Tenerife 7th - 14th June 2005

[Tonto]

Left Norwich at 3:00 AM on coach to gatwick, would consider flying from Norwich next time (oh yes, there will be a next time), got to puerto de santiago sometime around 4:00 PM.
Managed not to fall apart on the flight out, helped by not having a seat in front of me, tons of legroom and a young student between Linda and I who was even more nervous as it was only her second flight so I kept a
stiff upper lip.
Amazed at the amount of building going on/banana plantations and the mad driving (not you Emma if you're reading this)
First ever dives off a rhib actually a lot less complicated than I had been led to believe and great fun zooming along in it, Incredible coloured water, sort of greeny blue not grey, is this normal outside england?
Did 7 dives in the end, all fun but two were fantastic.

On the Punta Blanca dive, I want to thank Neville the Irish guy for reassuring Linda as did Mike who came back to make sure she could get from the anchor line through the current to the dive.
It was a quite large horse shoe shaped rock formation with virtually no current inside, little overhangs to go/shine torches into, with what looked like red snapper, trumpet fish, box fish and others, with a sandy bottom with isolated rock piles for the baby morays to hide in, could have stayed down there hours but had to call time with 60Bar.

The other was the ray feeding dive, I was a bit slow getting to the site as I had been tying to help Sammy get down but she couldn't so after seeing her in the safe hands of Brian, I rejoined Linda on the anchor line but I have a problem equalising if I surface during the dive, it took maybe 5 mins to get down and at the bottom I could see the white curtain of bubbles where the feeding was happening, as we made our way over rays were arcing out and round for another foray into the melee, as we got really close all we could see were hundreds if not thousands of other fish all piling into the area and in the middle of all that the students were feeding the rays, Linda got the last of the food to give to them and I just watched it all going on, eventually the fish realised no more food and left as did the buddy pairs of air pigs and then we made our way back to the stop.

The students made the trip really as did the guys at Ocean Blue Divers who were very gentle with us all, although Chris was getting a bit frayed by the time he went in after the 3rd or 4th lost fin, and Brian's back must have been giving him pain from lifting the kit into the boat with no help from our divers.

Got awarded the POLDA (person of little diving ability) but as my indiscresions were not diving related I think it was a stitch up, (lost my camera, fell over carring weights back to the centre and couldn't work out that the lense cap was still on the video camera)

Highlights were the Octopus couple on honeymoon, the flying fish that kept pace with the rhib, the rays at feeding time and little Sam who still went back for another dive after throwing up at 4 Metres, respect.

Had some lovely evenings at the Blarney Stone (and a thanks for the offer of the sunglasses from an irish guy in there as I'd lost mine) and the nearby karioke bar where they barred two of our students for singing so badly.

Thanks for a great time Brian, Mike, Chris, Emma and Adam of Ocean Blue Divers and to Alan for making it happen from this end.