Gozo 2009

The dive trip this year had taken quite a bit of organising, what with dates, thinking of different places to dive, and wanting more challenging diving than just floating around in the Red Sea, and so Gozo was finally chosen for its deep wrecks and immense caves and caverns.

Situated fairly far South in the Mediterranean Gozo enjoys a warm climate all year around, with sea temperatures remaining in the mid 20's until quite late into the year.

For some bizarre reason the flights to Gozo from Birmingham are at the ungodly hour of 5am, meaning a 3am check in, which meant a 1.30am start.. this is not so good, but you do benefit from actually landing at 9.15am in Malta, so a whole day to sort everything out when you get there.

We had booked the diving with Atlantis Diving in Marsalforn and they also sorted out our accommodation and the taxi transfers both ways.

At "Ohmygodthatsearly hours" on Tuesday morning, we departed bleary eyed from the UK to hop on our flight to Malta. On arrival, we were met by a nice lady in a mini-bus that had seen much better days, and who drove at an alarming rate through the horrendously pot holed roads of Malta to take us to the Ferry terminal. The taxi lady was very pleasant and pointed out some interesting places we were passing en-route, but we were far too concerned about the dashboard not actually being attached to the vehicle to spend too much time enjoying the passing scenary. However, we did make it in one piece with plenty of time to spare for the Gozo Ferry - a 20 minute very pleasant journey

On arrival we were met by another lady taxi driver, this time driving an estate car that had seen little TLC in the way of polish and vacuuming, but at least all the important parts were attached in the right place. The taxi lady took an immediate shine to Brian and at one point I thought we wouldnt be seeing much of him during the trip! However, he did manage to resit her womanly charms and extricate himself from the Taxi, eventually.

The accommodation booked by the dive school was adequate. It was clean, in need of some refurbishment in the Kitchen department, but to be fair it had everything you wanted - 2 bed rooms, 2 bathrooms, kitchen, drying patio, large lounge and a balcony with stunning sea views.

We were picked up later that day by Atlantis so we could drop off all the dive kit, and get all the paperwork completed, and it was all well organised.

After fine food and good wine, an early night was had by all ready to start the great diving adventure.

An early 8am pick up by the dive school, and a quick loading up of various trucks and vans had us on our journey to the first dive site. There were quite a group of us, but we were split into smaller groups with a dive guide- we were lucky as we got William as our guide. William is a 40 something Glaswegian with a mop of blonde hair, an hillarious sense of humour and a great friendly nature. The first dive site was Raqqa Cove. We were all in high spirits and looking forward to getting into the gorgeous looking blue water, until William showed us the way in - no less than a stride entry off the top of a cliff, 5m down into the water - missing the narrow ledge to your left on the way down and hanging on to your fins as you couldnt put them on first. I looked, I gulped, I paled, my legs trembled and then my brain kicked in and told me to just jump, dont look down, just jump.. now!! And thats what I did. A little run up with full kit on, massive leap of faith, swing to the right, hang on to fins, scream and dont forget to hang on to mask when hitting water !!! Its the first time I have ever been in deco on a stride entry.. Im not sure how deep you drop under the water, but it took forever to get back to the surface. A mad scamble then pursues trying to get your fins on in rough sea before you get leapt on by the next persons leap of faith.

The sea was full of huge jelly fish, beautiful creatures, but they constantly keep nudging you out of their space, so its very weird swimming through hundreds and hundreds of them as you drop down into the ocean. It was like a scene from a sci-fi movie. The first dive was a 30m+ reef dive and although, being the Med, the marine life is not that good, there is good colour and the topograhy is stunning. Big gulley swim throughs, large caverns, grassy ledges full of critters, deep blue water.. it was pretty good for a first dive, with water temperatures of around 24 degrees.

The structure of the day is that you return back to the dive centre inbetween dives, where the crew fill all the cylinders, and you get about a 2 hour break for brunch. There is an amazing brunch place right on the sea front who serve great quality food at reasonable rates - it became our daily break out place for toasties, lattes, baguettes, pizza etc.

The diving went from good to awesome, with the seconds day diving taking us to the Karwela Wreck. Due to our diving qualifications, we were split out from the main group and enjoyed the most amazing wreck dive I have ever done. We had the entire wreck all to ourselves, just the 5 of us. The wreck sits at 40m and is the old Gozo Ferry, so its decks are huge with big wide staircases you can explore in safety. Ambient light is good, but torches make exploring safer. We picked up Deco Time on the wreck, but its worth it. There is so much of it to see and explore, and there is very little silt, so an absolute must dive to do.

The Blue Hole and Inland Sea were also two exceptional dives. We did the blue hole as an exit point, starting the dive at Coral Caves. This was an enormous cave system, that deserves some dedicated exploring. You get lulled into swimming through cracks and crevices to get behind the rocks and its just mind blowingly awesome.The most tranquil of feelings to be in such an enormous cave system, floating around in silence and total darkness. Without your torch on you would be in complete blackness, it was truly spectacular.

Out of this system, the swim back along the reef was interesting, morays, fireworms, more nudging from the jellyfish, groupers, odd barracuda, but the topography is excellent. You then come to busy entrance of the blue hole which has its own cave system to explore, and plenty of life on the walls of the central core to look at as you complete your wash out stop. The exit is a little hairy and involves clambering over slippery sharp rocks and some flights of steps to the car park.

The inland sea is also at the same site, and involves a wee walk over the road to the other side of the cafes. The inland sea is an inland large puddle formed because there is a huge chasm in the rock face that goes out to sea. There are small boats you can go on for a little trip through the chasm, or you can dive it. The dive starts inland and involves a fairly long swim through the tunnel, keeping to the left. The tunnel is huge and takes a good 10 mins to swim the length of it, going out is pretty spectacular as you have the huge chasm opening underwater in front of you with that vast window of gorgeous blue water to look at. The journey is dark and requires torches, but its awesome.

Once out the opening you can go left or right. Right is away from the blue hole, and left is towards the blue hole. Swing left to find some extremely excellent tunnels and caves to explore varying from 30 to 20m of depth and these tunnels go for miles into the rock face. Again, worth a dive on their own. The swim back through the chasm is murky as you get towards the inland sea, due to it being shallow and being kicked up. Its a little spooky as you cannot see where you are going so keeping to the right on the way back is important so you dont get garroted by a boat.

Ta'Cenc was another spectacular dive. This was different in topography being mainly sandy bottom and not so much rock. This dive involves a long climb down approximately 100+ steps to the bottom, with a gentle stride entry into the gorgeous greeny turquoise waters, and dropping down to about 18-25m. This dive is famous for sting rays and sea horses, and there were plenty of them of them to see snuggled into the sea grass. The dive was relaxing and chilled, and made a change from the extremes we had been doing - until you get out that is, and then realise you have those 100+ steps to get up with all your kit on in 80 degrees of sunshine too !! Now that is what I call exercise.

Having previously dived the Karwela, we decided we wanted to go back and dive it again. This time we had the pleasure of Will accompanying us, and I distinctly remember the dive brief warning us of the fishing buoy with lots of sharp hooks attached to it being in the sea on the way to the Karwela. It was obvious - it was Red, and Large and Bobbed around. Me and Hurstie set off swimming across the tranquil waters out to the wreck buoy, minding our own business and enjoying the sunshine and last few dives. A distant noise drew our attention just as we reached the wreck buoy. I suppose you could say it was a muffled kind of moaning. A bit like a distressed seal you might say. We turned around to find Brian gesticulating wildy to his hand and sort of shouting...... through his snorkel!! It was quite hard to understand what was going on, and Will paid no attention at all. After further wild gesticulations and more muffled and garbled shouting Will swam over to see what was wrong, and finally worked out that the local fisherman had infact got the catch of a lifetime, being Brians hand and was busily winding Brian back in to shore, to land him in his keep net!!! On being released by Wills knife, Brian continued to gesticulate wildy at us, cursing about something to do with fishing hooks in his hand, but we couldnt really understand what he was going on about, so in good crew spirit, we promptly dumped the air from our jackets and left him on the surface to moan at Will ....lol... we just enjoyed the tranquility and solitude of being underwater floating peacefully down to another great dive on the Karwela Wreck.

The whole trip was absolutely fantastic. The weather was hot, calm, sunny, and the eating out at night was really excellent. We enjoyed a whole variety of food at very reasonable prices and some good red wine, chosen by me and Hursty - who are now becoming the holiday wine buffs.

The only mark on the whole holiday, was my nightmare about Hursty. Shouting and screaming in the middle of the night as I chased the evil Hursty through a Monesty trying to kill him with my Beaver Plasma Torch !!! I have no idea what it was all about, but it woke up half the street and provided much amusement over dinner.

A great holiday, would definitely go back and do it all again. Its all shore diving, no boats are needed, and its a great relaxed place for the wining and dining at night.

We have a DVD if anyone is interested in watching it. £3.50 each.