Derek’s Dive Domain

(I have included the photos as links on this report as they are big files.  Please click in the appropriate places to see the full pictures.  Credit: Lynne Marshall.) 

I managed to book a really cheap deal for a weeks holiday in Ibiza back in June, so Monday October 1st found my sister and I at Luton airport waiting for an Easyjet flight over to Ibiza airport.  We had accommodation booked at the Monterrey Apartmenthotel, and a hire car booked from the airport.  Excellent.  I had a five dive pack booked with Sea Horse Divers, a snip at 115 Euros for the five boat dives.  Hopefully they would prove a good outfit.  I knew a couple of the YD massive had used them and recommended them, so I had high hopes for the week.

We arrived to a warm and sultry evening, and picked up the hire car as promised from the BK Car Hire rep. in the airport car park.  Very cheap car hire, and good service too.  I had the task of driving on the wrong side of the road for the first time in my life, and it was fun driving from the airport on the east side of the island over to the west side and to San Antonio Bay, where our hotel was up in the foothills on the Port des Torrent side of the bay.  But we made it safetly and just after 2AM we were booked in at the hotel and in our rooms.   The next day we explored the local area, and I located the Sea Horse dive center in Port Des Torrent, a lovely little bay with the dive centre and sever beach bars around the bay making it a lovely place to spend a few days.

ibiza-october-231.jpg 

 Anyway, Wednesday morning dawns and it is time for the first dive.  I head on down to the dive centre, and meet up with the owner Jeff.  It looks like there are just two customers today, myself and Charlie Cornwell, a retired fireman from the London area.  A devoted rugby fan, as I find out later in the week. 

Jeff sorted us out with kit, and we loaded onto the boat, and headed out to our first dive site, the Margritas Caves.  This is a dive site where you pass through a series of small tunnels and overhangs, with plenty to look at.  Jeff went through everything on the boat, leaving no detail of the dive untouched.  It was the most thorough dive briefing that I have had in 150-odd dives, and I was quite impressed by his attention to detail.  So we dropped into the water.  Jeff was diving with Sam, one of the instructors, a British girl who is working out there this summer, and will be back there next year.  I was buddied with Charlie the other customer, and Jake who is a young man gaining experience and dives with the dive centre.  We descended down to 28 metres, which is always a wonderful experience when you can see the surface from down there, and the n we went into a rocky area, before heading into the first of the cave/tunnels.  From here on  the dive was a series of rocky overhangs and small caves, and tunnels, but all of which had easy escape should you feel the need.  I saw a whole host of sea life on this dive, including Wrasse, coral, pencil urchins, damselfish and starfish - all the normal critters.  As always the first dive on a holiday is all about familiarisation with the environment, and the people that you are diving with, and I was nice and comfortable with everything on this dive, especially as I was back on the BCD after a summer using my Buddy Tekwing.   40 minutes later, and we were back on the boat all too soon, although we had the second dive of the day to come just around the corner in the area of the wreck of the Petralis.

After a surface interval which involved cookies, and a load of good natured banter, we dropped in for the second dive.  This time only Charlie and myself were diving, as Jake was suffering from the cold (in 25′C water, for goodness sake!) and Sam and Jeff were looking after the boat.  So Jeff gave us the dive briefing, and we dropped in off the boat and headed over to our descent point.  We went down to about 20 metres, and we could see the wreck of the Petralis just below us, which is a concrete yacht sunk there deliberately as part of an insurance claim.  We didn’t descend onto the wreck as we had agreed a dive plan involving a max depth of roughly 22 metres, and the wreck was about 26-27 metres down, although to be honest there wasn’t a great deal to see there, and the wildlife in the area was probably more interesting.  We had descended down a wall, and we spent a pleasant 30 minutes having a good look around mostly in the 15-18 metre range, spotting more starfish, wrasse, and the usual.  We then had a nice slow ascent up the wall having a good look at everything on the way, before exiting at the arranged point halfway along the rock face, where the boat could see us.  Tow really good dives to start the week off.  Nothing really special, but really enjoyable pleasant relaxed dives, which for me is what it is all about.

The next day we were back at the dive centre ready for some more diving.   Again I was buddies with Charlie, as we were now a known quantity.  (Charlie is a regular visitor to the Island and the dive centre, and I had obviously proved trustworthy(!), as we were left to enjoy our dives with Jake for company, whilst Jeff and Sam looked after some less experienced divers on the boat)

ibiza-october-064.jpg The boat loaded and ready to go…

We headed out to the Haystack for this dive, which is a small rock in the middle of the sea, but not too far from the coast to be remote.  This is quite a well known dive in the area, partly because of its wonderful array of fish life on view, but also because some fun loving locals decided to drop a Vespa scooter in there a while ago, which now resides at 20 metres!  We made a nice leisurely descent whilst finning around the rock to the far side of the Haystack, before maxing out on this dive at 30 metres.  I took my camera into the water on this dive for the first time and came up with a few shots which I can only put down to beginners luck, which I have put on the YD site since my return home.  A really fantastic dive this one, which now resides at number 3 in my top ten dives of all time.  We saw octopus, barracuda, crabs and loads of other life on this dive.  There was a small ball of fish down at 25 metres, which seemed to surround us briefly before moving on its way. 

dsc00998.JPG  (A shot of me on this dive by Charlie which now has pride of place on my PC wallpaper!)

 Anyway, back to the dive centre for a pint of deco juice and a good old natter with everyone before heading into San Atonio to explore.  Charlie had mentioned a good restaurant calle La Torre’ which has a great view of the sunset across the sea, so we went to find this place and had a coffee there, before deciding to come back another evening to have a meal there.

Friday dawned, and another one dive day, due to Jeff being busy at the dive centre.  I don’t mind, as one quality dive per day makes the diving last longer into the holiday :)  Today we are diving the Torre De Rovira, which is a dive site that Jeff knows, and uses for Open Water training dives, as there is a combination of a nice dive down to around the 10 metre mark, but if you head around the corner, it drops to 25 metres and beyond, and there is plenty too look at down there.  Today I was diving alone with Jake, as Charlie was not diving, and Jeff was in with Neil a student doing his Open Water course.  On this dive I spent a pleasnt 45 minutes doing the scheduled dive with Jake, taking a load of pictures along the way, most of which came out poorly, proving my beginners luck status of the day before!  We saw another couple of octopus on this dive, as well as some parrotfish, and a couple of groupers.  When we had finished the scheduled dive, we were sitting underneath the boat at about six metres, and Jeff was still working with his student, so being as we had plenty of air, rather than head up to the boat we spent another 20 minutes on the bottom, and I played around with the camera, and Jake took a couple of pictures of me. 

 One of the pictures that Jake took of me, which we also used later to spot the problem with my first stage!

This was a really great dive,one of the best of the week for me, and I know Neil on his OW course was raving abotu the dive as well when he got back onto the boat.  As you can see from the picture, there was a problem with my first stage towards the end of this dive, you can see the “fizz” coming from the turret valve in the photo, which Jake pointed out immediately after he took the photo, and we had a look when we got back to the dive centre.  Myself and Jake disassembled the first stage and greased the O rings etc, with no effect, but fortunately it turned out that Jeff was an ex Apeks serice technician, and with his help we stripped the turret and cleaned the O rings, and the seating area within the first stage, before reassembling.  It has been OK on several dives since, so the problem appears to have been some limescale type buildup which managed to get underneath the plastic seating ring inside the turret.

Saturday morning dawned, and my last dive of the week…. Charlie was present but couldn’t dive as he had a spot of lurgy and couldn’t keep his ears cleared properly, so he sat this one out.  I again buddied with Jake, although the group of 5 all kept together on this dive, as it was more of a guided tour than a regular dive.  We powered round to a cove just around the corner from the Torre De Rovira site, to a site known locally as Snakes and Ladders.  This is a site which goes down to around the 25 metre mark, and twists up and down little passageways between rocks, and some walls, and also has a couple of good overhangs.   This dive was split into two parts.  Initially we all did the same dive, but when we got to 18 metres, myself Jeff and Jake headed downwards to look under some overhangs  and into some very small caves, whilst Caroline and Sam stayed above the overhang and finned along watching us down below, as Caroline was limited to the 18 metre mark.  There was again plenty to look at on this dive, and I saw a couple of scorpionfish for the first time in the week, along with loads of jellyfish at the surface, and all the normal groupers etc around the bottom.  There was a great variety of coloured plantlife on the walls where the water flow was reduced, none of which I would be able to identify by name…  We surfaced after 41 minutes into a gorgeous sunny blue bay, and just relaxed on the surface before getting back onto the boat and heading back into Port Des Torrent, where we slowly dekitted. 

ibiza-october-105.jpg  A nice blue sea on surfacing

In the afternoon, my sister took part in a try dive session, as she has seen me dive a few times, and I could tell that she was getting interested in what I was doing.  Unfortunately her nerves got the better of her, and she couldn’t get to the point of being happy underwater, but she could keep her head underwater for 30 seconds at a time, so she go to see the underwater world from a shallow perspective, and she got more comfortable as she went on, so I think another try dive may be in her make up sometime….  Sam the instructor was absolutely brilliant with her, not pushing her too much, leaving all the decisions to her, but between Sam and myself we got her to kneel on the bottom for a little while and she was able to see the fish in the bay and other stuff, so she still managed to get the general taster of what diving is all about, even if she didn’t get to do an actual “dive”

In the evening we went out for a meal with Charlie and his wife at the La Torre restaurant that we had looked at earlier in the week, the Swordfish was absolutely delicious, and we watched the glorious sunset over the rocks in the sea, a really pleasant evening, after which we headed to one of the English bars in the area, and watched the second half of the rugby, to see England beat the Aussies….  top stuff!

ibiza-october-172.jpg  Team photo from the week.  Back row:  Mrs Charlie, Jeff, Sam, Sam’s friend!, Me

Front Row: Teresa (Jeff’s wife and fellow dive centre owner), Charlie

And that was it on the diving front.  On the Sunday we explored up in the hills around San Antonio, and had a look in the aquarium on the north west side of the bay, before heading back to the hotel, and an hour in the swimming pool before packing and slowly dragging ourselves back to the airport for the journey home.  As usual, we didn’t want to leave, and I really hope to be able to return back to Ibiza again next year for some more diving, and to explore some of the other parts of the island that we didn’t get to do this year.  The holiday package deal that I found on flightline.co.uk worked out perfectly, contrary to what I thought might happen, being so cheap, and I can well recommend them for late deals!

ibiza-october-176.jpg  Me on a wall in Ibiza, looking sunny