Simon & Kathryn getting ready to dive

Ok, so it’s been a little while since my last post here and the simple reason is that I’ve been enjoying the delights of a holiday. Yep, Kathryn and I took the opportunity to go away for 10 days to the sunny island of Tenerife. Not to sunbathe but to go diving, every single day. I’d never thought of diving in Tenerife before, I assumed that it would be devoid of life and a bit uninteresting. Well I was wrong! Don’t missunderstand me, it’s not like a coral reef, but it is stunning nevertheless, oh yes – and it’s very deep. Being a volcanic island, there are a couple of short ledges out that drop off at 30m and 50m and then next ledge is 3000m+. We took the opportunity to take twin cylinders on our backs and a mix of oxygen rich gas in a cylinder side slung (for faster decompression) to allow us to dive a little deeper and longer than we would normally as the conditions were so good.

We saw so much life: huge rays, turtles, barracuda, moray eels, shrimp, jacks and so much more. There were wrecks, walls, caves and all sorts of other interesting features.

Exiting after a cave dive

During the first week we were there we were lucky enough to be diving with a group from Northern Ireland who had us in absolute stitches all week, so much so that I had stomach pains from laughing – or perhaps it was the endless chips that you get fed out there.

While we’re talking about the food, I don’t think we ate anything Spanish the whole time we were there. We had a good Indian, Chinese and plenty of tourism fried food but nothing authentically Spanish. We did try on one day at lunchtime, between dives, to go to a Spanish restaurant. There was a dozen or so of us and when the food arrived, pretty much everyone had ordered a gut busting English breakfast. Oh well, I guess we all needed the calories for the diving.

So it’s back to work for us now, fun’s over

Ray

For anyone interested in diving in Tenerife, I can recommend Dive 24-7 Tenerife Dave and Nikki, who run the dive centre, are a great laugh and as accommodating as you can legally get

Thanks to Ken and Jane for the photos.