leaving Ann to rescue both those two and Theiss's broken arm. Meanwhile, Casandra's character was drunk and narced and annoying, which didn't really help Ann in her stressful situation. Poor Ann.

On the contrast, it definately didn't peak when Will desperately tried to start the AED only to find out that he hadn't connected the machinery to the main Tenerifean electricity network (instructor proof? Think again...).

On Thursday together with Trigger, Ann and Cas, Theiss did the confined Rescue divers skills which bascially teach you how to handle an injured (responsive or unresponsive) diver. It's a really fun and beneficiary course, so we enjoyed ourselves a lot. At the end of the day, we set up kit for the next morning's night dive.

We got up at the absolutely inhuman time of 4.30 in the morning on friday to do a night dive, which you have to have experienced as a Divemaster: We were a little tired, but also very excited. Ann went together with the rest of the interns, Will and Pete to Poco Naufragio to do a great night dive in excellent vis. Among the very special experience to dive in total darkness with only a flashlight to rely on for some light, we saw some sleepy puffers and a baby moray. Unfortunately, equipment trouble kept Malene out of this dive.

When we got to back to the Marina, Malene, Eric and Hannah did the kit and chillaxed, meanwhile the rest of us went out in open water to do our mandatory rescue scenarios. In the first scenario, the instructors (Melissa and Will) hid two conspicuously coloured object for us to find. Trigger and Theiss took a wee bit too long to get kitted up in the boat, but found the object very quickly.

Will then swapped in for the object and acted as the unresponsive diver, whom we brought up in a controlled manner and at a safe ascent rate. The second scenario consisted of finding an unresponsive diver at the surface and then bring him back to the boat while providing rescue breaths and undoing his kit. It was a pretty tough challenge but also a very good experience! Because of the early meeting in, we got off early in the afternoon.

On the following day we started off in the pool for the skills, supervised by Will and Melissa - we're definately progressing but there's still some way to go. Afterwards we went to the marina to get our stamina assesed in the 800 snorkel and the 100 tow.. Again, there's definately room for improvement!
Later on, we got to practice being in the boat handler role and get people kitted up and in the water - to summarize we had an excellent day where the mood was high and the jokes were flying about!

On Sunday Malene had her long-expected day off, while Theiss went to Abades with Paul, Chloe, Trigger, Hannah and Melissa. We had a couple of awesome shallow dives (5-8 m), where Hannah was leading and Melissa pointing out a lot of cool stuff, which included a baby cuttlefish, a cuttlefish fast asleep, beautiful anemones, octopus and even an eagle ray!!
It was a magnificent experience and especially the way the sun rays hit the colorful reefs on the second dive was simply breathtaking.

When we got back to the dive center we chillaxed a wee bit while having a RDP-session and practiced knots - simply a wonderful day!

Until now it's been hard work, but also great fun, and we're definately looking forward to proceed and improve.

As they say in Tenerife (and other Spanish speaking locations): Hasta la vista!

Boyce and Marlene

Finally im a PADI Rescue Diver.....and playing with dummies!

This week started off with Will showing up and our PADI Rescue diver course starting.

Basically we went through all the things we learned in our Emergency response manuals and had a good laugh at all the ridiculous stuff we had to practice on the dummy.
The EFR course took us through all the "skills" needed to help someone in trouble.

Tuesday we spent a ton of time in the marina going through the rescue diver confined session.
We spent at least 2 hours in the water going through all the tows and rescue scenarios and all the skills and before that we had done another 800m snorkel which both Hannah and I did poorly on.
After that it was regular day in day out kind of stuff, we had basically mastered all of that at that point so it was all good.

On to our mapping dives which we need to complete to pass our Divemaster course, which we done at Yellow Mountain. Our maps were just simply awesome!!
We also finished our Rescue diver course with two open water rescue dives. It was awesome even though Hannah could not get Alice out of the water to save her life…and by that I mean she eventually managed after quite a bit of work.

Las Eras was our next dives, I was buddies with Kali and Hannah was with Kali’s husband Yaro. Las Eras is one of my favorite dive sites but it was the first of a couple of days of really terrible visibility and surge underwater that we experienced.
But on the whole even though we had some issues, it was a good learning experience for me and Hannah.

Then the next day we went to Abades and due to the weather (just wind and surf) we decided to skip going on the right side of the bay and decided to only go on the left side.
Luckily I still was able to go and even though visibility was poor I enjoyed the dive.

The next day we went on dives at Yellow Mountain and originally Hannah and I thought we were leading dives to Alien Rock and Swim Through but with the poor visibility Alice took over and lead the dives.
Then on the second dive as I was swimming along near Yaro he pointed out a pair of underwear floating along the bottom nearby, that was quite funny!!

The next couple of days we had a few pool sessions and DSD’s in from the hotel pool so that was good.

Eric ~ Bananaman