Derek’s Dive Domain

Day 4 of the diving dawns, but today its a little duller, with some black cloud hovering over Teide. Its not going to rain though, because it doesn’t apparrently! Another two dives today at El Paraiso and El Puertito. El Paraiso is a shore dive, down 63 steps onto a beach from the road and into the sea over a rocky shoreline. Then its out of the bay and around some rocks on the corner of the open sea, dropping down to about 7 or 8 metres. The water then drops down to about 13 metres, before rising back to 6 metres as we climb up and over and start following a faultline, a volcanic fissure. Just before finning up onto the fissure we stop for photos, as Kate has found an octopus which Michael was able to shoo into a nice photo pose

   El Paraiso
Then its along the fissure, seeing loads of pencil urchins and fish as we go, and a black moray eel sheltering down in the cracks of the rocks, before we drop off down to 23 metres, and into what is almost a rocky amphitheatre. Michael fed the fish with some fish that he had brought along with him, and we watched all the fish congregate and feed, before moving to the edge of the amphitheatre, where we saw a junior marbled ray buried in the sand. I thought this was a big ray, but apparrently its just a junior sized one, so I can’t wait to see the bigger ones! From here its back up and onto the volcanic faultline, and the return journey, where we see a lot more wildlife. I’m watching my air at this point as I am on a 12 litre cylinder instead of a 15, and I head up to 5 metres to clear my safety stop and to conserve some air as I know I am going to need it on the way back. We head back with me hovering above the others, and its quite interesting to look down on them and watch them finning lazily about looking into crevices and the like. It was quite a tranquil and relaxing scene from above, and one that I am quite glad I experienced, as you don’t normally get to watch a dive from just outside the group. When we got back to the shallower water, I dropped back down to join the others, but I knew that I would need to borrow some of Michaels air to avoid a longish surface swim, so I headed over and changed onto his long hose for the remainder of the return swim. This was an interesting experience, and definitely worth experiencing as even with a long hose, you have to keep a close eye on your bouyancy and also where the donator is heading so as not to bump and barge each other.

Out of the water, and into the bus for the transfer to the next dive site at El Puertito, and a small beach cove with quite a few people sunbathing etc, just a normal small village bay. A shallow dive this one, with us not breaking 10 metres the whole dive, but a very eventful one, and probably the best dive of the week. We head out into the bay, finning lazily around some big rocks and amongst all the anchor points and bouys for the harbour boats, and then through a conservation zone, which looks as though it has been set up for learning/schools type use. Suddenly, I notice a bull nosed ray, and I am captivated by it, watching it glide effortlessly through the water, with that style that only rays have. I spend a very pleasant couple of minutes watching the ray until I suddenly realise that I am the only one still watching. I turn around to see the rest of the group watching a loggerhead turtle lazily swimming among the group, having a look at each diver in turn. I literally shout a naughty word into my reg, and quickly join the group to see the turtle. This is what I have waited for all week, as I’ve been especially keen to experience this moment. We spend a good 15 minutes finning around with the turtle, who was also joined by his mate, who swam right up to our masks, giving us a good once over, then generally playing with the divers. They were very inquisitive, and especially like Kirstie’s pink fingerless gloves (thats another story though!). Many many photos were taken by everyone, and some lovely shots resulted, a few of which you may have seen on the YD site. After a fantastic time with the turtles, it was all too soon time to head back towards shore, and we watched them swim off into the distance and headed homewards. A short way into the return swim, I turned around to check on everyone behind me, and saw Paul finning along with a turtle just behnd him. I motioned for him to look around, and he turned and saw it, and the two of us had another few minutes swimming with him before we really had to head in. Then its back to the shore, and the excitement that greeted me when I surfaced was great, everyone really excited about the dive. I didn’t want to get out of the water and just lay in the shallows with the waves washing around and over me just laughing and enjoying the moment. Unfortunately due to the weather later in the week this was the only time we were to dive here, and I’m looking forward to a time in the future when I can dive here again.

Dive 7 (64) 23.5 metres, total dive time 56 minutes

Dive 8 (65) 9.8 metres, total dive time 53 minutes