Diving

After all the fun we had with the underwater camera we remembered that we had an unfinished diving course to complete. Where better than in the lukewarm waters of the Gulf?

When we left the UK we were all but done with a diving course run by SSI in Ipswich. We had done all the pool sessions, the theoretical exam and were just short of being officially allowed to dive by the fact that we couldn't face our outdoor dive, which would have meant going to a big cold lake in Peterborough. It was so completely alien to our visions of diving in the warm waters of the Med that we kept putting it off. Then we left.

When we arrived here we realised that diving was the ideal thing to do on hot summer weekends round here. A way to be outside without too much heat. Water temperatures are high enough not to need heavy diving suits (even when the water is quite warm, it cools down the body by extracting heat, so some sort of dive skin is a must). There is purportedly very good diving here, in Oman and on the East coast of the peninsula near Fujairah .

Unfortunately we haven't been able to transfer our obscure SSI semi-qualification to the local PADI training centre, so we will have to start again. We signed up for a course starting in September at Jumeirah Beach Hotel, so no diving in the Med again this summer.