TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence
Congratulations to Matt Hubball who completed his EFRI! He is now able to teach people the all important life saving skills necessary to be an emergency first responder. (and play with dolls!)
Congratulations to Malcolm Hammer for becoming a PADI Divemaster and doing the snorkel test in fine style at his celebration party. Malcolm did a great job with Pete and has been a pleasure to have around. As Malcolm is living in Manila, we hope to see him come down more often.
It was great to host field editor, Gerald Kong and Larry Tan recently from SoScuba.com, an official media representative of “Diving Magazine” registered in the Singapore – a diving magazine in China with close to a 100,000 subscribers and growing: http://e.weibo.com/prodiver. We’re looking forward to seeing us in the magazine real soon!
Tommy, Allan, and Andy with Kate and Jeroen in New Zealand, 2005.
Early 2005 Allan, Andy and Tommy decided they should go on a dive holiday together. Only one rule, no white beach and palm trees, try something different. As Allan and Tommy had met a nice guy called Jeroen from Dive Tutukaka in New Zealand at several dive shows they decided maybe this would be a perfect spot to go for a different dive experience. Tommy came up with the idea of going there in September for two reasons, first he had read it was more Bronze Whaler sharks when it was cooler (New Zealand winter) and of course the resort and shop back home would not be overly busy. This proved to be a slight mistake as the boys quickly learned from the first day of diving in 14-15 degree water and with the weather conditions anything else then favorable.
The boys enjoying the balmy diving conditions…
Next two days the diving was cancelled due to bad weather so the boys took off and checked out the northern part of North Island to return on Monday morning for more diving. Jeroen and Kate who own Dive Tutukaka made sure more neoprene was added to the boys and the sun was out to add some warmth after the dives. The Asia Divers team was treated like kings during the entire stay in Tutukaka and had a great time diving the Poor Knights Island. Finally after 8 years we have had the pleasure of having Kate and Jeroen with us in Puerto Galera. It’s been wonderful to see them again and for them to get to know us more on our turf. We hope that they can come back soon and perhaps bring along some of their divers from New Zealand.
Kate and Jeroen got in some great diving in our nice warm water and also did a nitrox course with Alli to take advantage of the wonderful diving conditions in Puerto Galera.
Was a nice thought of Sandi O’Donnell taking 6 weeks holiday from her home town of Southampton in England to pay a visit to Andy Norman who was school classmate at Manor Court School in Drayton, Portsmouth from 1965 -1972. Having been in same class in certain subjects from age of 11 and travelling with Sandi and friends throughout Europe this was her first time to travel to Asia and the cultural way of life that was very different from the average English high street.
While in UK, during those slightly younger years Sandi always enjoyed sports with the youth club we were both at so only natural that she’s do the PADI Open Water course with us. Must admit, Sandi done very well, something she can add towards the memories of the Philippines when returning to England.
Actually, reminiscent of Fell (hill) walking in England in the 1970’s, we took on a little bit of fell walking in the mountains north Philippines in the rice terraces, however, importance was not of speed or who could climb the highest as we did at the age of 18, but of the slower country walking pace geared towards a slightly older generation.
Sandi is a professional artist and during her travels throughout the country, she was able to take on some very nice sketch drawings that hopefully will go on show in UK.
From all the staff…. and especially from your old classmate from Portsmouth, thanks Sandi for being with us at Asia Divers.
This is the view from our office right now! Beautiful sunny weather, calm water and great vis under it…what more do you want?! Many folks get frightened off coming here because they think the weather is bad during this time of year, but they are so wrong. We get some of our best diving over the months of June to September and the water temp will stay around 29-30 degrees. So….Come on down!!
If you’ve been here over the past couple months you’ve most likely noticed a couple new faces here. Miumiu and Andy are two instructors from Shanghai China who are now living here and looking after our Chinese students. So, if you need Mandarin speaking instructor, just let us know!
This week we welcomed Dolphin Scuba all the way from Australia Perth. The guys at Dolphin Scuba heard about Asia Divers a couple of years ago when they met Allan and Tommy on their tour around Australia, so they decided to come over and find out what all the fuss was about. It’s been a fantastic week with great weather and even better diving with sightings of Hairy Frog Fish, Soft Coral Crabs and Pygmy Seahorse, not to mention the great drift dives at the Canyons and Verde Island. Special thanks to Emma and Ben for putting the trip together.
Allan is back in Tulum for the second time this year to do some cave diving with Kelvin and Annabel. Below is a brief report from him.
This is a photo before the three of us did a 160min dive into the Blue Abyss a sinkhole in a cave system in the Cenote call Pet Cemetery. This dive was full of small restrictions, amazing decorated cave that would make any national geo reader sit up with excitement. The scale of some of the rooms with massive white stalagmites and stalactites some two meters in diameter joining together and making amazing columns to small tight rooms that you would have to be so careful not to damage the fragile decorated ceilings, truly amazing and something to be said, it was a life changing experience with a lot of WOW!
This was the first set of stairs we had to carry our equipment down to the entry point.
Take a look at the map. Note where we started the dive at the top right hand side of the map and we swam through the system to the Blue Abyss on the lower left of the map. It was about a kilometer into the cave to get to the Abyss. We entered the Abyss at 9m and came over a sinkhole, we descended to 30m and it kept going down to what I understand is below 240′. The circling was at about 3m bloody awesome place!
Annabel listening with anticipation as it was her first time to this Cenote
Check out the following youtube video that Jamie shot of a Sargassum frog fish, which was just at the end of our pontoon floating around!