Tenerife - 2006

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The (in)Famous Five Go Adventuring Again
+ THE Frog

Anybody that knows us would be well aware that a diving holiday to Tenerife involving me, Cate, Keith, Sue and Dave was going to be eventful; you'll be glad to know we didn't disappoint. The flight out saw our party increase by one member... a stuffed version of the Crazy Frog - he was to be our group mascot, that is until Dave started to devise means of torturing and killing it.

As well as diving we had Keith's birthday to celebrate... some celebrated more than others!

May 4 - Las Eras & Barracuda Point
Las Eras was a 23m 64 minute dive; the site is located a few bays north from the dive centre with a very easy entry and exit point.
This was followed by a dive (the first of many) on and around the house reef heading towards Barracuda Pointin 12m for 54 minutes; access to the entry and exit point for this site involves a short walk from the dive centre, however it seems much further when laden with dive kit. Due to the proximity of the sites the sea life was very similar with the following tick list of critters – African Cuttlefish, Garden Eels, Octopuses, Scorpion Fish, Tiger Moray, Arrowhead Crabs, Cleaner Fish, Trumpet Fish, Damsel Fish, Parrot Fish… and many more.
Tenerife has a huge problem with sea urchins - you will see, quite literally, hundreds of them on every dive and the reefs are being systematically stripped of algae; as such don't expect to see much in the way of corals, plantlife or sponges.

Keith had this to say about the day's diving:
The holiday started for real today as my erstwhile colleague says above 2 very excellent dives with Sue seeing a cuttlefish for the first time so she can tick that box. George the dive guide seems a sound fellow despite being an ex pongo.

One incident of note; a coming together of the corpse and the service and as is often the way one has to make sacrifices for the other. In this case the service took injuries in order to allow free passage to the corpse. The injuries were inflicted by that denizen of the deep the black sea urchin, but a full recovery is expected!!

May 5 - Barracuda Cove & Right Side of Abades Mountain
The group split for the morning with the girls and Keith going to Poris whilst Dave and I did our first DPV specialty dive past the house reef and Barracuda Point into Barracuda Cove. The dive took us to 18.5m and we had a total dive time of 45 minutes. When we got to Barracuda Cove, Ian our guide for the morning, spotted a huge ray at rest - fantastic.
My first impressions of DPVs are that they make good tools for getting from A to B quickly - where A is the entry point and B is the actual dive site - but I wouldn't use one for any of the recreational diving I'm currently doing. They would have been useful when we tried to find the Gipsy but other than that a fun piece of kit with no practical use for me at the moment.
The second dive saw the group reunited for a dive on the right hand side of Abades Mountain, a site which nobody had dived before so in some ways we were all heading into the unknown. Our maximum depth was 17.1m with a dive time totalling 46 minutes.

May 6 - Playa Paraiso
Following a heavy night Cate decided to sit out today's dive to a well known site for rays; unfortunately for us they must have decided to take a day trip elsewhere as we only saw a couple of small eagle rays. Still a good dive but frustrating for George because he felt he'd let us down. Max depth 23m, total dive time 58 minutes.
For a change we found a decent restaurant in the evening; unfortunately for me, because I'd been up until 05:30 hrs looking after Cate and getting Red Bull out of my system I felt totally knackered and had to cry off early... I actually left a very nice steak half-eaten on my plate.

May 7 - Barracuda Point x2
After completing our knowledge reviews for the DPV specialty (haven't had to do any of those for a while) we were back to the house reef and Barracuda Point for DPV dive 2 for Dave and I whilst Cate, Sue and Keith were doing DPV dive 1. Skills first then off for a play around our favourite dive site! I was leading the group but after a short time the battery in my DPV started to die so Dave and I swapped with him bringing up the rear and finning like mad to get the most from his scooter. The next one to hit a go-slow was Cate's so I swapped with her... at this point buddy pairs mattered not! Aiming to return to shore I started following the ripples in the sand until we began to get shallower (leading without a compass - tut tut) after a while I stuck my head up from 4m to check that we were in fact heading in the right direction. Bearings sorted down I went again and headed off on what I thought was the correct heading. Nope, somehow I'd managed a 180° turn; at this point I relinquished the lead to Dave who got us back safely.
Nightfall saw us diving with Oliver around the house reef and Barracuda Point (surprise, surprise), masses of life from huge shoals of fry to barracuda and rays, Cate spotted a small angel shark which she pointed out to me but the rest of the group missed it. The highlight for me however was stroking a cuttlefish; that probably means I won't be getting a Project AWARE badge now.
The lowpoint was returning with a D4 torch housing but missing the vital bits of torch; such as lens cap, bulb, bulb housing and battery.

May 8 - Radazul & Barracuda Point (Just for a change)
Radazul is quite a distance from the dive centre, a few kilometres south of Santa Cruz in the north of the island. The dive is superb offering a maximum depth of around 40m, although we limited ourselves to 30m. Some huge trumpetfish, barracuda, parrot fish... all of the usual suspects were there in plenty and generally bigger than we'd seen them elsewhere. 53 minutes was definitely not long enough for this site.
The afternoon saw us return to our favourite site to complete the DPV specialty for Keith, Sue and Cate... 'nuff said!