| 080822 -
Fri & Sat, August 22-23, 2008 |
828-832 |
Dibba Rock |
Freestyle |
Gillian certifies for Advanced
Open Water - Our first diving weekend since returning to work from
summer holidays and we had an ex-open water student who wanted to go on to her
advanced course, so we pitched up at Freestyle Divers at noon on Friday and
went for a dive, just me, Bobbi, Nicky, and Gillian. For our first dive we
selected a boat dive to give Gillian a refresher. It took her a while to get
buoyancy under control (but she did in the end). Looking back for her on her
first dive in a while she could be anywhere between midwater and the surface. A
current was sweeping us along the raspberry coral patch and I was turning up
into the current to keep from being swept off it, and these maneuvers
eventually proved too much for Gillian as she let herself be carried off the
reef, then to the surface, where the surface current moved her even further off
the reef. She seemed OK at the surface so I suggested we snorkel back to the
reef, but after a few minutes of that with negligible progress she was
uncomfortable with taking in water through the snorkel so I suggested we just
go down and try to regain the reef along the bottom. Ear problems prevented a
fast descent so we were carried even further in the wrong direction. Many would
have given up by now but not Gillian. I had one hand on her BCD and with the
other I was augmenting fin kicks by pulling us along the bottom. Ten minutes
later, 36 min into a 50 min dive, we got ourselves back onto the raspberry
coral. Here it was much nicer. A black tip meandered into view. We followed a
tongue of coral out to where a trio of devil rays were hovering off the reef.
We came up on the rays and they didn't bolt, as they often do. They moved off
the reef and we followed. Gillian was under control by now. With 53 min of dive
time, max depth 13.5 meters off the reef, we surfaced having salvaged the dive
nicely.
For the three o'clock dive we were taken to the east (right) of
the rock and dropped in with possibility of riding the current back over the
corals at the front or dropping over the wall and diving the back side. Nicky
favors the back so we humored her. We did the dive as Gillian's underwater
naturalist dive. We went out over the sand off the wall looking for rays and
jawfish. We found the latter and watched them watch us from their holes while
Nicky photographed. I've noticed from her photos that often they have cleaner
shrimp living on their heads and jaws. This time I was able to spot the shrimp
live (just have to know what to look for). They were the high spot of the dive
though we saw the typical reef fish and morays on our way around the rock to
finish at the spot where Nicky got all the shark shots last time we were there.
This day that spot was pretty as usual, aswarm with tropical reef fish, but
quiet.
We had a long wait for dusk to descend so Gillian and I could go
on our night dive. Gillian's buoyancy was improving steadily and for her first
night dive she was an excellent buddy. In a crowd of lights like fireflies she
stuck close by me. We didn't see much remarkable in the way of fish but the
temperature of the dive was ideal, like a cool bath, and turning off the
torches and swirling up phosphorescence is always fun, as is swimming about a
moment with only ambient light from moon and stars. It was a very pleasant
dive, well executed.
In the morning it was time for a deep dive on the
Inchcape. The wreck is a challenging dive for newcomers, 30 meters, but a
redundant one for experienced divers. As with the night dive there is a
detailed briefing and a regimented entry down the mooring line, which is tied
to the starboard stern of the wreck. On this day we descended in a cloud of
algae with clear water, thankfully, from ten meters on down. I stayed close by
Gillian naturally while Bobbi and Nicky went on down to the wreck. Eventually
we arrived and examined the deck in the short time we had remaining. Both Fred
and Frieda, resident honeycomb morays, were home and craning their necks for
diving photographers. The shoal of snappers was there as usual, parting for
divers to pass but closing over like branches once a hiker has pushed through.
We conducted the dive with close precision, aiming for the mooring line at
exactly 20 minutes. We took another ten on the ascent, stopping in the algae at
5 meters for a 3 min safety stop. Back on the boat safe and sound, all felt it
was a good dive. The wreck is always beautiful, and there were no
mishaps.
The last dive of the day was Dibba Rock, the shallow front.
Gillian really had her act together now with buoyancy. The algae that had been
present near the surface at the Inchcape was clouding the entire dive site here
though. At times we could barely make out the sharks passing by. I saw my first
one in clearer water coming down the edge of the reef as I'd got a bit too high
and popped my head above water to make a heading correction. We put ourselves
on the raspberry coral and I had Gillian do a dead reckoning from a spot I led
her to, to the origin, and back to her starting point. Later I had her do a
square pattern, but current was shoving us aside and we got carried too far on
our third leg, couldn't be helped, her heading was fine. I saw a shark on that
third leg, don't think anyone else did though. Bobbi was getting good at
spotting sharks, kept honking at us. Nicky was taking pictures and working on
her hair.
At the end of that dive it was a pleasure to congratulate
Gillian on her accomplishment and on her underwater maturity in just 5 dives to
truly advanced diver status. |
| 080830 -
Sat, August 30, 2008 |
833-834 |
Ras Gurab |
Ocean Diving Center, Abu Dhabi |
Back to the balmy waters close to home
in Abu Dhabi, PADI open water training dives #1 and #2 for Calum and Kyla
Cromey-Hawke, two young students, brother and sister, whose father
particularly wanted me to train them, so we'd spent Wed and Thu nights in the
classroom and pool at the Beach Hotel, and Saturday they were ready for their
first two dives. Suhaib is the new dive pro at Ocean Diving Center, he's from
Jordan, and he runs a professional tour, nicely impressive. He also swept us
out over reasonably calm seas, slight wind a-blowing, to a new set of coral and
bommies for me at Ras Gurab, one with plenty of fish, excellent vis on this our
lucky day, and water the temperature of a refreshing bath. We had two dives
there. Calum thought we got to 8 meters on at least one. They were 61 and 46
minutes on my computer, the last three being a safety stop. The first nice long
dive was done without skills, just meandering among the corals, admiring the
schools of snappers and whatever that diamond fish is, flat silver, with yellow
fins top and bottom pointing streamlined back, and a delta fin at the end that
wiggles when he gets to speed, lots of those. We also saw some spotted yellow
grunts, some yellow and black striped bream, some parrot fish, blue tangs with
yellow paint slashes at the tail fin, and one small grouper that stared back at
me. Also shrimp dutifully cleaning guppy holes while the latter stood guard.
Skills on the second dive were the usual reg recovery, mask clear, and
alternate air source both static and on ascent, plus compass skills and CESA
for both students. Nice day, very pleasant, happy re-union with the fickle seas
off the coast of home. |
| 080905 -
September 5, 2008 |
835-837 |
Dibba Rock |
|
Two refresher dives for Angela, and
first three dives for Rachel Barton and Graeme Mullen's PADI Advanced Open
Water course. - As we often do, Bobbi and I got up at dawn to make coffee
and finish packing and head across the country to our consistently favorite
dive site in the whole world, Dibba Rock. We had agreed to meet Rachel and
Graeme there for their Advanced O/W dive course, 5 dives in a weekend. They had
also brought along a friend, Angela, for a refresher.
On arrival shortly
after 11, we found Freestyle had over-booked and had decided to lay on a
separate dive boat for us with the catch that it was leaving earlier than
planned, and they asked us to get ready in 15 minutes. This became awkward
because of the refresher diver. Angela had been certified some years ago but
had not dived in 8 years, and I didn't want to take her out with us without
first having her review some skills including mark clearing and alternate air
source in confined water. So I took her on a brief session in the shallow water
on our way out to the boat. As one can imagine, there are many issues including
weighting and trepidation when a diver after such a hiatus is asked to review
skills while being rushed so as not to keep others waiting. Angela did fine,
performing the skills flawlessly, though not smoothly (I encouraged her to take
her time). Once we got on the boat, we were told our dive time would be only 30
minutes because that boat was scheduled to return at a certain time to take
other divers to the rock. Typically after noon dives, there is at least an hour
before the 3 p.m. dive, so there seemed no logical reason to have us cut our
dive time down to half what it should be when the next dive could just as
easily be delayed. Waiting around is an accepted part of diving but DIVING is
the main part, and to cut that back wasn't cool, but in the end, Angela ran low
on air at about 30 min. so I had to surface with her anyway, Bobbi was diving
for free as my assistant, and as for Rachel and Graeme, they were promised one
free night dive in compensation.
And the dive itself, that half hour,
was superb. Graeme and Rachel were doing it as a boat dive and as a low stress
refresher, so we just headed over our favorite raspberry coral patch. There was
an algae cloud on the south part of the patch so I tried to stay in the clearer
water to the north where we soon started seeing barracuda, and near them,
predictably, sharks whiz by right on cue. We saw a turtle, and at one point in
the dive I indicated to Rachel that she should keep an eye on the blue above
the coral, and it was not long after that we saw a devil ray in just that
vicinity, and were able to follow it closely. In fact at the start of the dive
we had tied up at the back of the BSAC yellow diver and a couple of South
Africans I knew shouted back to me that I needed to change my website where I
had said that there were devil rays on the rock in summer. They were there now,
in September. These guys had apparently seen a few of them. We saw just the one
before Angela went low on air and 27 minutes into the dive I heard our boat rev
its engines to get our attention to come to the surface.
Our next dive I
planned as advance u/w navigation. I walked Rachel and Graeme through the
course on the beach beforehand and once in the water we decided to head to the
back side of the rock for variety and maybe see some jawfish. Glenn had
meanwhile joined us and he and Bobbi went down first and were no more to be
seen because Glenn was having problems with a non-inflating BCD and hadn't
adjusted weighting at the surface to compensate so their dive didn't go well at
all. Rachel and Graeme and Angela and I were not having a great dive either
because the algae cloud had by then moved to where we were just about to go
diving. So we descended in murk and didn't see much on the way down and over
the wall to the back side. Actually I was looking about for almost any salient
feature. I finally settled on a pointy rock at 11 meters and I had Rachel and
Graeme lead us away from it 30 meters along the wall and then back to it using
natural reference points. Then we headed north over the sand from it and back
to it on a reciprocal compass heading, 30 meters. I left a pile of rocks at the
outer point in hopes of coming on them later in a square pattern. Back at the
rock we headed east before turning north and then 30 meter to the west, though
I could feel on that leg we were caught in a current. I held back on fin
kicking but Rachel and Graeme went ahead (didn't see my pile of rocks, hmmm).
We all turned south and when we hit the wall we looked upcurrent for the pointy
rock. We found it close enough considering the current. Angela was by then down
to 50 bar so rather than carry on around the back side I led us back the way we
had come to shallow, clearer water. Near the mooring I took Angela to the
surface and Graeme and Rachel kindly followed. There were a dozen dive boats
there, and we found one from Freestyle that would take Angela at which point
Graeme and Rachel and I went on down to continue diving on the reef in front.
We had 15 minutes of dive time left to reach 50 minutes and in our remaining
time we saw a few more sharks and right at the end of the dive a huge turtle. I
recall how nice it was to see sharks again after sand diving at the back of the
island. I also recall just now that the turtles might not feel the same about
the sharks because we came upon one there that was missing a back fin due to a
wound, since healed, that looked suspiciously like a shark bite. He seemed to
be getting on quite well on three fins, thank you very much.
Back on
shore we had a long wait for the night dive, which got under way at 7:30, Glenn
joining Rachel and Graeme and I. This was a very pleasant dive. I got a little
chilled toward the end of the dive, wearing just my lycra, and I remember that
two weeks before with Gillian the temperature had been perfect. Winter is on
its way. Graeme and Rachel thought this dive was the best ever. I alerted them
to keep an eye out for little red eyes and there were LOTS of those, each with
a tiny red shrimp attached. The highlight of the dive was passing over a family
of turtles all bedded down flat in the coral patch. There was another turtle as
well we followed with our torches on it who trailed a nice remora right down
the middle of his shell. My night dives always include a few moments without
lights where we switch those off and all make phosphorescence sparkle in the
dark and then swim around a bit in the moonlight, kind of makes you want to
strip all your gear off. |
| 080906 -
September 6, 2008 |
838-839 |
Inchcape and Dibba Rock |
Freestyle |
Last two dives for Rachel Barton and
Graeme Mullen's PADI Advanced Open Water course, for certification. -
Another lovely day dawned at Freestyle divers and started for us with a deep
dive on the Inchcape. These are set piece dives with instructors taking down
students. Graeme and Rachel were buddied for this purpose with Bobbi and Glenn
intending to accompany us. But at the last minute they were asked to accept a
solo diver as buddy, and when the questions were asked later one of them was,
did he have an advanced certificate? I don't know the true answer to that
question, but if not, what was he doing on this dive? Glenn had helped him put
his gear together at Freestyle and he wasn't familiar with backward rolls. If
this was his first ever deep dive that would explain how he consumed half a
tank on the descent and got down to 50 bar before a single circuit of the deck.
Bobbi and Glenn had to return to the surface with him and give him alternate
air-source on the way up. They were not pleased, but I managed to get Glenn's
payment for the dive waived. They would have preferred having a decent dive
though.
Meanwhile Rachel and Graeme and I were carrying out our dive as
planned. I had a little trouble getting Rachel's attention at first because she
was glommed on the two large lion fish in the sand by the stern, but I soon got
them settled on the deck for the cognitive task of calculating a minimum
surface interval. That out of the way, plus quick comparison of depth gauges,
and we headed off for a tour of the wreck. There was a huge bull ray in the
sand and the normal panoply of snappers and whatnot, and Frieda was seen to be
lolling about in one of the hatches. Fred was perhaps sleeping and had not come
out to play. Graeme got down to 70 bar before 20 minutes were up and I made a
quick pass around the deck looking for Bobbi and Glenn to tell them we were
heading up early and was only mildly concerned that I couldn't find them since
they should have still been there since 20 min had not yet passed, but then I
had to focus on our safe ascent. We watched my bottom time on my computer go
from 2 minutes to 5 then to 22 then to 44 and very quickly to 99. At the
surface I saw that Bobbi and Glenn were already on the boat with their tail of
woe. Rachel and Graeme were saying, no THIS was their best dive
ever.
The last dive of the advanced course would be underwater
naturalist where students have to identify 5 vertebrates and 4 invertebrates.
Same buddy pairs as before (without the solo diver, thankfully) I told my team
they could do as they liked but I'd be looking for sharks and devil rays and if
they wanted to see those they could come with me. They all did, though the
start of the dive was a little disappointing since the red algae had settled in
with a vengeance casting a brown pale over what we would prefer had been blue
water. We started out on the boulders near the mooring. I pointed out a pair of
synch dancing batfish and different kinds of trigger fish. There was an
interesting cleaning station where a pair of wrasse were working the gill slits
of a passive puffer. A shark came by near the start but we didn't see another
for several minutes. We had got all the way out the tongue of coral that
signals the end of the reef when a lone devil ray appeared. We swam after him
and he let us get close enough to get a good view of his eye stalks but when he
took us into the rubble off the reef I decided to let him go. We doubled back
onto the reef and a big shark appeared, and some in our group swam after him
until he went into the rubble. I hung back to be sure we didn't lose our coral
patch and as the others were returning the shark reappeared and swam right
beside me. My turn to follow over the coral and then the water overhead
suddenly morphed into a school of devil rays. Our group caught up to them and
watched them disappear into the haze and then further on we saw them again. At
that moment two sharks passed just below them in one of the signature tableaux
of Dibba Rock, close and dynamic juxtaposition of shark and devil ray. The
sharks swam out of view but we followed a phalanx of 8 rays as they moseyed on
ahead of us, swimming two meters off the reef. I was able to fin quite close to
them. When the rays vanished more sharks appeared, Graeme pointed to 50 bar and
disappeared, and Rachel his buddy signaled up to join him at the surface. At
that moment a small shark cruised nearby in clear water and Bobbi and Glenn and
I swam over and watched him out of one eye and Rachel ascending out the other.
We spent another 5 minutes meandering about on our own but only saw one more
shark. Up on the boat I allowed that was one of MY best dives ever (vis could
have been better ;-) |
| 080919 -
September 19-20, 2008 |
840-843 |
Dibba Rock |
Freestyle |
Open Water Certification
dives for Kyla Cromey-Hawke. We'd scheduled two dives on the Friday,
meeting up at noon. A huge retinue (8 or 9) of divers appeared mainly brought
along by Rachel and Graeme, and also a few just turned up such as Gillian,
certified advanced by me not long ago, and Iain, a hasher who wanted to see if
he could get in on a discover scuba diving introduction to an open water
course. I told him to watch the dvd while I was taking Kyla on her dives, and
I'd take him in the pool in the evening while the others were out night diving.
Rebecca Woll was also down to do a refresher course pursuant to a
planned trip to Mauritius over the upcoming Eid holiday. Kyla was brought down
by her father Bob, a commercial diver, who stood watching from the shore as we
set out on the first dive. Andrew (at the helm) asked me if a 12 meter descent
would be ok, in which case he'd take the east shoulder off the rock and we
could round the back side on our way to hopefully reach the raspberry coral bed
at the front where we usually see the cool animals. Jen and her husband wanted
to join us, and we took our time going in while Andrew sorted out Jen's o-ring,
and Rebecca was sorting out her memories of her last dive under Bobbi's capable
buddy assistance. Kyla and I dropped on down the mooring line and I had Kyla do
her oral inflation and mask flood and clear while waiting for the others.
When all together, we headed on a north heading down the boulder wall
and onto the sand where we at some point reached 18 meters (60 feet on my depth
guage; I'd somehow left my computer in my dive back back ashore). Jen and hubby
went their own way while Kyla, Bobbi, Rebecca, and I went over the sand looking
for rays and jawfish, saw neither, so tracked back to the wall and angled up
the boulders looking for the way into the shallows on the northwest edge of the
rock. I saw a light space and headed for it.
We came into the shallows
where we found grunts and snappers among some nice coral bommies, but also sand
and coral rubble and a little surge. I was confused as to where we were exactly
when Bobbi signaled an ascent. Her snorkel had caught at her neck under her
chin, causing breathing problems, and rather than let me work it out for her,
she decided to do it herself at the surface, so we all had to join her there.
This was a good thing in that at the surface I saw that we were inside the
coral and therefore then knew where we had to go to go to reach it. But it was
a bad thing in that Kyla had to descend midwater in order to resume diving and
she had ear problems doing so. I waited at the bottom for her to work it out,
Bobbi and Rebecca disappeared into the haze but returned to see what was
keeping us, and after a few minutes, I figured we might as well head for the
reef and let Kyla join us at the bottom when her ears cleared. At least I now
knew where the reef was.
The clacking on the raspberry coral bed can be
heard as you approach it heightening anticipation of what you might find there.
When we reached it I decided to turn right on it and almost immediately I saw a
shark crossing it. Kyla however, still having trouble descending, was too high
up to see it and Rebecca was lagging behind with a foggy mask and so only Bobbi
rushed over to see it. We soon saw another and not long after that we saw a
devil ray mid-water. Again Bobbi was there to see the second one, and the
third, but our ladies were just far enough above and behind that they missed
these as well. I don't think any of them saw the last shark or two I caught
skirting the edge of the reef, though I believe we all saw turtles on this
dive. It was a nice dive.
The next dive we decided to get a drop right
on the reef and our dive buddies agreed to keep abreast with us this time and I
promised to show them sharks if they'd keep up with me. I got on the reef right
away on a westerly heading from the mooring, and we passed early on by the
salient anchor the marks the start of the coral patch. This dive was superb. We
saw sharks, plenty of them. Rebecca was stoked she finally saw a shark!. We
also saw devil rays. But the really memorable aspect of this dive was the
turtles. We kept coming on them throughout the dive but as we heading out to
the far edge of the reef we found turtle city. It was low tide, Andrew said
later they go there from shore at low tide (which was why we didn't see them
next day, same place, but high tide). At one point we found dozens bedded down
in the coral. I was able to count seven in one view, and one who took off just
as a shark passed, presenting another of those Dibba Rock tableaux. Bobbi swam
alongside them and touched their shells, a benign intrusion into nature we
think. We decided to return there next day. Incidentally, at the end of this
dive, Kyla became a certified O/W diver.
Back on shore, I guided Iain
through the flip charts explaining discover scuba diving and took him into the
pool where he did everything perfectly, so I figured that the following day's
diving would be pleasant. The morning dawned not so hot, the seas were calm,
and the vis looked excellent as we backward rolled off the boat, though it
deteriorated to haze over the coral patch itself. Bob had decided to join his
daughter Kyla, and Bobbi was teaming with whomever as I was sticking close to
Iain. I saw a shark almost immediately though again the other divers were
hanging back, and it was only Bobbi who joined me in pointing and making the
shark sign at her forehead. We saw some cuttlefish here as well, and later some
flighty squid larvae dancing with rippling skirts. Though vis was poor we saw
more sharks but we had to work hard against the current to make our way all the
way out the reef where we saw no turtles as we had the day before. At least as
that point we could wheel around and return comfortably with the current. Time
and air were running out when a pair of devil rays appeared and led us off the
reef. We had to work a bit more to get back on the reef and Iain signaled 50
bar. We were shallow and I wanted to show him one last shark which I felt we'd
surely see. One appeared on cue and Iain saw it, so we headed up. Another nice
dive.
Iain wanted to go for another dive so we obliged, this time going
off the east shoulder as we had our first dive the day before. We descended
down the line into a school of blue trigger fish. As we popped to the sand a
big brown ray meandered over. There was another snuggled underneath a wire mesh
fishing pot. As we had the day before we went into the sand looking for
jawfish, found none, but did find a small delta ray, the kind we see often at
the breakwater in Abu Dhabi. Continuing up the wall we found morays and lion
fish and clown fish in the anemone. This time I didn't take the gap that led me
the day before in the shallows between the rock and the reef. I kept wide and
went west along the boulders. Too far west I thought, looking for a chance to
turn south. But the rocks looked familiar, eventually a rope tied to one showed
us a mooring, and beyond that, the raspberry coral; however, 40 minutes into
our dive. Now we were back on familiar territory though. We saw more sharks
before Iain showed me 40 bar and at 50 minutes we headed up. |
| 081003 -
October 3, 2008 |
844-845 |
Dibba Rock (where else?) |
Freestyle Divers |
Working again with Iain, getting
him up to PADI O/W dive #2 - Bobbi and I had been hiking for three days
in the Jebel Alakhdar region of Oman but came back on Thu just to see if Iain
wanted to go diving He did. Unfortunately all our usual hoteliers in Dibba had
doubled their prices on the occasion of Eid Al Fitr, each and every one, even
Seaside, so we didn't stay the extra day as we normally do.
But we
hooked up with Iain Friday morning and rode up together to Dibba, doing
academic modules 2-3 in the car on the way up. Once there we did a first dive,
8 meters on the front side of Dibba Rock. Vis was not good, there seemed to be
a cloud of algae hanging right on top of the raspberry coral. We saw
interesting creatures though, as usual. Bobbi found a couple of nudibranchs
caressing each other right off the bat. We saw a squid and a cuttlefish, and a
placid turtle. There were the usual batfish, triggerfish, wrasse cleaning
stations ... and sharks of course. These glided in quite near, otherwise we
wouldn't have seen them. Oddly as we came out to the end of the reef vis
cleared somewhat. We turned to regain the reef, and there was once again the
murk for some reason. We still saw sharks and were looking for more when we
thought we ought to end the dive at 55 minutes.
I took Iain for his 2nd
and 3rd pool modules between dives and we then re-entered the ocean for what
was officially his o/w dive #2. This time we dove the back side. Again it was
murky and there was a current sweeping us along, so I didn't want to get too
far out over the sand. We found a few morays in the rocks and in the sand, no
rays, only ray shadows, but regaining the reef Bobbi noticed jawfish. We found
a couple, young ones and shy, that ducked out of site. There was a strong
current, I overcompensated for it and came up too early looking for the gap
round the rock, got us caught in the surge, went back down, and led us to the
shallows as Iain was running low on air. He and I ascended at around 48 minutes
(15 meters), nice dive, but I prefer the front side with all the sharks. Iain
did well, two dives to go. |
| 081010 -
October 10-11, 2008 |
846-848 |
Dibba Rock and Inchcape |
Freestyle Divers |
My o/w student cancelled his dive in Abu
Dhabi so Bobbi and I suddenly had a weekend free and decided to go to Dibba and
dive just the two of us. We made a leisurely 11 a.m. start from Abu Dhabi and
arrived in time for the 3 p.m. dive. We were told vis had been great at noon
but by now the haze was back slightly over the reef. We popped over the side
and I realized I'd left my compass ashore because I was using a different reg
from the usual one (with compass) and hadn't thought to bring another, they
were back in my dive bag. Solution snorkel over to the reef and descend right
on it and then you can't get lost. In the comforting 30 degree waters we
drifted along over raspberry corals, greeted occasionally by sharks which for
some reason didn't give me the kick they usually do. The reef was fairly
crowded with divers as well. A group of Arab guys followed close behind us and
when we spotted a turtle one of these divers went after it as it lifted off the
reef. Feeling threatened the turtle accelerated and the Arab used his arms to
pull himself forward rather than streamline with fins. He caught up with it and
gave it a shove to one side. I was afraid he was going to grab it. People at
the Royal Beach Hotel are starting to catch the ones that loll off the beach
and haul them out of the water. It's a nature reserve but there's not very
diligent enforcement. Trying to remember now what else we saw. As we were first
in the water we gave ourselves 65 minutes down, nice dive.
Next day we
got up at 6 to get ourselves down to the dive center and do a morning swim out
to the rock. For some reason a lot of people at Freestyle think we're
superhuman for going out there in full gear but Bobbi had no problem (no
current fortunately). I used a rope as a 'buddy line' to help her confidence in
case she flagged but she did fine. We took a 30 degree heading direct to the
rock but Northerly would probably have been better as we had to fin west to
find the reef. None of the dark patches looked quite right till I saw a turtle
lift off one and a moment later a shark swim over the top of the reef below.
Yep this was the place. We descended.
The raspberry reef at 7:30 a.m. is
alive in a way that it isn't once the horde of divers arrives. Vis was decent
as we finned along the southwest leg toward the junction of the V that shapes
that reef. There were sharks moving about, more than we usually see. We were
the first to bother them this morning, so they only slowly moved away. We saw
many, some coming right along our bows as we finned comfortably
forward.
Heading N/E along the left leg of the V as seen on this page,
we found the anchor that marks the top left of the V and then turned around for
the return leg. It was at this point that a pair of devil rays came into view.
Also they were high off the reef in the clear water above the soft white haze
clowding the coral. We swam over to them and got good views as they cavorted
and sauntered away.
We had a pleasant return back along the reef,
finding more sharks and right at the end of the reef a half dozen cuttlefish.
Two of these cuddlefish were locked in a tentacle to tentacle embrace, face to
face. On that dive I wish I'd had a camera to record some of the sharks that
came close, the devil rays, and those two cuddlefish.
We'd been diving
over 50 minutes but we'd come to the end of the reef and wanted to make the
9:30 dive, so we consumed last 100 bar in our tanks finning 210 degrees along
the bottom till I got down below 50 and we surfaced just 10 minutes finning
from the Freestyle dive boats.
Since we'd been to the rock Bobbi and I
decided to go to Inchcape just the two of us. So many times we've been there
with students and others who had compromised these dives but this time it would
just be Bobbi and I. To make it interesting we decided in advance to go three
minutes into deco.
One thing that was different about most of our dives
here was that without students hanging on the line and with no current so we
didn't even have to hold on to it, Bobbi and I just dropped to the bottom,
passing the others hanging on the rope, and falling the 30 meters in about a
minute. So rather than spending 4 min of a 20 min dive inching down the rope,
we arrived at our spot with 19 minutes still to go.
Here we had the
wreck at our leisure. We found a ray in the sand that wriggled away around the
bow and disappeared on the other side. We perused the deck looking for Fred and
Frieda and finally found them nestled into the very bow of the wreck. Mohammed
came along and stroked them and we did likewise, first time I'd dared touch a
honeycomb moray eel. Fred and Frieda didn't seem to mind. Their necks were
surprisingly soft. Bobbi touched them too.
We let our deco build to 3
min and started up the rope. The deco held till we reached our safety stop and
burned off at 5 meters. We stayed another couple of minutes as a safety stop
and headed up to the surface. Great dives, great weekend.
|
| 081025 -
October 25, 2008 |
849-850 |
Abu Dhabi: Delta Buoy and Old Cement Barge |
Kirk Duthler on his good ship what's its
name |
Certified Calum Cromey-Hawke, Open
Water - Kirk Duthler and his partner boat owner Nicolas Bouverot asked
me to show them some local dive sites in their boat. They had to be fairly
local because they had only one engine, so we puttered out to Delta Buoy. It
was a nice day. Delta Buoy is about 20 km from Abu Dhabi and the wrecks are 40
km beyond that (Lion City and Jassem) or 60 km further (Ludwig). It had been a
while since I'd been to DB. I always look for the gully or 'canyon' which is
the most salient thing I've ever found there. We anchored on my GPS and dead
reckonning, and that plopped us right on a patch of staghorn coral with some
attractive leopard spotted grunts in it (at the bottom I moved the anchor off
the coral and placed it in the rock ledge). I thought we'd hit the canyon and
moved along the ledge but it soon petered out, and then we were over
nondescript coral dollops swirling with fish, but meandering nowhere. I
followed my nose this way and that and big surprise to me eventually came out
right on the dropoff at the end of the canyon. At that point I knew exactly
where we were. I led in the area around, found us a nice sea snake to follow
and get tantalizingly close to, and in the sand where we hoped to see rays we
encountered a big mackeral fish just passing through. But following the ledge
back toward the boat we never found the anchor. When we surfaced after 55 min.
(12 m) we found we were near it but it was in a gully further over, which
explained my confusion at the outset (to me, no one else cared I don't
think).
For our second dive we were planning to stop at the breakwater
on our way back to the Intercon harbor, but we decided to go to Old Cement
Barge instead. I had misgivings about that because there was no fish-finder on
the boat I have had a hard enough time finding it sometimes WITH a depth
indicator. But we decided it was on the way home, halfway there, and when we
arrived we found Dolphin Divers (Tariq's crew) parked on the wreck with divers
bubbles coming off it, so it was obvious where it was. We snorkeled over and
saw if from the surface, and saw the batfish patrolling, and went down on a
bubble stream. Unfortunately the vis was pretty poor, silty. Not much to see
apart from a school of fish hanging off the cement bags at the highest point. I
tied my marker buoy there and sent it up, and later we came back in the boat so
I could GPS the exact spot before going down to retrieve my marker, so maybe
next time I can get right on it.
Fun dives for Abu Dhabi, congrats to
Calum for getting his certification. |
| Saturday, November 15, 2008 |
851-852 |
Abu Dhabi: Empros Reef and Boxes 4 km from Ras
Gurab |
Empros, Abu Dhabi |
Ianthe and Rosanne DeJong Open
Water dive #1
With Red Tide devastating Dibba sea and beaches, I was
forced to train Ianthe and Rosanne DeJong in Abu Dhabi, but it turned out to be
a great day out. Empros were quite impressive. They brought a liveaboard boat
over from egypt to enter the market here and they've only been around for a
week or so. They're aiming to please. All passengers were issued cabins with
heads and warm water showers (and towels, of course). They had a huge coolbox
full of fruit juice and fizzies. They brought staff with them from Egypt who
were kind and helpful. At 450 per person to be pampered for a day, we had quite
a few from Froglegsscubaclub take them up on the offer.
They took us to
a couple of sites I had never been to before, both full of fish like
baraccudas, batfish, sea snakes, yellow spotted grunts, jacks .. really active.
First dive with the two kids was 32 minutes, 14 meters.
Empros had two
compressors and filled the tanks as we used them. I was just about to take my
two students, dutch girls 11 and 14 yrs old so quite small but game, on their
second ever dive when suddenly a storm comes out of nowhere, seas choppy,
suddenly turned the sea to a cauldron, currents fierce. Couldn't take the young
girls, so went with their mom instead. Down below I found Bobbi with her buddy
Nicky unaware that the sea was broiling topside, and they were ready to come up
so though Godelieve and I had spent just 18 min down I wanted to get Bobbi and
Nicky to go up the rope so I steered by the boat shadow and found the anchor
dangling from the stern, and we went up that together. Topside, the guys on the
Empros were prepared, they had brought a chase boat and were able to collect
divers who were unable to get aboard the pitching yacht. Still recovering
divers from those rough seas was less than straightforward
The seas made
a lot of passengers sick and they were unable to enjoy the great buffet set out
including a big pile of shrimps which were left to the ravenous few with sea
legs. On the way home, things smoothed out and everyone arrived in home port
safe and sound and feeling almost normal again. |
| November 29, 2008 |
853 |
Abu Dhabi, Lulu Island corner by the jetty |
Cleanup Arabia 2008 |
Ianthe and Rosanne DeJong Open
Water dive #2
Froglegs were offered a boat courtesy of Mahir at
Gasco which took me and Godelieve and her two kids Ianthe and Rossane, and well
as Bobbi and Stewart Clarke over to Lulu Island for a beach cleanup. I had
decided to include the kids 11 and 14 for the environment experience, but in
fact I took them for their PADI ow dive #2. We did all the exercises required
for that dive in shallow water made challenging by the fact that just as we
were all about to set off from the corniche beach a wind storm blew up, just as
when we dived here last, or tried to, except this one was not so fierce and the
boats set out. There were whitecaps on the water INSIDE the island though, so I
had the boatman take us to a jetty where we'd be protected from the wind. We
dived right at the jetty. It was very shallow, just a couple of meters, and
maybe 20 min down, and vis was pathetic and subject to being made worse by
flipper movement, but the kids did great, stayed together, got through the
exercises under poor conditions, and emerged much more experienced divers. Hope
our next dive is great. They've been unlucky so far :-( |
| December 2, 2008 |
854 |
MALDIVES: Fan Reef to Ory Faro |
Rashdoo Divers at Kuramathi Village |
We rushed ourselves out of the house at
8 in the evening to arrive at the airport only to find that our flight to
Colombo from Abu Dhabi was delayed two hours. Apart from the inconvenience of
having to batten the hatches at home two hours prematurely (our departures are
always rushed and abrupt), we were mainly worried that we would miss our
connection to Male. The counter staff looked it up and told us that even with
the delay we would still have half an hour to catch our flight. We were still
concerned about our bags, especially our dive gear. No problem, we were told.
Usually that means no problem for the person who tells you, 'no problem.'
In Colombo we were met by airport staff saying “Male? Male?”
They ushered us to our gate and within minutes of taking our seats, the plane
started rolling back. Bobbi and I wondered how they would have had time to
offload the plane we had come let alone transfer baggage to our flight. So we
were quite surprised when in Male our bags were among the first off the belt.
Each had been tagged “for immediate transfer.” We passed through
immigration easily enough, our bags were x-rayed for contraband booze and pork
products (this country claims to be 100% Sunni Muslim; it must be a condition
of citizenship), and right inside the terminal we found our transfer desk and
to make a long story short, we were on a boat within half an hour of stepping
in the arrivals hall and at Kuramathi Island by 11:30 a.m. Coming down the
jetty from the speedboat that brought us from Male we saw a small brown
white-tip reef shark in the shallow clear turquoise water under the jetty. It
turned out that small sharks like that, half a meter or so, were frequent
visitors to piers around the island, but it was an initial obvious sign of
healthy underwater environment. After checking into our cottage just off the
beach we made it down to the dive center, and at 14:00 we were heading by boat
(spacious and perfect for diving, even a bathroom aboard) for the nearby house
reef.
For our first dive at Kuramathi, we drifted along the wall with a
slight current so diving was sometimes done hovering, and we each surfaced with
70 bar. It was not bad for having just stepped off the plane. Water temps were
comfortable, vis was a lot better than we were used to, fish were plentiful.
There seem to be a lot of tuna prowling around this part of the Maldives. They
like the 20-25 meter depths. We saw a white tip reef shark during the dive and
at another point a turtle. The wall was beautiful and relaxing, but there was
coral rubble in places and chalky silt maybe from where they had constructed
some cottages on piers near shore. So it wasn't a great dive but it was a
pleasant one and not totally devoid of dramatics. We were glad to be where we
were.
Depth and time: 24 meters max depth on a wall dive where
we stayed at mostly 20 meters. Time: We were told to be at the surface in 60
min including the safety stop and since it was our checkout dive and we needed
to behave ourselves, that's exactly what we did.
Temperatures:
We each wore our thin lycra and were a little cool during the dive. The lycra
was bearable but since we each had 3 mm suits as well we used those on
subsequent dives and were perfectly comfortable for the rest of our time in the
water.
Weight: As an instructor who usually carries weight to
give off to students I'm never sure how much weight I need, so a Maldives trip
is a good place to fine tune. I discovered through trial that I need 4 kg in my
3mm suit. Even then I dropped a kg at the bottom at the end of one dive and
stayed down, but to cover all conditions (in case of exertion in current for
example) 4 kg is the right weight for me with that thickness full length
wetsuit. |
| December 3, 2008 |
855-6 |
MALDIVES: Hafza Thila in North Ari Atoll and Rashdoo
Channel in Rashdoo Atoll |
Rashdoo Divers at Kuramathi Village |
Next day was much better. North Ari
Atoll is just an hour by boat across the Channel from Rashdoo and the next
morning we crossed over there for a dive on Hafza Thila. A thila is a coral
peak that in the case of this one comes to within ten meters of the surface and
was around 28 meters at its base. We crossed in about an hour on smooth seas
with cool sun in pleasant temperatures, maybe 28 degrees air temperature, which
was similar to water temperature.
At Hafsa Thila we dived along
its wall at around 20 meters. There were lots of treats on the dive. We first
noticed some nudibranchs and a scorpion fish (the kind that are plentiful on
Martini Rock) and a moray, also common in the UAE. But again we found cruising
tuna and bonito which we were told looked like tuna but with a black pattern on
the back, and unicorns and batfish, and a nice school of orange fish with big
red eyes that let us swim among them. We saw white tip sharks occasionally on
this dive, and the first big treat as we angled up near the top of the reef was
the resident eagle ray who was happy to cruise among the divers. At one point
it turned along the wall and came right up to me and let me swim alongside. I
could have stayed with it for some ways but it turned a corner along the wall
and would have taken me out of sight of the other divers.
The top of
the thila was even nicer than the wall. At one edge there were a couple of
octopuses that other divers chased back into their holes but when they left
Bobbi and I hovered a couple of meters away and they came out and caressed
themselves with their tentacles. One extended a tentacle to the other and left
it there for reassurance that the other was nearby. We watched for some time
and then moved to the staghorn table corals at the top of the thila. There were
baby sharks there hiding in pairs under the tabletops. A big moray (the size of
our honeycombs but dark purple) moved about here, and when he sought cover
under the tabletops he dislodged the sharks who were then forced to swim about
exposed. Those plus the plethora of other reef fish made this a great place to
hang out while we breathed down to 50 bar and time to come up with the others
at 60 minutes (24 meters max depth, just for the record). On the ascent and
safety stop I made it a point to fin into the current and so keep myself over
the thila so I got to see the eagle ray come back and cruise over the top, my
parting shot of that reef, great dive.
Rashdoo Channel - The
second dive of the day, the afternoon one, was off Rashtoo Island, which was
one over from Kuramathi, separated by a channel, which made this an interesting
spot. We were told in the briefing that the channel was 30 m. deep but we would
move from thila to thila and thus keep ourselves in the 20 m. range, and we
would end up in the midde of the channel. We followed Sam the divemaster, who
knew the thilas well. We started on a colorful wall with masses of little blue
trigger fish (common on all our dives so far) plus the usual suspects, but saw
little else of interest until we navigated to a spot where we swam up a canyon
with cloudy conditions and were feeling a little bored when we saw a white tip
and another resting on the bottom. Sam then led to the thila on the left (our
entry point for the second dive we did here on Dec 7) and here there was a huge
humphead napoleon wrasse at 22 meters on the coral shoulder. We rounded that
shoulder and came into a perpendicular canyon and here we saw several sharks
cruising. This was a nice spot, sharks moving about for the rest of the dive,
as many as 5 at a time. The other fish were their usual color and variety but
the sharks really put the icing on the cake, and we enjoyed this dive very much
and found it an excellent way to follow up our superb morning dive. |
| December 4, 2008 |
857-9 |
MALDIVES: Donkalo Thila, Fish Head, and Maya Thila
in North Ari Atoll $ |
Rashdoo Divers in combined safari with
Cottage and Kuramathi Village |
We went to bed at 7:30 the night before
apparently still exhausted from our previous workweek and missing a night's
sleep traveling to Colombo and Male. That evening we had been to the sandbar on
the far north of the island to see the sunset, just missed it because we had
been called in at 5:30 p.m. for a briefing (which contained no information we
couldn't have been told when we left the center that afternoon at 4). We had
had two beers while waiting for the briefing and we were strangely mellowed
from them. After missing the sunset (we had seen the orange and purple cloud
show though) we had returned to our room by way of the sting ray feeding which
takes place every evening at 6:30 at the Cottage Spa pier on that island. And
we somehow ended up in bed after showers and just didn't get up even to go have
dinner. We weren't hungry, just tired. So when we turned up next morning at
5:45 a.m. to get our dive gear from where it was stored at the center, we were
the only ones on the boat who had just had ten hours sleep, I'm sure.
The boat took off at sunrise heading south across the channel over
smooth seas, occasionally disturbing flying fish that skimmed the surface
across the water. It was a brilliant day, subtly sunny through a protective
layer of clouds. Temperatures were ideal. We passed between idyllic islands and
wondered what the liveaboard cruise boats anchored at certain spots were
treating their divers to. We never found out, but pressed on to the south.
Eventually a buffet breakfast spread was arrayed on the top of the cabin and we
were enjoying coffee. After an hour and half traveling we arrived at our
spot.
The dive-leader Fredericka had a laminated diagram of Donkalo
Thila and gave us her usual most thorough briefing before jumping into the
water to check current. She wasn't happy with the location, she said we were on
the back side to where we wanted to be, but she said the current wasn't bad and
we could get where we wanted to go from there, so she called us in. Vis was
disappointing, kind of like Lima Rock on a good day, not endless blue as we
might have expected. Still we were able to see the sharks resting on the bottom
at 30 meters from where we cruised at 20. At the far east of the thila there
were some alcoves with lobsters inside and a couple of rocky outcroppings, very
deep, which we pushed down to about 28 meters, but all we saw there was another
resting shark. Fredericka had been stopping to take photographs along the way
and here, half an hour into the dive, she started to focus on the ceilings of
the caves, leaving Bobbi and I sort of treading water and wondering what to do.
Bobbi saw a bull ray cruise by fast but apart from that it was the
anticlimactic end of the a dive where we had expected to follow the fearless
leader. I think what Fredericka had expected us to do was never-mind her and
carry on around the thila and meet back at the top, which was what we ended up
doing on the next two dives. But the top of this thila was not all that
inspiring, mostly rock and not that much colorful coral. We found a turtle
there while breathing down to 57 minutes, then doing a 3 min safety stop to
arrive at the surface after one hour, as we'd been told on previous dives.
Back up top we were told we could have a choice of going to another
site nearby (at that point, sounced boooring) or to Fish Head, which
we'd read about and which was one of the reasons we had chosen Kuramathi over
other places, its proximity to both Fish Head and Mayafushi. Fish Head was
known for schools of Hammerheads if you got there early enough in the morning.
Now at mid-day we were told to expect to see the big napoleon wrasse there. It
seemed doubtful that the schools of sharks would still be there. We saw the
occasional grey white tipped reef shark on this dive, but again I would say not
a great dive on the order of Hafsa thila the day before. This time when
Frederika got stuck into her photography we carried on away from the group and
found the three big napoleons. Bobbi remembers blue shiny fusiliers and batfish
and moray eels. I remember a current carrying us to the far end of the rock and
getting some shelter from the current as we rounded it, but as we attempted to
come up over the top, we were faced with the current and had difficulty
maintaining our position. The current was flushing other divers in our group to
the same spot and they ascended as they went low on air. We hung out to the
bitter end. There was a small turtle up there and some coral heads with
colorful fish, but nothing highly inspiring. I recall writing back on the boat
that I had gone 26.2 meters, with a dive time of 61 minutes (58 without safety
stop).
For the last dive of the day we went to Maya Thila, the
other reknowned site in northern Ari Atoll off Mayafushi, and the other spot we
had come to see, so we were pleased with the locations we were being taken to.
This turned out to be a cracking dive, as my earstwhile BSAC colleagues might
have said. Again vis was not all that great, and Fredericka again got stuck
into her camera after pointing out some sharks resting on the bottom, but by
now Bobbi and I knew to just carry on. Her briefings were at least good enough
for us to follow on compass. At the northwest point there was an obvious
overhang which we swam through and carried on briefly to the east but then
turned south to where there was a second thila in the haze (had been indicated
on Fredericka's diagram) which we finned over to. Here we got a bit deep for a
third dive, over 27 meters but we found some sharks out there, one a bit larger
than the other smaller grey white tips we'd got used to. We didn't want to
linger at that depth so we regained the thila to the north and carried on
around it, encountering more sharks swimming nearby, till we arrived back at
the salient overhang, at which point we came up ten meters to the top of the
thila. Here we found the others in our group enjoying the fish life there.
Bobbi and I meandered out the point defining the top of the overhang and found
a turtle out there which we swam with. It was unconcerned about divers, just
swam along with us, and we managed to herd it back to where the others were and
Fredericka took over, making it the subject of her photo studies for the next
five minutes. Then Fredericka beckoned another diver over and we thought there
was something interesting to see so we followed. In fact she wanted to pose
this other diver on the far side of an anemone, in a shot you often see in dive
magazines (except this subject was hanging on a rock for support; whereas the
models you see in the mags are perfectly buoyant). Still it was good she got us
over there because a shark appeared out of nowhere and criss-crossed the reef,
casually swimming un-noticed by most of the other divers. Bobbi and I were able
to swim alongside and see it in the bright light at only ten meters. It was a
nice way to end the dive and our day out on safari from Rashdoo atoll.
We were back from our dive in time to get home and change into our
running clothes for the short jog out to the sandbar, finally in time for
sunset. We started in the opposite direction from the sandbar, toward the jetty
at the eastern waterfront of the island, just to elongate the jog a little bit.
The island is only a little over a km long and angles slightly north at its
western edge, making the sand bar there a good place to see the sunset, and we
stopped at the last bar before the sandbar and picked up a couple of Coronas
and walked them the rest of the way out the beach. We strolled into the cool
turquoise water to immerse ourselves and cool off from our jog and sip our
beers as the sun went from bright yellow to more subdued orange and sank in a
ball below the clouds on the horizon. Then we wandered back barefoot to where
we'd got the beers and had two more while taking a seat on the pier to watch
the nightly stingray feeding. It was interesting as usual with sharks and
remorahs darting constantly among the big brown rays which glided over one
another in anticipation, and when the man came out to feed them they mobbed him
and flapped up his backside, emitting grunts like hippopotamuses while he
stuffed chunks of meat in their mouths while the rays chewed at it as he
introduced it, as if the ventral surface of each ray was a face with only a
mouth about where you would think it should be, but with no nose or eyes. Then
we went back to our room and showered with every intent to go out and have some
wine with dinner, but somehow we rested again and just stayed in bed for the
next ten hours, neither hungry nor in want of anything but rest. We both slept
well, and I remember having many dreams, none that I could recount now. It was
starting to feel like a vacation. |
| December 5, 2008 |
860-1 |
MALDIVES: The Caves and Three Palms in Rashdoo Atoll
|
Rashdoo Divers at Kuramathi Village |
We got up and had breakfast, exactly
the same as the previous time we had eaten here, a nice mix of curries and
standard English fare, but only our second time here, already beginning to feel
redundant, especially as this was our chief source of sustenance on Kuramathi.
In case we might want to make a sandwich later we took a couple of bread rolls
from the breakfast buffet back to the room with us.
30 meters, 61
minutes, “the Caves": We reported to the dive center at nine for
our second dive on the house reef. The dives on the reef south of Kurumathi are
not particularly interesting. We had dived the section closest to the jetty our
first afternoon on the island and found it ok for a checkout dive and
orientation to Maldives underwater, but it was not a place I wanted to pay a
fortune to go back to. The first section extends to where they have just
constructed bungalows out over the water, and we figured that might be why
there was coral rubble and silt here, but we found when we dived the third and
farthest out section this morning that the silt extended the length of the
reef. The caves, or more accurately shallow alcoves with nothing of interest
inside when we were there, are on the wall beneath the submerged reef that
extends beyond the sandy sunset beach and underwater define the continuation of
the atoll. The site is a wall dipping from 5 meters to well below 30 in the
sand far below. The idea is to cruise along it at 20-25 meters so as to extend
dive time while being able to see anything that might be in the sand below.
Some tunas or bonito (possibly the the latter) cruised by in the blue, but we
didn't see anything else out there. On the wall itself there were morays and
lion fish and the dominant tiny blue triggers spawning en masse, and fish the
same shape as unicorns but without the 'corne'. Above from 20 meters we saw
three eagle rays move overhead but we couldn't get up to see them close due to
the time it took to ascend, but when we saw the last one 45 min into the dive
we decided to come up to the shallow edge of the reef. We stayed where we could
see into the top as far as the silt would allow and as deep into the blue as we
could. It was prettier up there though the coral was not that colorful and it
was milky with silt, but the reef fish were teeming here and it was a pretty
part of the dive, nice relief from the wall, which could have been any wall
dive in the Philippines but with accommodation and San Miguel and diving itself
a fraction of what it cost in the Maldives.
The afternoon dive is
(Gasp!) Three Palms, the section of the house reef between the harbor and the
caves. Have these people no shame? I'm wondering why they didn't offer us
better diving today. Oh well should improve tomorrow, 6:00 a.m at Hammerhead
Point and 9:00 at the northern channel at the opposite northeast corner of the
atoll, hopefully the side up current from the silt. We'll see. Now to go dive
Three Palms (ho hum).
Three Palms was an absolute wash, $100 worth of
diving (for the two of us) wasted on poor vis and a wall of coral rubble whose
impression I have from it was browns and murky greys. We did it at around 20
meters. At one point I went down to 33.5 meters just to see what was in the
deep sand bottom. There was nothing, but I had to go that deep just to SEE the
bottom about five meters further down. I could not help resenting during that
dive that Rashdoo Divers had not taken more care that their customers should
have an exciting and varied diving experience. Our choice for the morning had
been the Caves, just a little further out the three palms reef, where we had
never been, or Rashdoo, next island over, where we had been, but which would
have been the better choice of two dives, clearer water, and shark infested
channel diving. Actually we learned through experience that the best diving for
vis and interesting sea life on Rashdoo Atoll was further east and north around
the atoll just minutes away by boat, yet for one day of our holiday we were
shunted down to the southeast end of Kuramathi Island on the reef closest to
the harbor for our two dives that day (afternoon dives at the two dive centers
were combined, so the only alternative to diving Three Palms was NO diving).
This reef is accessible from shore via snorkeling channels, so conceivably you
could rent a tank and shore dive this reef, and in fact we saw snorkelers free
diving during the shallower parts of our afternoon dive. Resorts with house
reefs sometimes offer unlimited free shore diving as part of the package (in
practice, divers sated with good boat dives elsewhere won't do much shore
diving due to the nitrogen hit, even if it's free, so this enticement rarely
results in many more tanks being used – but the point is, what some
resorts offer as a inducement to attract divers to their centers, Rashdoo
divers was including as part of its main offerings, which resulted in our
spending an entire day of our expensive Maldives dive holiday diving on walls
little different from what you might find in the UAE or in the
Philippines).
After the dive we rode the boat around to the Cottage dive
center so we could store our gear where the dive would originate next morning.
We had signed on to go look for hammerheads, best done at sunrise, and there
were trips Saturday from Cottage and Sunday from the Village dive centers.
These were actually the same center, under same management, but they listed
slightly different dives so divers could have some choice (mornings only). I
saw that the next afternoon dive was given as Ory Faro, which is the dive site
right outside the harber. I mentioned to Fredericka that the diving that day
had been crap and expressed disappointment that the following day the afternoon
dive would be at the same place, because Bobbi and I would not be going back
there and we had been hoping to dive a better spot next day. She wandered off
later and returned while we were having an evening refresher on the pier
opposite the dive center. We saw her writing on the whiteboard so as we were
about to leave we walked over to see what she'd written, and she had changed
the next day afternoon dive to Madivaru Finohlu nearer the sweet spot of the
lagoon, which we immediately signed up for. Things were looking up.
While drinking our beer we had been snacking on nuts smuggled onto the
island from Abu Dhabi and we had stuffed the wrappers in one of the beer
glasses that the waiter collected when we were finished. It was noted by the
Island Survelliance that the guests from Room 37 had food not purchased at the
resort, and this information was entered into the central computer database so
that the system was alerted to monitor our consumption. The database kicked
back the information that we had indeed made no purchases after 7:30 for the
past two evenings (when we had gone to bed without dinner) and that our
expenditures were much lower than our profile indicated they should be. Later
that evening we purchased a carafe of wine at one of the outlets and extracted
from our bags more smuggled food, a tin of designer pasta and a pack of gourmet
spice tuna which we spread on bread smuggled from that morning's breakfast
buffet. Probably we could have got away with consuming contraband food items a
little while longer had it not been for the bread. This bread, being
perishable, was clearly not a smuggled item but, ahem, a stolen one! This was
duly reported back to Island Surveillance Central where, unbeknownst to us, we
were flagged for our suspicious behaviors. We were skating on thin ice now and
we'd have to watch out who was watching us from now on. Although we didn't
realize it at the time, Room 37 was now on the close scrutiny list, and staff
would be alerted to watch our every move whenever that number was given out
towards a purchase at one of the island's outlets.
Meanwhile, oblivious
to what data the computers were compiling behind our backs, we returned to our
room where we still had a two thirds full plastic bottle of water, costing
$4.40 on this island (and even now the staff had been instructed to see if they
could determine where we were getting our water, as the computers indicated we
had not purchased any more from official island outlets for the past few days).
As we had made greater than usual purchases of alcoholic beverages this evening
(surveillance computer data indicated that this was closer to normal, but still
no food purchases, very suspicious, our profile would be analyzed carefully
while we slept), we went to bed at around 8:30 and slept till 5:15, when we got
up to go look for hammerheads. |
| December 6, 2008 |
862-4 |
MALDIVES: Hammerhead Point to Madivaru Reef, North
Channel, and Madivaru Finolhu in Rashdoo Atoll |
Rashdoo Divers at Cottage and Kuramathi
Village |
Since Bobbi's watch was 7 minutes fast
and we had only a 5 min walk to the Cottage dive pier and all our gear was
there and we had only to don t-shirts and bathing suits and put on our sandals
and walk along the beach over to the boat, we arrived before anyone else. It
was starting to get light when Sam came to unlock the shop and about that time
the boat appeared with tanks and we kitted up with the other divers. By sunrise
we were in position further up the lagoon at the spot where hammerheads were
known to congregate at this time occasionally. Fredericka had seen them the
morning we arrived, 15 of them she said, so they could be there or maybe not.
We weren't the only boat on the water. Divers from the liveaboards would be
going deep we were told. By law in the Maldives you can't go below 30 and
report that fact while still under the jurisdiction of the Maldives gov't
(perhaps more importantly, it affects liability and insurance in case of
accident). Hammerheads are known to be a deep water fish, and we were diving in
a channel 200 meters deep I think I heard Sam say. It would be a blue water
dive.
It was pretty easy to all get in and then follow Sam around for
half an hour. If we had been at 30 meters those of us diving air would have had
20 min before having to come up. I figured out that with Sam diving Nitrox a
good strategy for Bobbi and I was to hang above him. He would let us know if he
saw anything and we could save our nitrogen hit for when it would be needed. To
make a long story short, it wasn't needed. We saw nothing but beautiful deep
blue, excellent vis here (and ironically nothing to see except the occasional
passing tuna). I kept the sum of my dive time and no deco time remaining equal
to 30 throughout the dive, but as we neared 30 min time passed and soon I was
up to 16 meters swimming about 5 meters above Sam. Eventually he worked us over
to the reef, which turned out to be Madivaru (though I didn't know it at the
time). Now the dive became beautiful. We drifted along the wall to its edge and
then continued out a tongue of rock and coral extending along the sand bottom.
There had been tuna and/or bonito on the wall and now looking down on the coral
tongue we saw white tip sharks and big humphead wrasse moving along it among
the other colorful fish. We worked out way down to it, drifted along it,
enjoyed the sharks meandering lazily, and breathed our air down toward 50 bar.
Our no deco time was now at the point where our dive time could go over an
hour, which was the time we were due back on the surface, so there was no rush,
just take in the beautiful scenery. We followed the thila up to its highest
point at 8 meters and waited there while a shark passed through a gap just even
with us. At 57 minutes I noticed a school of 2 dozen barracuda which happened
to be at 5 meters, and I suggested we do our surface interval there, in their
midst. Great way to end a dive!
We were back on shore by 7:30, time to
have a shower before going to breakfast and meeting up for our 9:00 dive. In
the restaurant they had made small changes to the menu. On the upside dhal was
now among the curries, but the the delicious pork bacon had been replaced by a
more hilal but less succulent chicken product. Also we didn't notice at first
but the waiters had been instructed to triangulate on us. They positioned
themselves in such a way that at no time would we be unobserved. Our normal
coffee man, the one we rely on to fill our cups each morning, had made it a
point to carry the pots as far away from us as possible and keep himself across
the room so that we would be forced to focus on him for attention. That way we
would be less likely to notice the other spotters at the moment that Bobbi
chose to transfer two precious bread rolls from the top of the table to her bag
which she'd place open in her lap. In an instant the order was given to swarm.
A Surveillance Agent dressed as a waiter immediately appeared at our table. At
first we hoped he was bringing coffee as our cups had been empty for over 5
minutes now. However he duly informed us that we had violated the regulations
of this institution and possibly broken some laws in the Maldives as well by
attempting to steal two rolls of bread from our breakfast table. This was
totally against the regulations and capitalist creed of the island on which we
now resided and in future if we desired bread outside of breakfast time we were
to purchase it in the manner of any other pax at the coffee shop, where there
was nothing on the menu for under $7. I'm not sure, perhaps you could get a
bread roll there for $5. Maybe I should have asked for the bread menu at that
point. However, as the resort was making an egregious misdemeanor over two
pieces of bread we defused the situation by returning the bread to the top of
the table where it would stay and later be thrown away with the rest of the
uneaten garbage left over from the morning meal routine.
After
breakfast we had a nice dive at the North Channel where we were told we had the
chance to see a manta. I remember seeing those in the Florida Keys in the 60's
as a matter of course (regarded as a kind of sea monster at the time, some
people used to try and spear-gun them), and they were common in Cook Islands,
and of course Yap, which had a dive on the north side of the island where the
mantas came and played with the divers. Now they are not so common, though we
did see a hovering eagle ray on this dive, hanging in on a gathering current so
we had to fight the current to draw even with it. The North Channel dive went
from thila to thila separated by sandy banks full of dancing garden eels, lots
of them, almost everywhere you looked carefully in the sand, until you got too
close and they would totally vanish. We saw a turtle, and sharks of course
– one went behind a rock and I went around the other way to catch him as
he passed behind it, but when I looked in the anticipated place, no shark. I
looked under the rock and found him cowering there, but on discovery he escaped
and made his way through the approaching divers and beyond to safety. There
were lots of Napoleon wrasse, Bobbi saw a barracuda. We saw a scorpion fish and
a nudibranch, the big trigger fish (what are they called, emperor?), and lots
of baby blue ones, turkey fish, morays ... lots to see on this dive.
We
had a few hours break in our room, becoming our routine on Kuramathi, and at
1400 we met for the briefing for our third and last dive of the day. We were
going to Madivaru Finolhu but in the briefing Bobbi and I were told we could
dive solo. Sam drew a chart of the reef with depths and contours and we just
had to keep straight whether the current would run east to west or the
opposite. In the event, it ran east to west and we were dropped down on the
wall and had to follow it to its confluence where we had been given
instructions depending on whether the current was incoming or outgoing to hang
on there and wait for sharks (but don't swim where they were coming from or
we'd scare them away) or in another kind of condition swim around to the
backside of something and approach the area from the north. We had been there
that morning so it seemed kind of clear what to do, and the first part of the
dive was easy except for the current which we'd been warned would carry us
across the channel if we let it. We started along the wall at 25 meters but
soon went higher as we had little no-deco time at that depth, and at some point
I thought I'd look over the top of the reef and see what was up there at about
15 meters. The current was really jamming so I had to be careful to hold my
position and so as not to be blown off the crest of the reef and into what
turned out to be sand on the other side. That was a surprise; I had expected
the top of a reef, and in the sand was a big sting ray and a shark. I turned to
make sure Bobbi was ok in the current and when I looked back both were gone,
leaving only a pile of churned up sand where the ray had been. So we played at
the crest for a little, sometimes dropping down the wall side to be better
positioned vis a vis the current, and the next time we popped over to the sand,
the ray was there again. This time we managed to get close to him. The sharks
liked the top of the wall and it was not unusual to see their white fin tips
just on the other side and rise up a bit for a better view. Only 20 min or so
into the dive we had been steamrolled down to the picturesque Madivaru reef
proper but unlike that morning when we had viewed the comings and goings of the
animals living there at leisure and in placid comfort, we were now chasing deco
and fighting current to hold our position, which was in turn consuming our air
faster than we normally used it. The reef to the south was beautiful with tuna
cruising along it, and surely sharks to arrive soon, but as we followed it, it
went deeper, 24 meters and dropping, with only 4 min. no deco time at that
depth. We had to get higher so I led us to the back of the reef where we had
some shelter from the current and then back to the top, about 20 meters, where
we hung on like extended pennants to chunks of rock in the coral garden, blue
and orange fish flitting everywhere, and looked to see if any sharks would
cruise by. None did, dive time got to 30 min and only minutes to go before
deco, so we had to get higher. I led us down into the sand where we had again
shelter from the current. One of the Napoleon wrasses was there, and we swam to
the thila on our left and climbed that to about 18 meters. But vis was too
cloudy to see higher ground anywhere around and this seemed to be the end of
the road, and the place where we had ended the dive that morning. I didn't
recall seeing any escape to higher ground that morning, and I was down to 50
bar so the choice was to stay there and end the dive (probably the wisest
option, in retrospect, nice reef, chance a shark or two would wander by in the
next few minutes) or turn loose and see if we could get carried to a higher
reef. Since we were just under 40 min dive time and a higher reef would have
given us another ten minutes to explore it, we opted for the latter course and
found ourselves getting swept over coral rubble that rose only up to 12 meters.
I was down to 30 bar and Bobbi had 60 so I decided to go onto her octopus while
we drifted to see if we could make a landfall. After a couple of minutes we did
see a reef to our left and we swam to that. It turned out to top out at 8
meters but was again just brown broken coral, so I gave Bobbi her octopus back
and we ascended to 5 meters for a safety stop. The time at that point was 49
minutes, and in the 3 min we hovered we got swept like a catamaran before the
wind, ascending finally on the north side of Rashdoo island with the two radio
masts, around the corner and out of sight of Kuramathi. We swam toward that
island and would have made it in half an hour or so, in case our boat didn't
recover us, but eventually the boat appeared and we were picked up. No body
seemed to mind that we had become separated from the group and had to be
recovered on the far side of the channel.
After the dive we went to the
nearest beach bar for deco treatment but found a Philippino there testing his
bass and drum background thump grinder and karaoke skills, so it wasn't
pleasant there. We walked up the Cottage and had a beer or two on the pier
overlooking the green water with sharks and needlefish cruising under the pier.
At 6:00 happy hour began so we ordered some evil concoctions called After
Diving (Campari and Drambui and wine) and something else called Karamathi Way.
We then retired to quarters for showers and laid down to dry off and next thing
we discovered it was late and we'd gone to bed again without dinner, so that
was again our routine in Kuramathi. |
| December 7, 2008 |
865-7 |
MALDIVES: Hammerhead Point to Madivaru Reef, Rashdoo
Channel, and Veligando North in Rashdoo Atoll |
Rashdoo Divers at Kuramathi Village |
Next morning we had a last chance to
look for hammerheads. We were up at 5 but again, as with our routine, after
getting about ten hours sleep!! There was only one other diver besides Sam our
dive leader, a German guy named Hennie. The four of us entered the water before
sunrise and headed out to the blue. In no time we found ourselves surrounded by
the most incredible school of hammerheads. Hah, yeah sure. Actually Bobbi
noticed a marble ray on her way down, and I noticed in our wanderings in the
blue today that we were never far off the reef. You can tell by the presence of
reef fish in the blue, and I was keeping track by compass of where we were. So
we weren't in particularly deep water and we weren't particularly deep
ourselves. Sam was making a show of looking for game at 25 meters, and Bobbi
and I were trying to stay above him to conserve air and consume less nitrogen.
In fact the reason I liked that dive was only in part the miniscule chance of
seeing hammerheads. It was the perfect thing to be doing at sunrise on
Kuramathi Island, cool, blue, relaxing, spots of blue phosphorescent diatoms
looking like stars in a galaxy wherever we looked, and all there was to see
apart from the occasional big marauder fish, and the big blue-brown fish shaped
like unicorns without the corne who like to school at the back of people's
regulators. After after half an hour of pretending to look for hammerheads Sam
led us west which I knew now was the really fun part of this dive, ending up on
Madivaru Reef, also my favorite reef hereabouts. We hit the reef at exactly the
place we had left it on a freight train the day before except now the current
was calm and we could move about and enjoy the scenery. The orange and blue
fish were there in the healthy coral with the occasional shark swimming close
by, small grey white tips. The napoleon wrasse was there. The barracudas were
schooled where we had ended our dive the previous morning. There were dozens of
garden eels poking their heads above the sand as we made our way to the
opposite thila where we saw more sharks and moray eels. Then Sam led us to the
north to find that higher reef which I hadn't known about the day before (our
train was heading west ;-) We ended the dive there seeing nothing of great
interest, except another shark or two, ho hum.
After this dive, we went
to breakfast. Without explanation we found our table assignment had been
changed abruptly. That is we sat in the usual place to begin with but the
waiter came and snatched our number 37 away and we were asked to move our
things and also the food we had already placed on our usual table to a more
claustrophobic location in the restaurant. Bobbi found herself seated in such a
way that she was right next to a pillar which left her without any sort of view
for 135 degrees of her field of vision. I asked why and was given a
non-informative answer. I'm sure it was for security reasons. I think we were
being moved to a place where we could be watched more closely, a place
equidistant from the stations where the agents dressed as waiters could keep
better eye on us, or perhaps it was a table in better view of the hidden
cameras.
At least we still had diving. We ate breakfast only to survive
on Kuramathi. For our morning dive we were taken to Rashdoo channel, a place we
had thoroughly enjoyed a couple of days before. But this time we had to dive it
more conservatively. We couldn't really get down into the canyon where we had
seen all the sharks the time before. In fact we started our dive crossing to
the ridge where we had seen the Napoleon wrasse our previous time there, and he
was still in residence and we were able to swim quite close to him and see him
clearly, but to do this we had to drop down to 26 meters. I'm sure someone has
taken a picture of that wrasse and I can find it on Flickr. Anyway, Bobbi and I
were forced to keep to the top of the reefs between 22-25 meters to keep our
dive time, total up to then plus no-deco remaining, summing to 30 minutes. We
saw some sharks below on the reef and in a sand patch a pair resting, one of
them quite large. Near the sharks someone had dropped a blue fiber plastic bag
from a boat and as rubbish was quite out of place in this pristine location I
went down to collect the bag (and ahem get a closer view of the sharks). Woops,
31 meters. That little indiscretion cost me in deco time. Sam was taking care
to lead us up the reef because he knew we'd been deep. Accordingly we probably
missed a lot of sharks that cruise the channel, but we did find the little blue
and yellow ribbon eels that Sam had told us to watch for. We also found
lobsters. Meanwhile we had crossed the channel and were coming to the part
around our boat harbor, the part that we had already dived too many times on
previous days. But today it was active. There were snorkelers in the channels
above and they were disturbing the sharks which on two occasions headed in off
the shallow part of the reef just above where I had gone to burn off deco,
passing right in front of me on their way to the safety of the depths. I was
surprised on surfacing (with 60 min on my computer) that we were near the
bungalows built out over the water on the south side of the island, coming on
to a near repeat of our first dive on Kuramathi 6 days earlier. We'd almost
come full circle then, but we still had one afternoon dive to go.
The
afternoon dive was way around the lagoon past Madivaru and just past Veligando
Island, at a place called Veligando North. Again Bobbi and I were told we could
go solo, but watch out for the current, which was indeed strong. We were told
in our briefing that we should watch the wall for honeycomb morays and other
small creatures but we'd be not likely to see big stuff here as it had been the
spot most damaged by the tsunami when it had ripped through here some years
past. The wall was nice and concealed many treasures. One of our first tableaus
was a pair of brown morays each with a shrimp cleaning its neck, very
picturesque. There were lots more morays, lots of honeycombs, lion fish, little
shrimp in holes, and the usual reef dwellers. We saw no one else for most of
the dive until at the end we hooked up with Sam and his group. A capper for the
day was a meaty black tip reef shark that appeared suddenly, making us homesick
for Dibba Rock. These are much finer animals than the lean white tips, more
sure of themselves, prouder sharks than their light finned cousins. It was a
pleasant dive, an adrenaline letdown perhaps, but an easy way to finish off six
days of diving in Rashdoo and Ari Atolls, and the nitrogen hit would allow us
to fly in 21 hours, which was about the time our plane was due to take off from
Male the following day.
The cost of all this diving turned out to be
around $1400 (comes out to about $50 a dive including boat trips) and as we
paid our bill that evening, there were no surprises. Our food (mainly drink)
expenditures came to about $250 for the six days.
One final incident
came next morning when we tried to change our table to one of the hundreds of
others of empty ones in the spacious breezy restaurant that had some view of
the ocean because they were not behind pillars. We were told by one staff to
see the man at the front desk, who sent us to our coffee waiter, and finally
several waiters (and quite possibly some security personnel dressed as waiters,
intensively trained to handle this kind of outbreak among the pax) descended on
us and told us all the tables at that restaurant were reserved, ALL of them, as
far as the eye could see, there was nowhere for us to sit but where we'd been
assigned, and we should go back to our pillar and behave ourselves. So we did
(but we moved the blocked-in chair so it wasn't behind a pillar, I'm almost
surprised we weren't asked to move it back ;-) |
| Date |
Logged Dive
# |
Location |
Diving
with |
Most
recent dive is the one listed above
http://tinyurl.com/6xw3t2 |
It's a little expensive to hang out for long on an island
in the Maldives, and at the end of 6 days we felt we had seen pretty much all
the secrets of our atoll that Rashdoo Divers were capable of revealing to us
given the staffing available to them. So on Monday it was time for us to move
on. Ever organized, our resort had arranged a small yacht available to whisk us
and a few other guests back to Male airport (flying fish, dolphins, and even a
sailfish sighted en route, lovely trip). There we were met by a representative
of the company that had arranged our holiday, though there was not much for him
to do but walk us from the boat to the departure hall where we passed through
security and eventually boarded our plane. The weather in Maldives was
generally sunny with high clouds keeping the worst of the heat away, but on our
approach to Colombo we noticed raindrops out the airplane's nose camera and
indeed the tarmac there was being inundated with rain. We disembarked and got a
cab which drove through the rain into town. Colombo was a world away from the
tranquility of an island in Maldives. Traffic was horrendous from the outskirts
of the city which now started right outside the airport though there were
twenty kilometers of stop and go traffic before we entered the city proper. By
then it was dark and drizzly dreary. The driver complained of road closures,
had to circle though clogged streets to come a second time at the section of
Galle Road we were on, had to wait on many occasions for several lights to
change, was constantly squeezing between smoke belching trucks and buses, and
when he pulled up to the Hotel Renuka, which we'd booked online, we were all
worn from the trip, especially the last part from the airport to town. As a
parting welcome to the decaying city, he looked with disdain at the money I
handed him, 2500 rupees (a little less than $25) though it was more than the
2247 that was indicated on the booking ticket we'd been given at the airport
(which I showed him – tipping and pricing are quite ambigous in Sri
Lanka).
The Hotel Renuka was quite nice for $50 but then at the
end of our stay when we were handed a bill for $70 we realized the price quoted
over the internet did not include service charge, government tax, and VAT. The
Runuka did have a nice restaurant, the Palmyrah, which served an excellent
perfectly spiced Sri Lankan meal for two for $20 including several tall Lion
Lagers, though the bill with the aforementioned tariffs came to $26. Still all
were provided with excellent service and quality, so the only truly depressing
thing about the situation was the weather. CNN was showing a band of grey
clouds over Sri Lanka and Southern India which they said would bring flooding.
We were planning to go up to Ella in the hill country and do some walking, and
this plan was not going to work well if it was pouring down rain. So we went to
bed in Colombo our first night there thinking the only thing to do for it was
sleep.
Next day started out sunny so we decided to carry out
our plan, which included staying at a nice hotel in Colombo where we could
leave behind our dive gear. After breakfast, having sorted our things, we took
a backpack each with us in a cab to the bus station. The last time we traveled
in Sri Lanka we had our kids with us so we hired a car and driver to drive us
to Kandy and a few other monument towns beyond, the latter being places we had
missed on previous journeys to Sri Lanka. A lot of foreigners like to travel in
this way for good reason. But the driver will suggest places to stop along the
way, and most of them are things of minor interest, like a perfume factory for
example, where there is a strong pitch at the end of the 'tour' to take some of
the products home with you, in compensation for having been given such a
gracious tour to a facility you would never have stopped for had you not been
steered there by a driver you might be more comfortable having not hired in the
first place. So having seen the last of the monuments we wanted to visit in two
previous trips to Sri Lanka, this time we were planning in the few days we had
before we needed to return to work in Abu Dhabi, to go to Ella, one spot that
looked nice in Lonely Planet, and stay there.
But we still had to get there. We weren't expecting a
problem but we've noticed in our last two trips to the island that Serendip has
vanished in a surge of humanity overwhelming decrepit infrastructure that had
seemed to function adequately our first trip there in the late 70's but was
starting to get noticeably run down when we revisited 15 years later. On our
first trip, it was easy to get around Colombo, buses were easily caught, and
amazingly Sri Lankans would not only queue politely for them but they would
insist that foreigners go at the head of the queue. Getting around was a matter
only of turning up at the bus or train station, and I don't recall that there
was ever a hassle getting from one place to another -- and we went from Colombo
to Kandy for the perihera, and back to Colombo and then around the country by
its south and east coasts, before heading inland to Nuwereliya to walk
overnight on Horton Plain, Land's End. Next time we went with the car and
driver, and we noticed that the roads were constantly crowded, making driving
around tedious and anything but pleasant. In Kandy, we had to go way up the
mountain and out of sight of the lake to find accommodation (and the temple
there was partially closed after a bombing) and the monuments we wanted to
visit elsewhere in the country had $15 entry fees (not insignificant for a
family traveling together). In this our most recent visit we saw from Lonely
Planet that you now have to pay to walk around Horton Plain, and it's
apparently crowded up there. This visit, we had settled on Ella as a place with
scenery, some walking possibilities, and lots of interesting sounding, simple,
accommodation.
But to get there in this day and age, from modern,
hectic, crowded Colombo, first of all we were dropped at the busy station where
we were approached by people touting buses who, when we said Ella, looked
puzzled and repeated back, Ella? Where?? There were no buses to Ella, not
directly. It took us some moments to work out that we needed to take a bus to
Badulla, but initially we were pointed to one queue then another. We got on one
crowded bus but when we asked a fellow passenger he told us that bus wasn't
going where we wanted to go. It was rare to find someone who spoke English
there, but after half an hour we were finally directed to a Badulla bus, and
when we got on we found it had seats, and was air-conditioned. That was good
because we were going to be there for some time. We had arrived at the station
at around 9:30, we thought, and we were on this bus around ten, and then we sat
there for over an hour while it gradually filled up. We eventually noticed a
sign in the bus that said it left at 12:10. We were concerned about that but
amazingly the bus filled and pulled away half an hour early. It took us to the
END of that journey to realize that time in Sri Lanka was half an hour ahead of
time in Maldives. So we had actually arrived at the station at ten and got on
the bus at 10:30 and it had left after an hour forty minutes.
The journey was not bad. We had a map and could track
our progress. This was important because we could see that the bus was taking
the southerly route to Badulla and not the northerly one through the mountains.
Using this information we worked out that we would be passing through
Bandarawella before we reached Badulla and from the Lonely Planet we saw that
we could get a bus or taxi to Ella from Bandarawella whereas from Badulla bus
connections were infrequent, and the way to do that journey was to backtrack to
Bandarawella, so we decided to get off the bus at the town short of our
destination. In this way we could possibly also avoid having to deal with the
person behind us who slipped us a card for a guest house in Ella and whom we
were afraid we would have to shake off if he attempted to guide us.
But as the bus ascended the mountain to Bandarawella it
started to rain, and by the time we had arrived at that town it was raining
quite heavily. There was not a real bus stop there, only a roadside where buses
pulled over and people got on and off. At the place where our bus pulled over
there was no shelter per se except for a couple of stores with a very small
awning already crowded with people who had stopped there to escape the
downpour. The bus stopped, the door opened, and the attendant indicated that
this was the place. I got off and ran in under the awning with my day pack and
my computer pack, both of which I wanted to keep dry. I set them on top of a
counter which happened to be displaying the plucked produce of a butcher of
chickens. Bobbi followed through the deluge with her own hand luggage and she
took over watching my two hand bags. I now had to go with the attendant to the
back of the bus to retrieve our backpacks proper. The bay opened up offering
some protection from the rain but there was little shelter there and water was
running in the street so my boots got soaked as I pushed bags aside to retrieve
our packs one by one. By the time I had got them both and set them on a plastic
container that just happened to be in front of the chicken seller's shop, I was
soaked top to bottom, and our packs were getting spattered from runoff from the
awning as it splashed at our feet.
So this was not the best of entries to a destination.
However as we stood amid the Sri Lankans every bit as uncomfortable as we were,
kindnesses began to emerge. The chicken sellers asked us where we were from and
where we were going and in this way ice was broken and they even offered to
take our bags behind the counter to help us keep them dry. They indicated for
us where the bus stop for Ella was (not where we'd been left off unfortunately,
but two blocks yonder, by the clock tower we could barely see through the
rainstorm). They suggested we could possibly go to Ella by tuk tuk. Now this
was an idea. A minute or two later, one stopped just meters from us and let out
a passenger. I ran over and told the driver we wanted to go to Ella. He said
get in. I said how much. He held up five fingers which I assumed meant 500
rupees, about $5. In this rain it was worth it, I didn't haggle. I asked him to
pull forward. He did and Bobbi got in. One by one, passing them to her through
the unrelenting downpour, I handed her our bags which she put around her in a
way you would understand only if you had ever been a passenger in a tricycle
motor rickshaw. It's a tight fit, with the extra consideration of making sure
that things stayed dry. But we both squeezed in and tuk tuk tuk ... we were
off.
To make a long story short, the driver took us the 12 km
to Ella, turning his 2-stroke engine off and coasting in the downhill parts,
and peering out by peeling back the windowless tarp the driver was using to
protect passengers from the rain, we found the hotel which we had by the time
of our arrival chosen from the Lonely Planet guide (it was near the police
station, and there was a sign on the road showing the side road to the police
HQ). The hotel had rooms (everyone had rooms in that town we found later) a
little expensive but very comfortable, more on that later. We got our gear in
from the cab and I went back to pay the driver. He asked 700 rupees. In the
negotiations that followed, he told our hotelier that he had indeed held up 5
fingers, as we insisted, but followed by two, which he now demonstrated.
There's the five fingers and, what's that, another two suddenly appear. That
was bullshit of course, but to placate him I gave him 600.
Though if it's normal for a hotel in Colombo to
advertise $50 rooms and then charge $70 why shouldn't a driver ask 500 rupies
and then charge 700? That's getting around in Sri Lanka!
The hotel was quite agreeable. Our LPG had said we
should consider this one if comfort was a consideration, though prices had
doubled since 2003 when our book was published. We agreed to stay on half
board, which meant we would eat dinner there rather than go out in the rain and
forage for food that evening, and have breakfast there as well. After some
discussion in which the room we were offered for 5500 (put a decimal midway in
there to convert to dollars) came down to 5000 plus service charge and taxes
etc and we got that down to a straight 5000 including taxes plus plus. That had
broken down to 2500 for the room, 2000 for dinner, and 1000 for breakfast, so
it was ambiguous what the room alone really cost. In any event it was a superb
room. Each room including the dining room had little alcoves where there was a
table with near 180 degree views of the rain drenched shrubbery and the road
below, a small mainly pedestrian way leading from the main road to the police
station. We had a couple of tall bottles of beer there while watching the
clouds turn sunset colors and resting up from our trip, and after just time to
take a bath and dry off it was time to go down and eat. The food as always in
Sri Lanka was curries to die for, filling and delicious. A couple more beers
later and there was nothing to do but go up to bed. It was dark and still
raining out so we didn't feel like taking in our surroundings just yet. Oh
there was one thing to do, there was a big sign next to the stairway
advertising wireless Internet, no strings attached (the sign said). So I asked
about that and was told there was one string actually, I had to purchase a
card. But the card was only 100 rupees an hour so I said sure, give me one, and
went up to my room anticipating at least an hour of net surfing before bedtime.
But up in my room no wireless was detected so I walked my computer down to the
lobby where still no wireless was available and showed this to the hapless, or
in the case of matters pertaining to technology, clueless hotel staff member
who had greeted us to this hotel, negotiated prices with us, brought us our
food and beer to our room, and was the one face pertaining to all services
provided here at this hotel. He thought maybe atmospheric conditions caused by
rain were preventing internet from reaching my computer. I said that may be
true for internet in general but my computer was not detecting a modem
operating from this hotel, and for that modem to be detected by my computer and
for it to then provide me with internet despite atmospheric conditions were two
different things. But the word modem did not appear to computer with this
fellow so I had to leave it, though not without registering my complaint that
this was one big string attached to wireless service purported to be available
there at this hotel.
Next morning dawned overcast but it had at least stopped
raining, so after breakfast (papaya, omelettes with spicy chilis, bread and
jam, and watery coffee – forget coffee in Sri Lanka, drink the tea for
which the country is justifiably famous, thanks to pickers earning 150 rupees
any day they manage to bring in 10 kg of tea leaves, about what a worker can
pick in a day according to LPG – we went up to the nearby train station to
book platform cars for the famously scenic train ride back to Colombo, which
LPG had mentioned must be booked in advance. The station was leafy and
decidedly rural and had a glass-encased buddha out front. It was almost like a
toy train station, staffed by a life-time worker nearing retirement age who
patiently explained in excellent English that this was school holidays and all
the platform cars had been booked as had been all first class seating. We could
come down on the day and try for second or third. There were two trains a day,
one at 6:47 and the other three hours later. We had heard their whistles that
morning only an hour or two after the dogs stopped yapping in the middle of the
night.
Even taking our chances in 2nd class, the train was
likely to be the most comfortable way back to Colombo on Friday when we would
leave to return to Hotel Renuka and retrieve our luggage and catch our plane on
Saturday. Now it was Wednesday and we had two days to enjoy Ella and the
walking possibilities mentioned in the LPG, but first we had to find ourselves
some accommodation more suitable to our budget and social status. The Hotel
Country Comfort was indeed comfortable but we hadn't rested well with the dogs
barking and the view wasn't the best possible in Ella, which was famous for its
panoramic Ella Gap, looking back across the rolling foothills to the plains and
even the ocean below (the latter on a rare clear day, it was said). Plus the
meals were expensive, we like variety, and there proved to be plenty of
restaurants on Ella's on main street. It was a very compact town consisting of
a few storefronts on a crossroads. Buses came through regularly, almost
constantly, making the main street a roar of diesel engines and their
collateral fumes. So as we popped into the many places to stay along that
street a prime consideration was being far enough away from that noise, which
was one of the advantages of the Hotel Country Comfort, though the HCC did have
a nocturnal dog problem, as has been mentioned. Dogs might be hard to avoid in
this town in any event.
Probably the nicest place to stay in Ella might have
been the Ambient a couple of km up a road from the main town, but it's major
draw was the great views, and though the dry season had officially started in
Sri Lanka (December to April according to LPG) this December we were still in
the wet and there wasn't much to see from mist shrouded Ella. Also it seemed
the afternoon rains were the norm and we didn't want to be stuck in a place far
from the town center, so we never went up there. Near the town center we found
many agreeable places many for less than 1000 rupees a night. But some were
right off common areas (too noisy), one looked fine to me but Bobbi said, did
you see those sheets? Filthy! So that was off our list. Another had wonderful
spacious well decorated rooms with real matrimonial double beds for only 1500
but each room had a view of the road and was hence within earshot, so it was
out of my specs. Finally we climbed a paved track up to the “Hilltop”
and found pleasant rooms with a common lanai with a view of some waterfalls on
a hillside and views right out the gap in theory when the mists lifted. These
rooms were 1200 and I managed to negotiate a fan with that (and none of these
places applied service charge or taxes to room prices). The owner wondered why
I needed a fan since it was cool at night, but I made it a condition of our
stay since this was our white noise system to promote peaceful sleep and also
to dry our boots, still wet from our soaking the day before. We noticed that
Internet was available there for just 130 rupees an hour, and in fact it was
via the computer inside the comfortable family living room (when it worked as
was the case with seemingly everything here).
We liked the look and feel of the Hilltop, and we took a
room there. It turned out to be quiet, we never heard family or street noises
when trying to sleep, and there were no dogs barking at night. It was even
further from the train station so though we could still the whistle in the
morning, we at least didn't get the vibration from the train as it rumbled
nearby our old room at the Hotel Country Comfort. And when the mists cleared,
as they did our next morning there, we had a great view down the gap. Nice.
Well, to make a long story short, our stay in Sri Lanka
could have been better. Essentially we were rained out. On the other hand, once
we got to the Hilltop, we had a very comfortable place to chill out in the
rain. At moments the mists raised, from the lanai at the Hilltop right outside
our room we had a view of Little Adams Peak, one of the walks recommended in
LPG, which entailed a km walk out of town up a tiny tarmac road to the next
village away in that direction, and then a jaunt up a trail to the plantations,
then through an unmarked gate to the base of 300 concrete steps leading up to
the peak itself, a round trip trek of about 5 km from our viewpoint balcony. On
our first full day in the town, the one where we moved to the Hilltop, once we
got settled in to our new place we walked up to the top but found ourselves
socked in when we got there, and we returned to the town just in time to beat
the onset of the afternoon rains. The next day, our last and only full day in
Ella, we awoke to better weather and decided to jog to the top. This time we
got the view but the rains began in earnest while we were having breakfast on
our lanai and this day ended up a total wash, except that we relaxed, napped,
read, and eventually got a ride in a tuk tuk to the Ambience Hotel up the
mountain from ours, and found from there that for twice the price of our room
they had essentially the same view as ours, so we were happy to be back where
we were.
We also discovered a great small restaurant in Ella, the
“Ella Village Restaurant, Ella”. The kind proprietor had a book where
previous guests had recorded rave reviews of his cooking. We concurred and
added our review to the others there. The really nice thing was that his food
was cheap. For 250 we could order a heaping plate of rice and 5 curries (the
aubergine curry and coconut sampol especially tasty). We ate there three times
rather than at our hotel (one curry for twice the price). It's a small thing
but given the weather and the fact we couldn't really get into the countryside
while there, this place was a dominant experience in a town with few
possibilities for such experiences. Interestingly we read in the journals kept
by the proprietor that others from many nationalities had sat out the rains in
the same spot and appreciated the curries and beer provided by this little
ambassador for Sri Lankan cuisine.
The day of total rain we went to bed early, resolved to
awake at 5 and catch the early train to Colombo. Ironically this day dawned
with sunshine and the train ride home was a glorious litany of hillsides and
waterfalls. Or would have been had we been able to get a seat in the
observation car at the back of the train. We tried to get 1st class tickets at
the station but there had been no cancellations so we rode in 2nd, prices just
$7 and $3.50 respectively. But whereas in first class you'd get a seat and a
view and no disturbances the rest of the journey, on our ride we managed to
both squeeze into a single seat where its mate was occupied by a child only
because we happened to board at the first stop out of Badulla. By the time the
child disembarked people were crowding the aisles, so we let a young girl sit
down, three to a pair of seats being normal on that ride, and people in the
aisles blocking much of the view. It was a long tedious ride, but still with
waterfalls and lovely views of hill country on the first day we would have been
able to get out and hike had we really visited Ella in the dry season.
At the terminus in the Fort district of Colombo, it was
pretty easy to get a tuk tuk to the Renuka Hotel where we'd left our dive gear,
and what we really wanted after we checked in to our overpriced room was a nice
cold beer, but this happened to be the day of the full moon, and guess what you
can't get in Sri Lanka on full moon days? Not only that, but things normally
open are closed on this day, so even our Internet cafe down the street was
locked and barred. The only bright side was that the Palmyrah Restaurant was
about to open, and the Ginger Beer there wasn't a bad subsitute for the real
thing.
Next morning I went for a jog to see if there was
anything we'd missed around Colombo. I ran from the Renuka Hotel on Galle Road
along the back side of the lake to the Fort part of town. The Fort was a small
fortress of army checkpoints and traffic barriers, so the stretch of road
outside the Hilton to the sea was happily devoid of traffic. At the corniche
itself the sea lay under glorious sunlight as I turned south to continue my run
toward the cannons facing out to sea, next to each of which a soldier was
stationed. At the first one I was challenged and told I couldn't run down the
Galle Street seaside corniche road that was my straight shot home and that many
tourists must have enjoyed strolling in Colombo in the past. Not only that but
when I backtracked to take a more inland road home, I was challenged numerous
times, told to cross the road, a few hundred meters further on, cross back,
stopped and told I couldn't enter this hotel district ... in short, I found a
city where pedestrians were prevented from accessing the most agreeable parts.
So this was my impression of Colombo this time around.
Our first visit before our kids were born, back in the late 70's, tourists were
put at the head of orderly queues to board buses, transport was relatively
straightforward, the country was laid back and easy to get around. Now the
infrastructure has been neglected in order to pay for war and securily, it's
become a hassle to travel in, and if you're there on a full moon night you
can't even sedate yourself.
I wish for happier times for Sri Lankans. Bobbi and I
would like to visit the Maldives again but next time I think we'll prolong our
time there and avoid Sri Lanka if all we'll have is a few days to try and get
around there.
