An Island Wedding

Siquijor Island, Philippines
January 30th to February 11, 2015

Well, it seems like I was just at home for the holidays but just 4 weeks later I was on vacation again. This time it was back to the Philippines but this time it was for a big event....Debi and Scott's Wedding. We were getting in a few days before and would be there a few days after so lots of vacation time along with the nuptials. It would prove to be a fantastic trip with people travelling from Canada (including Mom, Dad and Gramma) and Australia.

The first night a number of us would meet in Manila before making the trip to Siquijor Island the next day. No running through the airport and hopping into a cab trying barely make my flight in time (see my last Philippines post if you need a reminder). This worked out much better. I'm not going to post too many pictures of the wedding itself (Debi has the best ones).....well actually none but here are a bunch for the days surrounding the big event. It was a very enjoyable 10 days.....with a wedding in the middle.

Ahh the business class life......one of the perks of working in Saudi that I really.....really enjoyed. Made the long flights to everywhere much more tolerable.

The happy couple.

Debi and Deon......the best man.

We had to take a boat to Siquijor Island. This is how we were met when we hit land.

Walking into the resort. Very nice first impression.

The view from my room. Yeah.....it was a little rough.

Taste testing some drinks. Needed to find something for the wedding....or just needed to enjoy some fruity drinks.

This one was good.

Wedding rehearsal time.....Yeah we're pretty gangsta. I was a good maid of honour.

Lots of time to relax on the beach. It was sunnier than it looks in this photo.

Took a little road trip on the island. Siquijor is not a very big island so easy to explore in a day. Here we are at the fish pond.

Yes they are eating all the dead flesh off my feet.

Another one of our island stops.

Swimming at the waterfalls.

Hiking back up out of the waterfalls.

The beach at the resort. It was a really nice place.

Late night beach walking.

Bachelorette night. Pretty sure she thought she was getting out of this but she did not.  I think we took it pretty easy on her. 

The wedding shoes.....it was on the beach after all.

The dresses.....well mine and Debi's.

Off to take some pictures after the ceremony on the beach. Everyone in a great mood.

Some of the wonderful staff that not only took care of us over the 10 days we were at the resort but on this night made sure all the wedding guests were watered and fed. Can't say enough good things about them.

You know....just hanging out in a rooftop hot tub at a rooftop wedding. It's what you do. (That's Stef and Deon).

There was a little diving as well. Hello fishes.

Not sure if they are smiling or growling at me......Do fish growl? I think these ones did.

Scott and I. Scott joined me for one dive.....I got a few more in as I did not have the same wedding commitments that he did.

Turtles. No need to dive to see these guys. Just needed a snorkel.

A little swim with a pretty big turtle.

Mom and Debi with a big lazy turtle.....just eating away. Not sure he even knows we are there.

Post-wedding road-trip to the butterfly conservatory. 

Not a butterfly....yet.

A little night-time entertainment.

Evening swims.....for some of us anyways.

No shortage of beautiful sunsets.

Jumping in to end a wonderful trip.

Eventually I had to go back to Saudi and other guests made their way back home. Mom, Dad, Gramma, Debi and Scott had another week.....although they moved to a different resort.

Not much more to say about how wonderful this trip was.....hopefully the pictures speak for themselves.

Julie

Finally Some More Diving

Thursday, June 5th to Saturday, June 7th, 2014
Sharm- El Sheik/Dahab, Egypt

Well it seems like forever ago since the last time I was diving but this weekend it would finally be time to get back into the water. With school and the hours at work it just has not worked out well. But not this weekend. This weekend we would head to Egypt to dive a couple of very famous dive sites, Canyon, The Blue Hole and the SS Thistlegorm. Lots of history at these dive sites (not all good) and lots of good times to be had.

But we had to get there first. Just a small group of us, Me, Kate, Aaron and Rob (so basically 2 Canadian girls and 2 American boys.....I'm sure there is a joke in there somewhere), headed out for the weekend. We left first thing Thursday morning, aimed at getting to our first dive site by about 1100. There was a bit of confusion when we arrived though because apparently not all the country uses daylight savings time but some of it does so we were off by an hour. There was also some concerns about security traveling from Sharm El-sheik to Dahab but we found no issues at all. Checkpoints were empty and no concerns to be had.

Anyway, we arrived at our first dive site ready to go....well almost. First dive site would be the famous Blue Hole....one of the world's deadliest dive sites. So when I say we were almost ready to go, Aaron was pretty worked up over the whole "deadliest" part. It is said that up to 40 divers have died at the site since records have been kept.....however they dive a very different part of the hole than we would. One of the recent divers who died actually had a camera running. When they finally went down to retrieve his body they found that camera and it's footage still intact......Aaron decided he needed to watch it on YouTube before this trip. Not a good idea....I avoided pretty much reading anything about the Blue Hole until the dive was done.

So the Blue Hole is a submarine sinkhole around 94 metres (300 feet) deep. The area where people get in trouble is a deep 26 metre long tunnel known as "The Arch" whose top is at a depth of 56 metres (184 feet). It is very deceptive for even the most experienced divers due to the tunnel looking shorter than it really is, an inward current making it take longer to swim through, clear water making it difficult to reference the bottom and sitting at a depth where narcosis can cause serious and dangerous confusion for divers. 

A few of the memorials to those divers who have attempted to conquer The Arch but did not make it.

Our descent towards the Blue Hole would start at the Bells entrance or Els Bells. Now you can do this entrance either head first or feet first. Being my first dive in a while I was very unsure as to which way I was gonna go, went back and forth during my little descent, but head first is was.

 

Making my way through Els Bells. You can see the little archway. Some people mistake this for the archway in the Blue Hole itself, but this is a very, very different place.

Once through you come out to some beautiful blue water and some pretty little fishes. The rest of the dive we just followed a nice wall before arriving at the Blue Hole itself.

Lots of little fishes to see.

Lots of beautiful colours on this day. My favourite type of diving.

Swimming along in our underwater safari.

As usual the boys up high.....while Kate and I check out the waters a little bit deeper. 

As always it is not just about the fish and the colours. I always love to see the interesting rock formations and coral too.

Kate relaxing among the coral.

We survived.....that's me, Kate and Rob. Not sure where Aaron got to. Probably still freaking out. (I joke....but he really did freak out).

My new camel friend. He was so cute and sitting there for us to visit during our surface break.

Our second dive of the day would be just down the street from the Blue Hole at a great little location called Canyon. As you can imagine, it involves a large underwater canyon with lots of beautiful sea creatures.

Heading down into the canyon.

Kate and Aaron following me down into the canyon.

This is down in the canyon. You can see the canyon entrance over my shoulder.

A little bit of the canyon wildlife. There was a bit more but lighting was not great and there were a ton of people in the way. Small area so we did not get to spend much time there.

After the second dive we headed back to Sharm El-Sheik for the night. It was a pretty quiet night as we had more diving to do on Friday.

Friday we got up pretty early and headed to the boat that would take us out to our dive site for the day; the famous SS Thistlegorm. You can easily find a lot of information about the Thistlegorm on the internet but here's a bit of a run down. The SS Thistlegorm was a British armed Navy Merchant ship. It was sunk in 1941 along with all of it's cargo. It was found in the 1950's by Jacque Cousteau, who only removed a few items including a motorcycle, the captain's safe and the ship's bell. After that the site was forgotten until the 1990's when Sharm El-sheik was developed as a diving resort. Now it is a great dive site, because pretty much everything that was on the ship, is still there.

This is a required nitrox dive, because it sits at around 30 metres and to stay at that depth for long enough to explore the ship you need to use nitrox. I had never dove using nitrox before so had to take a quick onboard course. Nitrox reduces that amount of nitrogen the body absorbs allowing you to stay at certain depths a little bit longer. We actually did 2 dives at the site. Here are some pictures and videos.

All kinds of crates full of things. I am not totally sure what these are.

A few remains from one of the vehicles that was on the Thistlegorm.

Checking out the outside of the ship.

Swimming along one of the train cars that were on the deck of the ship. Over the years, the pressure under the water has caused the cars to buckle.

 A little video from the outside of the trip.

I should mention that the weather on this day was not very good at all. Like not at all. As a matter of fact, the boat ride was so rough that they almost turned us around. Normally in rough weather like this they would not let us dive and just go back to port but they knew the 4 of us had come to Egypt just for this dive so didn't want to let us down. It was a rough boat ride though. Aaron actually only made one dive.....because he was sea sick by the time we got around to the second one. 

Another look at one of the train cars.

Debris piles on the deck of the ship.

The bathtub that was in the Captain's bathroom. Still in pretty good condition after all these years under water.

A little video from inside the ship. Keep an eye out for the rows of motorbikes (without handle bars) and even some rubber boots that remain in remarkably good shape considering how long they have been under the water.

After a not so nice boat ride back to port, we were ready to relax for the evening....or go for dinner and then hit a club. With no more diving and an early evening flight, we had no need to head to bed too early. The next morning we managed to do some shopping before heading to the airport.

Of course our tickets were actually wrong (again) because of the whole daylight savings thing but it gave us some extra time to chill at the airport.

Another great dive weekend.

Julie