Flying, driving, diving…
As always my terrible planning and preparations made the day before I was set to leave to the Middle-East hellish. There were still things to be bought, to be taken care of and to fix. At the end of the day I was stressed out of my mind and was starting to have doubts about the entire trip.
As they say; beside every strong man stands a…
This is normally the point where I start making jokes about the strength of women, but it’s actually true. Beside every strong man DOES stand a strong woman, but I have to admit the strength of the man in this case is debatable. If Emma wouldn’t have been there I would have ended up a sobbing mess. But she was, thankfully.
Thursday morning the adventure started with the final packing of the bag, which was terrible since I had to leave my Jetfins at home as they were too heavy. Other stuff had to be ditched at the airport since the bag was still too heavy. Finally in the plane I felt most of the weight on my shoulders slip off and I finally started to feel more relaxed. The first leg of the trip was to Vienna which was a short and easy flight, after that the longer flight to Dubai was to be done. Fortunately I had no people next to me on both flights so I was able to sit quite comfortably.
Finally in Dubai the first thing that hits you is the heat, it’s so pressing. No wonder they are airconditioning everywhere. Although my driver was an hour late it was alright. The trip by car to Khasab in Oman took me another 3 hours. Happy but exhausted I arrived at 2:00 at the Extra Divers Villa (see the picture above) where my room was ready but everybody asleep. I grabbed the neccasary things and did the only thing I wanted to do at that moment, SLEEP! Oh yeah, before that I set the alarm on my phone to 7:30 because on Friday we DIVE!!!
The next morning I got to meet Sandra and Kurt, the managers of the divecentre. We had breakfast together and after that we headed off to the divecentre, picking up the captain Ismael on the way there. At the divecentre I got the quick tour and we headed off to the boat. After cleaning it the only guest of the day arrived and we sailed off, onto the dive site. And damn that boat is fast! All the water the boat seered up seemed to land on me but I loved it. This is what I came for, diving! Arrived at the site I put on my new suit to get it wet for the first time (not counting the sweat in the store) and we jumped into the blue.
The first site was called Moonwalk because it started in a quite barren landscape which ended in some smaller coral patches. It felt great to be in clear and warm water again. Oh yes, I was a happy camper! The second dive was amazing, I have never seen these amount of coral in my life and all the colors were so bright. It was loaded with fish and nudibranch and I also saw a turtle in the distance. Of course Clownfish are always fun and so was the cleaner shrimp we saw. Did I already mention the water temperature is 30 degrees? :-)
Now I stop writing, I am so tired and I can’t even see the keys straight. Sorry for the typo’s above, I will filter them out later. Now I want to sleep. More pictures and stories to come.
Greetings from Khasab!