Tag: diving

  • Exploring El Hierro: A Diver’s Paradise in Europe

    Exploring El Hierro: A Diver’s Paradise in Europe

    A first proper diving holiday in Europe! El Hierro is the southernmost and westernmost of the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean. Getting to El Hierro is quite the trip. It involves a plane, a ferry and a long drive to the most southern point of Spain – La Restinga.

    Walk around La Restinga

    Our walk to the Restinga volcano

    Sunset walk across the lava fields

    In our 16 dives, we explored 14 different dive sites. These included El Coral, Baja Fria, Baja Bocarones, El Rincon, and Roque Bermejo. Other sites were Punta Restinga, Cueva de la Arena, El Bajon, El Salto, and Barco Chino. We also visited Punta las Canas, El Rio, La Herradura, and Punta de Tacoron. Thanks to Tagoro Dive!

    We have seen many trumpet fish, lobsters, white-eyed morays, eagle rays, filefish, lots of plankton, I have never seen before. Also schools of barracudas, leopard eels, giant pufferfish, huge groupers, garden eels, turtles and even a torpedo ray! And a fangtoothed moray, which was also the first time I ever saw it.

    Here are some photos from the ocean floor. It is all volcanic – very unique!

    Ocean life

    I enjoyed this diving and thanks to Tagoro Dive we really had some beautiful dives!

  • Discovering Diving: Our Liveaboard Adventure in the Red Sea

    Discovering Diving: Our Liveaboard Adventure in the Red Sea

    I have not been diving a lot so far. I know I love it. I want to do more of it. That is why Rick and I decided to try a liveaboard. This one was great. As their motto goes DIVE EAT SLEEP REPEAT. We traveled to Marsa Alam airport (Egypt), stayed the night in Port Ghalib and next day we board our boat. 6 full days of diving, 7 nights of sleeping. When we got off, we were still rocking.

    Here are some Port Ghalib photos at night. There is a very chill camel on the beach of our hotel. Also, see our boat and cabin on the upper deck.

    We did altogether 19 dives and here is some statistics of what we saw. It was beautiful!

    • Countless turtles
    • Busy, protective and adorable anemones (nemos)
    • Countless blue spotted rays
    • 1 hammerhead
    • 3 giant pufferfish
    • A shoal of many squids
    • A few triggerfish, bluefin trevallies & many other fish
    • Many morays
    • 1 barracuda & 1 crocodilefish
    • 1 sank safari boat
    Many adorable nemos
    Hammerhead in the deep blue
    Protective nemos

    Beautiful reefs, pinnacles, swim-through and other features that Red Sea offers.

    Plenty of beautiful marine life.

    Sunken safari boat.

    A shoal of squids

    On the photo you can see all the dive sites. We have met the nicest people, that we ganged up with. Thank you for your company.

  • My First Diving Experience in Picturesque Raja Ampat

    My First Diving Experience in Picturesque Raja Ampat

    I have wanted to try diving for a very long time now. Then Rick finally said ok, let’s do this. So we went straight to Raja Ampat, Indonesia, one of the top diving locations. Many people said we will be spoilt from now on.

    We stayed in a homestay for about 10 days. No wifi, no alcohol, no choice of food. We ate fish, rice and veggies every day for 3 times a day – my tummy loved it! Once in a while we had something different, like dadar gulung – pancakes made of coconut & pandan. We had this whole beach, like from a screensaver, just for ourselves. It was picture perfect.

    The island was very small, we would walk all around it in about 45 minutes. There was a school and the local men were fishing every day.

    On our arrival, we had some problems finding our homestay. The boat left us at the main jetty. We found out later that ours was broken. The locals don’t really speak English. After some time using gestures and attempting to pronounce the name of our homestay, we made it.

    We started our OWD at the resort of the dive center. After we passed it, we of course joined their other dives. They picked us up every day at the jetty. Every dive was special, since we were experiencing something new really. At the time, I was not taking photos yet underwater. However, our guides were so kind to take them for us. They sent us all the photos from all the dives we did.

    Between the 2 dives we always had a surface interval on one of the islands. On one of them we got a chance to see fruit bats.

    On another one we went to see the view of Piaynemo. It was beautiful to see it.

    We had some friends trailing us around the island all the way to our homestay.

    Our hosts were very kind. One day we had a privilege to get fresh coconut, straight from the palm. Our host climbed up so easily, cut it off and made it ready for us to eat. He even made a little spoon out of the peel. Amazing. Another day he came home on his narrow boat with the biggest swordfish ever. He was very proud of his catch. I forgot to put the case off of my phone, so I’m not really proud of these photos. Still, you get the picture.

    Local fishing at sunset

    We fell in love with diving! There will be more!