1st Week and almost 19!

I just had my first week and I’m sitting with my laptop writing my First blog ever.

I will start with introducing myself. My name is Lydia and I’m 18 (almost 19) years young. I’m from Holland and started my Divemaster internship as a PADI Open Water Diver. 

It’s my first time here in Tenerife and I’m really exited about being here. I started diving in Turkey with my brother , and we also went diving in Egypt.

In my opinion, the first week here is a lot to learn and to remember. Lucky for me, the other intern Sam , who is already a Padi Rescue Diver, is very nice and has been helping me a lot.

I finished the chapters I had to do of the Adventure Diving book. It should be forbidden to use that many difficult words. Unfortunately English isn’t my first language!

On the first day Melissa took Sam and me to the toyshop (the diveshop) where I started trying on wetsuits. After a while I finally found a great wetsuit, perfectly fitting and really comfortable. It’s an Aqualung suit and Pete has one the same make as well, so I just know it’s a very good wetsuit.

Sam and I had 2 pool sessions. The First pool session was to see where we’re at with the skills.
The second pool session went way better, already improving our skills.
My first dive was a shore dive in Abades with Alice and saw a lot kind of fishes, I saw a Cuttle fish and I saw an Arrowcrab. Those are really funny animals.

We also went on a dive boat and it was so much fun, you need to hold on or you bouncing off the boat.

I saw a Fire worm, Cleaner shrimps and a Barracuda at the second dive and a Fangtooth Moray Eel.

The greatest dive was diving with Turtles, one Turtle came really really close and it was amazing!

Othe than learning everything about diving and equipment, I also learned a lot about cleaning.

1. I learned that sweeping and mopping are two different things and it’s not just a funny way to say mopping.
At the end of the day I just said sweaping and swopping.

2. I learned that you need hot water when you clean and it’s also a pretty good idea to use cleaning liquid.

3. I learned how to dust, this went pretty well.

4. And I learned how to clean windows. Well I’m starting to learn because I didn’t do a great job. I was standing, bending and boiling behind the windows in the hot sun.

The biggest surprise this week, probably the biggest surprise in my life happened last week. I was focused on listening to Alice when two people walked in. I had a quick look and realised those two people were my Mom and my Stepdad visiting me in Tenerife.

I was in shock for a few minutes. They came to surprise me for my birthday which is on the 12th of October.

I’m really happy with my parents being here. It’s gonna be hard to see them leave again.

I hope you enjoyed reading it. I surely enjoyed living it.

Lydia

The Professionals at work

Now certified as PADI Divemasters, we had the week to use our skills and at last take our snorkels off!

We all started the week going to Las Eras, our favourite dive site. Two great customers and two great dives.

Melissa who has been diving here for 4 years or so now agreed that it was the biggest Octopus she had ever seen.............. it was rather large.

We were scared it would eat us. It gave a lovely display swimming in front of us we where rather lucky.
We continued to spot many more Octopus and Moray Eels, as well as Barracuda, and two Gurnurds, who have beautiful wings stretched out when the swim or fly.

We all spent the next day at Yellow Mountain where we went to Alien Rock lead by Geoffrey with our customer  Peter,  seeing a Common Ray and all the locals at the mountain.

As our time with Dive and Sea was coming to an end we all went out for a lovely dinner paid for with Beer Fines .
It was a great night with some individuals drinking a little too much. The next day we where left to recover.

The next few days where left to us to re arrange the shop and moving all the diving equipment to our new storage facility and now the shop is much more spacious and airey. It looks great.

Todd and Jess’s last day was leading dives at Yellow Mountain and cleaning the boat and shop.

It has been a roller coaster ride and a great experience we thank Pete and Melissa for putting up with us and all there help gaining us our Emergency First Responder, PADI Rescue Diver and PADI Divemaster qualifications.

Good Bye from us. Geoffrey is still here for a few more days so you will still be hearing from him!

3 New Divemasters :-)

Masters of Diving. Jess started the week leading dives at Abades, as part of her Divemaster internship with some great customers seeing a range of cool stuff from Sea hares to Moray eels and our favorite Octopus’s.

Not a bad dive in all for Jess. Geoffrey took his older sister Shontelle on a DSD dive, Discover Scuba Diving. Where they first started off in the pool progressing to the open water.
She had a great time and had done really well it was lovely to see brother and sister diving together.

Wednesday we all looked forward to the night dive.
With an early start of 5.30 am we made off to Yellow Mountain to see the creatures of the night. We saw many Octopus out of there holes wandering the sea bed. They had such great colours completely different to the day, which was cool.

We had found a Moray Eel that was out of his home who decided that we got to close and swam at Geoffrey.

Towards the end of the night dive we surfaced in the middle of no where with an enjoyable swim back to the boat due to some navigational errors.
Geoffrey, as part of his Divemaster stamina, completed his 400m swim and 15 minute float gain some good grades with a 4 and a 5.
Geoffrey also went to Las Eras to do his Deep Dive as part of his Master Scuba Diver certification.
He also had the bad luck of seeing a dead Turtle and an Octopus eating a Trumpet fish giving it the name Death Row.

Things where getting serious now. We completed our Divemaster skills all of us getting at least 100 out of 120 a great effort from all involved.
In the Afternoon we sat our Divemaster Exams all getting great scores ranging from 94% to 97% everyone was well chuffed.

As part of Project AWARE we all went out knife in hand and stabbed up some urchins making plenty of fish food. We must of killed over 250 between us ridding that section of the ocean of the pests it was great letting all that frustration out.

Todd completed his stamina test’s doing well in his 800m snorkel and 100m tow.

Our last skill to complete was the Kit Exchange where our buddy and us had to work out the best way to swap all our items if kit whilst breathing through one regulator.
It went without one mistake and we all smashed it getting 5’s.

We are now all Certified PADI Divemasters WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Not a bad week at all.

Urchin-killings and a new Dive Site ~ El Delphin

Week 3 of my internship has just passed, which means I only have 5 more days to go till it´s back to freezing Dutchieland. (Actually thinking about it, I don’t think it will make such a big difference whether your soaking wet because of the rain or soaking wet because your sweating like a pig all day!)

On Sunday we went to Las Eras for my and Geoffrey’s PADI Deep Speciality dive and my SMB Speciality dive. 

Las Eras is a really nice dive site, with a great underwater world. On our way out everything went really smooth, just bobbing around in the water, letting ourselves be carried away by a current, checking out the Needle fish, Octopus, Barracudas and all the little critters along the rocks. 

At around 30m. Gareth made us play a little game to check if we were effected by gas narcosis, writing our names backwards. No trouble for me there, Geoffrey on the other hand seemed pretty narced, having trouble remembering and writing the correct letters (although he did had some trouble spelling his name backwards at the surface as well, but we’ll blame the early morning for that!).
After our little play-time, it was time to return to shore. By then we realized that the current was quiet strong and we struggled to swim back.
To be honest we did really well, considering we did a 30m. dive for 43 minutes in a current that strong! Really cool detail is the Octopus we saw eating a big Trumpet fish (with the Trumpet fish still sticking half out of the Octopus….I’m realizing now without a picture this description is missing a bit of X-factor, not sounding half as exciting as it actually was, you should have been there…). 

A little less cool was the dead baby Turtle we saw, lying on the bottom, all white and with his head ripped off, starting to deteriorate (again, you should have been there for the visual effect with this description…or maybe not).

We also had some time this week to go exploring! Pete decided it was time to check if he still had it, so along with Gareth, Geoffrey and me, we went to a new dive site called El Delphin (named after a Dolphin statue we passed while descending) for another deep dive. 

Star of the day was the huge Atlantic Ray that swam towards us as soon as we arrived on the bottom. A beautiful start of the dive! 

Gareth also decided to take some breakfast food from his fridge to play yet another game. Playtime was over pretty fast (which is actually a good thing at that depth)…The boys were not able to crack the egg under water so I had to show them how (pretty pathetic guys that even under water the woman has to handle the food like in the kitchen) and Gareth didn’t really knew why he brought the tomatoes (other than they were mouldy anyway and taking up beer-space in the fridge) so we squeezed them all up and prepared a nice little breakfast for the Bream and Trumpet fish.

The second dive of that day was a project Aware dive. We went to Starfish bay to do some urchin-killing. Somehow everyone was really exciting about this dive, it didn’t bring up the best in all of us. 
In the beginning I felt a bit sorry for the urchins, especially the little one's, so I have to admit that in the beginning I did let the little once get off the hook.

When I looked to my left and right side, I saw my team-members who turned into psychopaths; tossing the urchins up in the water slicing them like Japenese sushi-chefs or Samurai soldiers. 
Some of them would put them on a rock, watch them walk away, toss them over, making them think they could escape the massacre and then give them the death sentence anyway. 
I just thought they were weird and British….UNTILL….I got stabbed by one of those sneaky bastards (talking about the urchins again not my team-members)! 
Then my finger hurt, a little drop of green blood dropped out of it, my mind went blank…. From that moment on it was Die Urchin Die!!

(Again for the people not familiar with the urchins, they are a pest in this area, not native to the area and are sucking the life out of this part of the ocean, they don’t have natural enemies so we need to kill them to protect the underwater life).

Also the past week, the All-stars turned into the All-blacks after they all became PADI Divemasters by completing the exams and kit-exchange, which makes me the odd one out in my red T-shirt. 

I did the kit-exchange together with Geoffrey. 

Before the exercise we had 5 minutes to practice in which we agreed / learned that:

1. We were just going to see what was going to happen

2. You should not clear your mask when you don’t have your reg. in your mouth because yes, you will run out of air and yes, you will try to breathe water.
3. We’re awesome anyway so this is going to be easy as!

The kit-exchange went really well, Geoffrey was in a bit of a rush which made it a challenge to keep up with him. Trying to take my fins off and put his "fins-fit-for-a-giant" on wasn’t that easy, made me tip over and sit on my backside at the bottom of the pool…..BUT….goal of the exercise was to make it look smooth and easy so I took my time (trying to fool the big boss that this was all part of mine and Geoffrey’s brilliant plan of preparation), and had a little moment for myself before Geoffrey helped me back up, proceeding the exercise in lightning-speed. In the end, like we expected, everything went awesome and we could be proud of ourselves.

I also had a go at doing a pre-dive safety check and the kit-set-up. Toughest part was to pronounce the word ‘Knurled Nut’ without laughing. I also need to remember to actually put on a weight belt when showing the student how to check for a weight belt and to actually turn the air on when I want to check my air!

At the end of the week, we went to a very informative presentation of Pro-sub, The Dive Centre's supplier of dive equipment otherwise known as Toy’s R Us for divers! 

Here we gained some useful information about the latest equipment and some sales- and business techniques.

Like I said in my intro, only 5 more days to go with hopefully a lot of beautiful diving!

Susanne

The week of the sore ass, the proud daddy and more diving!

Let´s start this week’s blog with a little quiz:
- Is your body starting to look like a female bodybuilder a little more every day??
- Do you find yourself suffering from muscle pains 24/7??
- Do you find yourself almost falling asleep during your 15 min. Float stamina test??
- Do you find it difficult to keep your eyes open after 4pm.??
- Do you find yourself ordering half a pint instead of a ‘big pint’??
- Do you find yourself ordering water instead of half a pint??
- Do you find yourself skipping the after work drinks for some nap-time??
- Do you find yourself on a boat at 9 in the morning, praying to god the day would end soon and you would not puke over or near any customers??

If the answer is yes to all of the above: CONGRATULATIONS, you just survived your second week of the DM-internship!!

Actually, my second week into the internship started pretty awesome: I had my well deserved day-off! After that, again, my life has known its ups and downs.

First day back to work, I decided to see if the stairs leading towards the pool were really that slippery when wet. And yes, I can confirm that now. After slipping down the stairs, the day only got worse. 

For the dives that day, I was scheduled on my first boat duty. With a lot of confidence and excitement, I loaded the gear on the boat, untied the mooring and rushed into my wetsuit….. so far all good. 

Once out of the harbor I started to realize that the waves were just a tiny-little bit bigger than the week before, which actually made the boat-ride out awesome, bumping around on the side of the RIB. 

Once we arrived at Yellow Mountain and all the divers were in the water, my staring contest started, looking at the horizon for 30 minutes, taking deep breaths, fighting the sea-sickness, asking myself out loud why I ever started this internship, swearing silently inside, and praying to god for the day to end, or the boat to sink (when you’re sick on the sea, there are only so little solutions)! 

Tuesday was course-day for myself, doing my fish-ID speciality dives at Alien Rock (Yellow Mountain). On the second dive I was able to take the camera, which is certainly a challenge in the beginning. The fish started to frustrate me by not sitting still, so the sea-urchins (who we normally kill) became my next models/victims, at least they were good for something. In the end I got the hang of it and really started to enjoy the dives and taking pics!

Talking about sea-urchins, I’m proudly to announce I killed my first two sea-urchins in the last week. I was a bit reluctant, but after you killed one, it’s easy as to become a serial killer (gives me actually a good insight in the minds of the boys at the juvenile prison I work at home….strangely we’ve got more in common than I thought!).

For the record, the black-long spined sea urchins are not native to the Tenerife waters and suck the life out of all the rocks and corals. They don’t have any natural enemies and are a threat to the underwater area, so killing them is a necessity for the preservation of these waters and the sea-life!

This week I also finished the first dive of my navigation specialty, which was pretty easy and fun to do, and also the first dive of my SMB-speciality. Thanks to our self claimed very-very-ill (not mentally) instructor Gareth (he can make a sore throat sound like he’s dying), that dive has to be repeated (but I’m not complaining! More diving and more practice sound good to me). 

Assisting Gareth on a couple of other dives and courses has been a very interesting learning experience (not only because we spotted tons of octopus this week). Every customer is different, which makes it a real challenge to provide the assistance they need to an awesome dive experience! It’s not just about the dive-skills, but a lot has to do with ‘reading’ your customers behaviour and actions.

The highlights of the week were the stamina tests that were all done on Tuesday and Wednesday. I’m very proud of myself and the All-Stars for getting awesome results and even getting compliments from the big boss himself, who was ‘very proud of his children’. We all had wobbly legs and trouble walking the stairs the next day, but we all scored fours on the tired-diver tow and the 800 m. snorkel, threes on the 400m. and fives on the float! We rock!!

Second highlight of the week was spotting the Dolphins on a boat ride out of the harbor towards dive sites Poco Naufragio and Pequeno Valle. It makes your day when it’s 8.30 am., your ass is still hurting from the fall down the stairs, your legs can’t carry you because of the tiring stamina tests and you can just sit on the boat, watch the sunrise and spot some Dolphins 3 m. away from you!

Summarizing: It’s been a busy week, with looooong working hours, but I was able to gain a lot of assisting-experience, finished my stamina tests, been to a lot of new (shore) dive sites and only gained 3 beer fines!!

Looking forward to next week!

Suzanne

Dutch back-up for little Alice!!

Unlike my fellow British interns, Alice will agree that Dutchies are much more humble, modest, discreet (also pretty, awesome, kind and lovely. But we’re not really focusing on the details now!) , so I’ll start by introducing myself before I declare myself part of the All-star-team!!

My name´s Susanne (female, 25 and Dutch; so from Dutchieland, Germany or Poland according to Pete). On the 1st of September I’ve started my 8-week Dive-master internship in lovely Tenerife, already being qualified as a PADI Rescue diver.

So far I've been diving in Vanuatu, Fiji, Australia, Indonesia and some sort of foggy-lake-kinda-puddle in Holland.
From today on I also will be writing a blog every week to keep everyone updated about the high’s and low’s of DM internship at Dive and Sea Tenerife.

So far, the first week has flown by!

Getting to know the other interns (Jess, Jeffrey (George) and from today on Wonka Todd), the bosses, daily chores, location of the materials, daily routines, beer-fine system etc. has been interesting, but also pretty exhausting.
The 30+ degree weather and British only able of mumbling are not helping the focus!
Most days this will result in a sunburned face and back and an English-language-button that switches off somewhere between 14.00 and 15.00, which sometimes can be used as a good excuse for a screw up!

The last week a lot of pool-skill-practice was scheduled; The self-pronounced All-star-team is close to the end of their internship and needed to fine-tune their skills. Got a little jealous looking at the level they were already performing at, but then at the daily debrief I would get my chuckles for all the beer-fines they are paying while I’m still off the hook for being in my first week!!!
Skills like hovering, ascending using the 5-point method, the pre-dive safety check, 400m. swim and 800m. snorkel and many more were practiced.
Even after a few days I’m happy to announce that hard work indeed pays off.
Skills are improving and it is really motivating to watch and learn from the All-stars.

After the morning pool session, there would normally be one hour of absolute total chaos (how is that possible All-stars?? ), in which we try to get all the equipment sorted and loaded into the cars to go out to the marina or the shore dive site.
The next week we’ll have to work on some sort of structure to get ourselves organized and make our lives easier!

My first dives at Yellow Mountain were awesome; almost flat water, great visibility (20m.+), good diving conditions and apparently very few naked men strutting their stuff at the nude beach where the boat is moored (according to Jess on boat duty; the number of naked man was concerning low….).

We saw heaps of trumpet fish, moray eel, bream, black-long-spined-sea urchins (zee-egels in Dutchie-language) and much more marine life of which I still have to learn the English names.

Assisting the DSD-students on one of the dives was a great experience. Not only is it great and very rewarding to be able to help others to have the best possible diving experience on their first dives ever, it’s also very eye-opening to realize you can focus on a job that much, that in a 30 min. dive you don’t see a single fish. (and yes I was underwater, and yes I had my eyes open!!)

On Friday I did my first dives at Abades beach, buddying-up with an open-water diver. I absolutely loved this shore dive (even though Alice made us do an 800m. swim before we were allowed to descend and we didn’t even make it to the pretty side of the dive site due to the number of pictures being taken by the customer!). There was a lot of marine life along the rocks; heaps of pufferfish (one of which was very curious, swimming up to us), a cuttle-fish, again some moray eels and some beautiful soft coral.    

To end this first blog, a summary of things I’ve learned so far:
1. When Dutch and reading your English-274-page Divemaster manual and you stumble upon a difficult pronounceable word, don’t ask Jeffrey for help.  He is British, however there is a big chance he doesn’t know the word either!

2. When coming back from a skill-practice in the pool and after 30 min. you haven’t located your scuba-review slates, there is a big chance they’re still at the bottom of the pool!

3. Alice = Kim, Charlotte = Alice, Jeffrey = George, Sam = Amy, Gareth = either something with a T or an F, but both not appropriate to mention online and Pete = always right!

4. When going on 2 dives, cleaning all the equipment at the marina and washing the boat (about a 1.5 hour job) in 35 degree weather, no shade and the middle of the day; there is a slight risk of dehydration when all 3 of you forget to take any water to drink at all!

5. PADI’s most favorite words are: ample and err (which is posh American, really annoying when being used on every single page of the manual and can only be explained by Jess who is a posh-word-maniac!)

Time for my well-deserved day off!

Suzanne

Going Dutch!

After a lovely relaxing day off it was back into the water to finish off our PADI Rescue Diver course. 

We took our skills from the marina to the Open Water saving the lives of our fellow interns and Martin.
The highlight of the day was practicing our lifeguard carry.

Jess had 3 great lumps to try and drag on to the boat, which she managed to successfully lift Martin from the water.

Geoffrey gave Todd a massive wedgey to get him on the Boat to put an end to our Rescue course.

We all passed and are now PADI Rescue Divers, well done all!

We had a new arrival joining our Divemaster internship; Suzanne from Holland putting two Dutchies in the office.

Suzanne joined us at Yellow Mountain to have some recreational dives where we saw a black morray and a White Spotted Octopus so not a bad dive at all!

Meanwhile Jess was assisting Pete on Kirsty’s first open water dive.

Kirsty did a fantastic job of her skills and controlling her bouyancy. We had the privilege of seeing a very grumpy Octopus who inked just to let us know quite how much he didn’t appreciate us looking at him!

The following day Kirsty was back in the pool completing her confined water session with Geoffrey and Pete.
Whilst Todd and Jess both assisted Alice with Jennifer and Rory who were ‘Discovering Scuba Diving’.

We headed off to Yellow Mountain, where we joined Todd, Kirsty and Pete.

Kirsty completed her Open Water Course, a huge Well Done to Kirsty who did fantastic and was very popular with the Team.

Rory and Jennifer loved their first open water dives which went really well.

Yellow Mountain is becoming a trusty old favourite dive site.
Every time we visit we notice things that we haven’t previously which makes it that little bit more enjoyable.

We had a day in the shop giving it a thorough spring clean and bringing it back up to standard after some very busy weeks.

We have also had time to practice our skills in the pool in the afternoons which has been very beneficial as we are all seeing improvements.

Leading Dives and living with an Australian Girl !

This week started with me being in charge for this week and it didn’t get of to the best start with being a busy day there was a lot to try to make sure it was getting done.

So we went for a nice relaxing dive in the morning at Abades as the next group of  interns were doing there induction.
This would be the first dive I have done with the new Divemaster, Gaz, that was back for being an intern last year, and out here to complete his PADI Instructors course.
 
There was a lot more people in the shop due to the new interns arriving and Hayley, Will, Jamie, Gaz and me were down at the marina for a while after cleaning kit. I learned a valuable life lesson that barnacles are much sharper that you might think, and if you were to jump into a marina don’t push against something covered in them unless you think it might be fun to limp around for a few days with a sore foot!

Alex and me were spending a day trying to get though a lot of the skills for our Divemaster course so it was sure to be a very busy day.
So we were straight in the pool with Pete to go through our skill sets. The skills went ok but I think I could have done a bit better with some things.

Then we did our 400m swim and I got my fastest time yet so I was happy with that, and then we did the treading water for 15 minute's. Now this I had never tried before and it was quite a bit harder that I thought it was going to be but it was over soon enough.

Then it was of to do our 800m snorkel and 100m tow.

The week finished with a shore dive with Alex, Todd, Jess, Hayley, Melissa and me at Abades. And I suspected that Alex and me would be leading these dive and my suspicion turned out to be true with Alex leading the first dive and me leading the second.

Although it was just four of us that were on the second dive , the dive went ok and we didn’t get lost but we did have a bit two long of a surface swim to get to and from are descent and assent points.

So its just me and Hayley in the apartment now that Matt has departed for the UK, but has been great sharing with an Australian and I am learning lots of new things !

Foster

The Three Musketeers.

The pressure is on now we are soon to be down to three interns.

We started our week by heading out for Yellow Mountain. The three musketeers being Geoffrey, Todd and Jess had two great dives stalking 3 Octopus’s watching them changing colour, crawl up rocks and finally swim off. The biggest must have been a good meter long.

Jess went of to El Puertito with Grace and Frankie. They had great dives seeing the turtles and an octopus whilst Todd and Geoffrey went to Poco Naufargio and Pequeno Valley where there where stingrays, black morray, fangtooth morray, nudi branks and all your local fishes.

The interns and Louie where off to Abades to do the Project AWARE dive, cleaning the ocean to make it a better place for everyone.  Luckily Abades doesn’t have to much rubbish and we came back with a few items each!

It was Gracie’s last day of diving so we where practising our peak performance buoyancy by floating on or heads and using each other as DPV catching a ride around the dive site.
We had to say farwell to Grace she will be missed she was a great role model and Divemaster.

Back to Yellow Mountain, the interns playground, where we practiced our navigation and mapping skills around Crocodile rock all went well and we made it back to the boat!

We where treated to going to Las Eras, with Mark a customer, a great dive site with tonnes of fish.
On entry there where hundreds of barracuda. We saw Stingrays, 3 moray eels, an octopus, cuttle fish and cleaner shrimp.

The other dive site there was the Pipeline where the underwater creatures have made home. There we saw a fangtooth morray, an octopus and a streaked gurnard our first one so it was great!

Off we set to try and earn our SMB speciality. It was great fun trying to erect our sausages. After many attempts we got there with Geoffrey’s looking abit limp! A sting ray even turned up to say hello.

On the last day of this diving packed week we started our PADI Rescue course in the marina joined by Martin another returning customer, playing dead and giving each other the kiss of life.

We finally then attempted to snorkel 800m, attempted being the main word. Work to do on that one!

More next week.

End of Part 1 for Hayley

So its my last week here at Dive and Sea Tenerife, as I am completing my Internship in 2 stage's.

I am now nice and familiar with how everything works, and what goes on in the day to day routine, which is good, I feel more comfortable in what I’m doing, and have already learnt so much and feel more confident, not only as a Diver but as a person.

There are still a few things I’m getting wrong but learning from my mistakes has proven to be a great way to learn and make everything sink in.

We have been on some lovely dives this week, started the week of diving at Abades, where we saw tonnes of marine life...to name a few: common octopus, cuttlefish, fangtooth moray eel, black moray eel, cleaner shrimp, wide eyed flounder, blue fin damselfish, scorpion fish….and…well if I wanted to name them all, I would be here all day!

On Friday I completed my PADI Advanced Open Water course, so I was quite happy with that!
We did lots of great adventure dives including: night dive, deep dive, drift dive, peak performance buoyancy and navigation so it was great to broaden my diving horizons and do things I have never done before.

A couple more dives at Yellow mountain, Poco Naufragio and Abades was good, starting to feel more comfortable underwater with my buoyancy improving.

One of my favourite dives of the week was with Will completing his navigation speciality at Yellow Mountain. 

He did a really good job, he took me around the Swim through, and over to Crocodile Rock, it was nice to just leisurely swim around and check everything out. I noticed that a group of fish followed us around for the entire dive, every time I would cut up a pesky black long spined sea urchin, they would all crowd around, and every time I pulled out my knife, they would dart straight towards it.

This week we welcomed new interns Geoffrey, Jess and Todd and said goodbye to Jake and Will. So, it was sad to see them go, but its good to have happy new faces around.

After coming here with no dives, I now have 23 dives and, I have discovered a new love for scuba diving, and I am really looking forward to doing more dives on my travels, and perhaps even furthering my education in the dive industry.

So with my last week of this part of my internship, I’m going to make the most of it, and take in as much as possible.

I will be back in the early part of next year to complete my Internship, but for now its bye bye from me.

Hayley

New Interns and Old Friends

It was impossible to take Jake seriously for the duration of the week as he failed to complete a challenge and had to wear Spongebob shorts to work every day as a punishment.

The new interns also arrived and it was time to introduce them to one of the centres favoured dive sites Yellow Mountain. The “fresh meat” were all paired up with the now “old” interns and turned out to be better than we all expected especially considering some of their dive counts. At the end of the day we all went for a drink with the new interns and attempted to get Foster to smile.

Pete and Nicola came with us on another dive, this time to El Puertito. There were two turtles who were both very over friendly. Meanwhile the new interns caught up on their Emergency First Response courses and sat their exams none of which came close to Will’s 100%.

We also had an opportunity to finish any reviews that we still had to submit in order for us to crack on with our theory exams for our next qualification.

Time for all of the intern to either set or try and improve upon their times for the 400m swim and the 800m snorkel. During these swims it became very evident that swimming in a straight line is far harder than it looks.

On Thursday we met with Jackie and Phil from Teide divers at the pool and practised our skills all day. Pete seemed to enjoy the skills and DSD training more than any of the interns by floating upside down and generally being a complete pain, this was to show the extremes of how challenging a Discover Scuba student can be.

Jake had a day off on Friday so went with Will’s friends to El Medano which is just along the course from the dive centre. As they got to watch all of the surfers and the amazing kite surfers perform flips and tricks.

At the start of the internship Pete said that we would all have bad days, this was Will’s bad day!

After taking an eternity to kit up two DSDs, almost sending a new diver in without his fins or tank strap done up and giving the wrong BCD to someone that required one three sizes smaller it was obvious that he just should not have left his bed that day.

The other interns got to dive Yellow Mountain twice and then moved on to work on their Rescue Diver practical in the afternoon. This was when Alex surprisingly found out that she cannot descend and start breathing without a regulator in her mouth.

Next day we went to Gijarro to complete the last stage of some of the interns and Chrissy’s Rescue Diver qualification.

Will didn’t seem as if he needed rescued at all as he was quite happy hand feeding Sharpnose Pufferfish Black Sea Urchins.

After mastering the tows and removal of an unresponsive diver it was time for lunch.

In the afternoon we all got a chance to go to the pool and practice our 20 skills needed for the Divemaster exam.

Jake and Will seemed to find the experience far more amusing when trying to perform all 20 skills the third time

More from us later.