Derek’s Dive Domain

The final two days of my diving adventures in Tenerife, and the end of my first diving holiday is in sight.  The first day we return to El Paraiso, where we had seen the marbled ray earlier in the week, and we are joined by Shaun for this dive, who I buddy up with as Kate is buddying with Paul as Kirstie and Sue are sitting this dive out.  We do pretty much the same route as before only with more surge, as things are still a little messed up from the day before.  As a result we didn’t see any rays this time, but we did see a couple of very angry looking Black Morays and a whole shoal of wrasse.  Finning along the faultline was quite interesting, as it is only at about 6 - 7 metres and the surge was quite fun along there.  Visibility was also vastly reduced from earlier in the week as the bottom had been churned up quite badly.

The second dive was blown out, as we were planning to repeat the turtle dive but the area was quite rough, and we also tried a return to Los Abrigos but this was even worse, so the horrors of an early return to the bar again were suffered.

The final days diving saw us only doing one dive as it was to be a deep one, and we also needed to leave plenty of time before flying home the following evening.  We got in the bus and went all the way up TF1 back to Rad Azul, and this time Kirstie and myself took the dive on, both buddying ourselves up with experienced divers, and knowing that we could call the dive at any time (not that we couldn’t have done it anytime before of course - rule 1 really)  We followed the seabed out past the marina wall and out into the open ocean, and shelved down gently the whole way.  We stopped briefly at about 15 metres, then just carried on down the gentle shelf, until we reached 40 metres.  Not a great deal to see really, but just as we were about to turn away and move on, a stingray decided to show itself, and make Sue’s day by gently finning past and cruising into the distance.  We ascended a couple of metres and had a quick look at the memorial to a lost diver, before slowly making our way back up into more sensible depths of water ( )

By the time we had gotten ourselves back up to 10 metres, the 1 minute of deco on my computer had cleared itself, so it was just a matter of clearing the safety stop, and have a final look at the wildlife, before climbing out of the water in front of a beach full of tourists and making our way back to the van, and finally back to Torviscas for the last post dive social.

All that remained was to thoroughly wash our kit down and lay it out to dry, ready to be collected and packed the following day.  An absolutely fantastic 10 days was had by everyone (it certainly appeared that way, anyway!) and I know I had the most incredible series of adventures, I would never have believed that the trip would be as good as it was, after all the hype and pre-trip nerves that I’d been suffering.  I knew the vis would be good, and I knew it would be hot, but everything was just so much fun, just how a holiday should be!

I can’t wait to go back - even if its just to hopefully see the turtles again, let alone Mike and Rebecca and the others on the trip