And yet more photos

This time from diving at Tiwi beach near Mombasa:

Packing

How many pairs of trousers do you need for a six months trip? How much tooth paste? Do you really need to take paper clips? What about an extra USB cable? DVDs for entertainment? Spare sleeping bag?

Packing the right things and not any more has been hard, even though we have been camping for years. This trip has other challenges: we have camera gear, dive equipment and lots of recovery paraphernalia for different kinds of emergencies, we are packing for six months, not three weeks; we have no idea what the deal is with getting supplies en route. We have had so much different advice about buying replacements throughout Africa, that we can get everything along the way, that we should pack extra supplies as there is nothing between the mayor centres, it's hard to know how it's going to turn out. Plus there are three people on this trip, not two.

We are well fitted out, with built-in cupboards on both sides, metal lockable boxes on the roof, and sliding drawers accessible from the back, so there is a space for everything. But as it turns out we just packed too much of everything, and we were too optimistic about the space we have. Filling everything up right from the start made it annoying to get to stuff when we needed it, and it seems that what we need during the day is hard to get to, and what we need at night a completely different set of items - is buried under a lot of stuff, too.

So a few days ago we started thinking about shipping some of the things we don't really need to Germany, and as it turns out we are quite happy to lose some of our dive gear, which we can hire when we go diving. It's nice to have your own gear, but a little optimistic when there is so much else to carry. We have also dumped some clothes on the principle that we can always wash,. and that camping means it's acceptable to have stains on your shirt.

Finding the right way to ship to Germany has been a bit of a slog, though, as our first option, DHL, has given us so much grief in the past, and now wanted to charge us 400€ for 20kg. Luckily NamPost came to the rescue and a very efficient and unflappable woman behind the counter helped us find packing material and found the cheapest way to ship, costing us only 120€ for 30kg. It'll take four weeks, but since we are not there till January, we don't really care. Let's just hope everything arrives in one piece.

The Formula One of Hotels

Cape Town meant an end to our short camping adventure for now, we had to go back into a hotel. After the relatively expensive places we stayed in in Clarens and Cradock we decided to plump for a cheaper option this time, a Formula One. This French chain advertises itself as: "All you need in a hotel room", but neglected to finish the sentence with "and not a thing more". The hotel provided just the basics, everything else was obtainable from vending machines. The room was like a real hotel room that had been vacuum packed into a smaller space. The bathroom is molded from one piece of plastic, shaped around the shower and toilet, and welded into the corner of the room. When you shower the whole unit gets flooded. The bedroom proper consists of a double bed with a single bunk bed stacked sideways above it, reachable by a metal ladder. There is a sink in the corner and a tiny triangular table with an even tinier stool to perch on in the opposite corner.

Sleeping in a dorm is always a bit fraught, as everyone tip-toes around trying not to interfere with other people's personal space or offend their evening habits. Then there is the potential for disturbing snoring, coughing or staying up too late and keeping the lights on. Luckily, we have so far not discovered any incompatible behaviour patterns, thus the potential for saving some money on hotel rooms still stands.

Unfortunately we needed to use the room as a drying space for dive gear after our visit to the aquarium, too, so with the hanging space under  and the rail across the bunk bed the room soon looked like a dive shop, BCDs and regulators, wet suits and booties all spread out to dry. Luckily we were on the ground floor and the car was parked right outside, so we could climb through the window and ferry gear in and out of the room quite easily. It also helped to smuggle the gas stove and kettle as well as breakfast ingredients into the room without having to go past the receptionist.

Diving in Two Oceans

Today one of my dreams came true. We dived in the predator tank in Cape Town Two Oceans aquarium. Ever since I saw the leaflet on my last visit I thought what a cool thing to be on the other side of the window. This is probably one of my favourite aquariums, it has very sophisticated exhibits, lots of information, and the main tanks are beautifully designed and lit. Somehow an aquarium doesn't have that depressingly lonely feel of a zoo, either, although the penguins never look very happy.

There are actually two tanks to dive in, the predator tank and the kelp forest. Both seem endless, like a window out to sea, the tantalisingly big fish just happening to appear in front of the aquarium window as we watch them, hypnotised by the movement and speckled light.

All morning I was beyond excited. I had no idea what to expect, just that there would be two dives, the predator dive and the kelp dive. Matt, our dive leader, took us to the tanks in the darkened exhibition space and explained the process, how to behave around the fish (keep your distance from the sharks, the rays won't sting, so you can let them touch you; watch the turtles, they may snap; if you get tangled in the kelp, don't yank it out) and what we would be doing (you can look for shark teeth in the sand - sharks can lose up to 40000 teeth in their life time -, we will feed the fish from a bag of pilchards, swim around at your own pace, don't get lost).

Next we went behind the scenes. To get into the tank we had to climb onto the roof of the building, where the aquarium is open to the elements. The tanks are covered with blue tarps to prevent evaporation. There was a big old rusty pump to simulate the swell in the kelp tank, rushing sea water into the container every now and then. A platform stretched across the water surface down some rickety steps to get into the water. It all looked pretty ramshackle from here, with old pipes and flaking white washed walls, compared to the controlled environment below. There was a real feeling of smoke and mirrors, feet furiously paddling below to maintain the calm elegance of the exhibition.

We first went into the predator tank, as the water was slightly warmer at 18C. Getting into the water was easy, we just ducked under the tarps, slipped off the platform into the water and dropped past the shark circuit - they like to cruise closer to the surface. And then we were in the aquarium. It was actually only 5 meters deep, but as with all dives, once you lose sight of the surface, the rest of the world becomes a theoretical location to return to by necessity rather than choice. In the water the surface is irrelevant compared to the strange and amazing world around us. Here were large wrasses, yellow tails, sting-rays in increasing sizes, ragged-tooth sharks and turtles. And amazingly, here in front of us, was the window. People were staring, waving, pointing, at us - and the fish we had joined on the other side. It was eery to be here, not on the side of the air breathers, that despite of all the equipment I needed to sustain myself down here, I was now one of the aquatics.

We really just spent the time swimming around, watching the rays pass us - the large ray had a habit of slowly passing flat along the glass with it's underside to the viewers, a very elegant move executed with a simple swish of the wing. Occasionally a shark would grace us below, still above us so we could marvel at the row of very pointy teeth. An old turtle mostly sat in a dark corner, giving off a depressed and resigned air, while the smaller turtle hung around, liking to have its underside scratched by Matt.

Our second dive took us into the - colder at 14C - Kelp tank, housing large schools of sea fish, a small shark and lots of sea anemones, From the outside it is fascinating, brown fronds swaying back and forth in the water, schools of silvery fish moving past the window, beautiful. Once in the tank it was a bit more confusing. Despite being only 12x12 meters, the rocks and kelp make the space disorienting, as we swam around new spaces revealed themselves, new angles and views. We had a chance to feed frozen pilchard halves to the fish in this tank, unlike the predator tank it was actually safe to do so here without the danger of loosing a finger, these fish being less aggressive - and having smaller mouths. Nevertheless there was quite a bit of jostling and nudging when the food appeared. One large wrasse in particular , a real bruiser, all shiny and silver, just snapped half a pilchard out of my hand. It disappeared without a trace. The smaller fish were a little more dainty, taking bites off the snack held out to them.

Maldives Diving

We just returned from the best holiday ever - ten days diving in the Maldives.

The first thing we did is make major use of our recent diving qualification by spending every possible moment underwater in the Maldives. We had planned the trip to be the relaxing break for Stuart after go-live, so we chose the hotel because of its 'no news, no shoes' policy. And then we ruined it by getting totally hooked on diving so that we went on the boat every day to see more fish. In between we just had enough time to catch some rays, eat lots of great food and read a whole pile of books.

There were so many highlights on this holiday - and that's without ever leaving the island except to go diving - that it's hard to begin. Everything was taken care of, from the little things, like aloe vera after-sun lotion in the bathroom and bicycles to get around, to the big things like fresh fruit cut up to order in the morning and being able to leave our dive kit at the dive school to find on the boat whenever we went out. The rooms were ideal, large with sofas in all the right places, like next to the - outdoor - bathtub, so that I could keep Stuart company in his favourite way to relax. We had a piece of beach to ourselves and loungers, table and chairs and a hammock with our villa number on them so that they were reserved for us, and we were in the most basic accommodation there was on the island. Other villas had pools and sunken living rooms on multiple levels.

But it was the diving that really got us hooked (can you tell?). We thought we'd take it easy and not go diving every day, but after the first time over the drop-off of the house reef it was all we could do not to go out twice a day. The reef is really beyond description. There is more animal and plant life there than I have ever seen, and in such variety that we stocked up on books on fish, coral, invertebrates and every other creature to be found below the water line. I have never been so glad to have a camera! We saw every kind of fish from parrot fish to mantas, sharks and turtles, schools of bat fish and huge swarms of little silver fish so dense we couldn't make out the reef. There were corals in every colour hiding the most incredible life, poisonous stone fish and coral groupers, sea anemones housed pairs of clown fish, shrimp and lobsters hid in caves, moray eel looked more dangerous than they are, star fish and sea cucumbers, and on and on.

Lots of pictures here and here.

Qualified - Diving Part 3

Today was our last dive to qualify as PADI open water divers. We had to go out to Al Boom's dive centre at Fujeirah to do this, but it was worth it, diving there is really something.

We had actually gone out towards the East Coast yesterday for a bit of wadi driving with Peter, Sabine and Jannek, their Danish visitor, so we stayed at the Fujeirah Hilton for the night. A lovely place with a cute little beach (home to many crabs), where we enjoyed the sunset on our balcony.

Diving off a boat brings a whole new set of challenges for the inexperienced diver, including having to roll backwards from the edge of the boat into the water like they do in spy movies (called back roll entry, surprisingly). The other is having to share a boat with the inevitable dimwit show-off who has seen sharks, whales and turtles in every ocean of the World.

So far no underwater pictures, just us (and a German guy in the background checking his kit) Luckily there is no talking underwater so we could enjoy the sights of colourful fish darting in and out of rosy red corals in peace. We also followed the lazy path of a turtle and discovered a flounder disguising itself as the seabed. On the beginners-mistakes front we managed, in the first minutes of our dive, to: get tangled in the descent line from the boat (Fiver); get detached from the tank (Stuart); get stung by a sea urchin (Stuart); and almost lose the snorkel (Fiver). Despite this we were allowed to qualify, so now we are now able to borrow tanks and dive where and when we like. Maldives - here we come!

Real Fish - Diving Part 2

Today we met Nemo, who moved to Dubai to live here incognito after fame got too much for him in Australia.

But really, we did our first open water dive today, nowhere exotic, only on Jumeirah Public beach, but what amazing things we saw: Sea cucumbers, hermit crabs, sea urchins and the famous Nemo (or another clown fish, it was hard to tell). Diving for the first time in the sea is a bit scary, but exhilarating at the same time. The surface is suddenly a lot further away than it was in the training pool (as in 6 meters, although we will be qualified to dive to 30 meters eventually) and there is a vast expanse of water all around. But we are down there and still able to breathe, which is a cool feeling. There is a lot more going on down there than is visible on the surface, all kinds of fish and invertebrate life, all just an arm's length away.

The least enjoyable bit was the fact that we had to lug all our heavy kit down to the beach and back again - not the easiest when you're wearing a wet suit and you're loaded with bit and pieces and 10 kg of extra weights.

After the dive at the beach, and the pool dive to practice swimming without a mask and keeping neutrally buoyant (i.e. not floating upwards or dropping to the ocean floor, but hovering just above the ground and controlling your diving level by breathing - one of the trickiest things to learn so you don't go off in unwanted directions while distracted by a pretty fish) we went on a shopping spree. It's better to dive with your own equipment, although it is possible to rent everything from the dive centre. But we decided to get at least the main pieces, a wet suit, a BCD (buoyancy control device - kind of like a life vest with pockets that the tank and other kit is attached to), mask and fins. That way we know it fits and we can look after it and ensure nothing is broken. So now when we travel to hot countries on diving holidays we will be carrying as much luggage as on a two week skying trip to Norway in winter. Oh goody!

Diving Part 1

Today we finally got started on our diving course.

We had already gone through most of a diving course with SSI in the UK, but never got round to finishing as it would have meant diving in the chilly murk of Peterborough Reservoir, or finding a - rare - SSI school in France. So when we came here we thought it'd be a great way to spend a hot summer, getting wet and cooling down in the waters of the Gulf.

Al Boom Diving School is one of the many places offering diving training the PADI way. They are based on Al Wasl Rd where they have a shop and a training pool for learners. To start with we did some theory, most of which was a refresher for us, and then we got to put on our kit to learn how to be safe underwater. The most dangerous thing that can happen when diving is to run out of air, so a lot of the training is concerned with teaching what to do if you have air problems. We learned how to drop our weights and ascend safely, how to share air with our diving buddy (you always dive with a partner who makes sure your kit is ok and helps out in case of problems) and what to do if you dislodge your mask or regulator (the breathing apparatus).

There is a lot to learn to start with so we were glad that we had already done most of it before. Next we will dive in real open water in Dubai, and then to qualify we have to take a theoretical test and take a final dive in Fujeirah next weekend.

Underwater Photos Update

Due to popular demand (thanks, Martin) here are the pictures of Stuart taken with the camera in its new underwater case.

Enjoy!

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.