Wednesday November 7th to Saturday November 10th, 2012
Well I made it back to Saudi safe and sound but decided that I wasn't going to spend my last few days of leave in Riyadh. It was a pretty quick turn around time but I managed to unpack one bag and get another bag packed and head back to the airport for the trip to Yanbu.
It was the usual crew diving again (Kate, Nick, Aaron, Sarah, Mark and myself) and the seas appeared a lot calmer than the last trip so we were looking forward to some good diving.
It's Saudi so you never know what will be in the truck bed in front of you. A horse actually looks pretty normal although I like it better when the truck is full of camels. They look so relaxed hanging out there.
Have no idea what this is but also found this on the trip from the hotel to the dive site. I'm sure it tells a great story.
The group of us. That's Sarah, Me, Nick, Mohamed (the dive master), Kate and then kneeling in front is Mark and Aaron.
Looking at some really interesting wreckage at Iona Wreck.
Aaron and Nick doing a photo shoot. You just always have to look waaaay up to find them.
Little curious clown fish. Not afraid of my camera at all.
That's Mohamed and Mark. Mark's a new diver so I cant give him a hard time about his slightly shallower dives.
The bottom of Iona wreck. Kate and I headed down to where the anchor is. Turns out that anchor is a little bit deeper than we were suppose to be diving. 40 metres (130 feet) is the recreational dive limit as specified by the Recreational Scuba Training Council. Kate and I kind of dropped down to 48 metres (157 feet). It made our dive watches very angry.....as well as Aaron who somehow managed to scold us while under water. As you can imagine, this was my deepest dive ever (Kate's too). We had a nice leisurely decompression dive back up after that.
A little more of Iona Wreck. That decompression dive back to the surface gave us a lot of time to check it out.
Air bubbles......you must know I love them.
That first dive was pretty top notch but there was still more diving to be done. Here are a few more pictures from the weekend.
Back to some pretty little fishes in some very pretty water.
Not sure I will every get tired of this view.
I can probably stop putting descriptions on photos by now.
More little reef fish.
Just hanging out under the water.
Kate and Aaron.....also doing just a little hanging out under the water.
Sarah and Mark.
The group of us under water. Back row is Aaron and Myself. Front row is Nick, Kate, Sarah and Mark.
A little tunnel video. No trick photography here. What you see is what I saw.
Kate just hanging around.
And me....also just hanging around.
Meanest clown fish ever. Seriously these things were attacking us. Of course that didn't stop Kate and I from hanging out and taking many.....many photos of them.
So happy under the water.
Getting a few pictures of the spotted rays.
And a couple of the giant puffer fish.
Beautiful underwater scene.
3 minute 5 metre safety stop. Aaron, Mohamed and Mark.
More little fishes.
A little video of a big ray.
From under the boat.
Eventually the diving had to end and we headed back to Riyadh. Unfortunately the trip turned out to be a little more expensive for a couple of us than we had planned. I lost my dive watch somewhere in the hotel (they cost anywhere from 400CAD to 1000 or more CAD depending on how fancy you want it to be.) Not to worry it has been replaced by a slightly upgraded version (which I'm loving....see next dive post). But watches are much easier replaced than pictures. Aaron lost his camera on one of the dives (maybe some diver on another day will find it). Not to worry, that has also since been replaced with an upgraded version so he will be back to making videos in HD in no time.
Despite lost items, it was another FANTASTIC trip. Never been so happy to pick up a new hobby as I have been with this diving thing.
Julie
No comments:
Post a Comment