Excellent diving in the Maldives

Advantages: Warm water, clear, lots of life
Disadvantages: Some dives not that exciting

...I recently did a dive trip to the Maldives, not a destination I would have planned on as I've always thought of it as a honeymoon destination. I travelled on a liveaboard boat, doing a circuit of dive sites around North and South Male atolls and Ari Atoll. Water temperature was mostly 28-30C, with mostly visibility of 15-25m. The weather was generally very warm, and fairly humid. Some of the dives were phenomenal. The highlight was the dive at Manta Point (though it's best to point out that there isn't just one but several manta points around the Maldives, partly according to season). We had 20+ mantas swooping in just over our heads, hovering and observing us as we observed them! Our second dive there wasn't as good but still around 10 mantas checking us out over the cleaning station. There were several other drift dives that were...

cathy_m80 27.04.2009 · Read review
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Review of Maldives (Dive Sites)

Mozambique - world class diving without the crowds

Advantages: Good diving, WHALE SHARKS!; not too crowded
Disadvantages: Infrastructure still developing, food overpriced

...This is a review of the dive sites around Tofo Beach near Inhambane - Mozambique offers a growing number of dive regions but can only comment on this one. I spent a week diving in Tofo in January 2009. Mozambique is emerging after civil war as a prime dive destination. Tofo is known particularly for manta ray sightings, as well as whale sharks, particulrly in summer. Water conditions were unusual while I was there in that it's usually a very warm time of year, with good visibility. This year, the water had been slow to warm up, so instead of the 26-28C that I was expecting, there were thermoclines on the deeper dives going down to 15C! Most of the deep dives were around 20-21C. The surface was still warm, around 24-26C, so you'd be fine by the safety stop, and it was baking once out the water (30C plus). With the thermoclines...

cathy_m80 24.02.2009 · Read review
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Review of Mozambique (Dive Sites)

Dive In At The Deep End!

Advantages: Easy acess to hotel, coral reefs onsite, friendly staff, good prices
Disadvantages: None

...We have just returned from our holiday in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt and when we booked the holiday we decided to do our PADI Open Water Dive certification at the same time. We decided on staying at the Hilton Sharks Bay Resort as it has the Sinai Dive School on the site with easy access to the sea from a jetty. The Sinai Dive School The dive school is situated at the bottom of the Hilton site complex and is an easy walk to get there, about 5- 10 minutes from main reception. This school is PADI registered and has just celebrated its 20 year anniversary this year. Layout of Dive Club The main entrance to the School is adjacent the Sunset Bar on the far extent of the site. It has very good disabled access to the front and rear of the school and this is very handy for us abled bodied too as when you are hot and got all your...

Jamie73 01.06.2007 · Read review
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Review of Sinai Dive Club

Dive into the live....

Advantages: Lagwagon at their best
Disadvantages: Slightly repetitive

...disappointed with the unenergetic performance and a tendency for the songs to all sound similar, it made sense to expect much of the same on this live record but surprisingly Lagwagon almost seem to play up to the fact that their performance is being recorded, or did I just catch them on a bad day. Recorded over a year and a half ago on two separate occasions at Hollywood's House of Blues venue, the Live in a Dive album certainly is a collection of Lagwagon's best material to date, combining the old and the new, and includes previously unreleased track The Chemist amongst the 22 songs. It includes all the old favourites, those tracks that made Fat Wreck compilations come to life, such as Sleep and the incredible May 16th that featured on Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 computer game. Alien 8 and Violins kick start the festivities, with the crowd...

heideroosjes 24.04.2005 (25.04.2005) · Read review
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Review of Live In A Dive - Lagwagon

Dive in to Darius

Advantages: Darius himself, lots of songs and styles
Disadvantages: Extra feature doesnt work

...As you may be able to tell, I am a mad Darius fan. I know many people only remember him as the cheesy, Britney impersonating runner-up from Pop Idol. But if you look and listen closely you'll soon see he's the boy next door, Charming, handsome and with a good voice. Vowing he would return and with a No.1 single and a triple platinum selling album by the time he was 35 years old, he achieved both easily with the release of 'Dive In'. Released 2nd Dec 2002 Label: Mercury Genre: Pop Highest UK chart position 6 Awards: Silver 13th Dec 2002 Gold 13th Dec 2002 Platinum 13th Dec 2002 Total UK sales: 382,828 1. Colourblind ( 3:37) From the first striking chord of the guitar, you know that this is a feel-good summery song. Basically an acoustic song, that sounds great with Darius' deep, gravely voice. With its fresh...

welshgal17 02.06.2005 · Read review
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Review of Dive In - Darius

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Advantages: Heart-wrenching, beautifully written
Disadvantages: disjointed at times

...The true story behind this novella is what drew me to reading it. Then, I did not know who Jean-Dominique Bauby was or, for that matter, what "locked- in syndrome" was. Not only does this book tell its reader a great deal about the author through the first person narration, but also via the obituary placed at the end of Bauby's emotive story. You come to learn Bauby's deepest fears, regrets, hopes and loves from this novella and everything you feel for him is cemented when you read the obituary. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is not your typical autobiography. It doesn't start with mundane and insignificant details of the author's childhood, followed by his struggle to rise to fame. In fact, it starts with his dreams, his darkest fears. As a reader, we are instantly drawn in to the hidden corners of Bauby's mind. He has no secrets...

chellbian 06.05.2009 · Read review
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Review of The Diving-bell and the Butterfly - Jean-Dominique Bauby

Diving at Villavaru

Advantages: The dive sites are never overcrowded
Disadvantages: none

...The House Reef is only a few feet from the beach so shore diving is great if you are not to happy with Boat dives. Saying that all the boat dives we went on were no more than 40 minutes away from the Island. Five Star PADI IDC Diving School - "Jurgen Schaegger's Diving World", was excellent, first class branded equipment for hire. 10-dive package was about $420,with all equipment. You have to pay $10 extra for a boat dive, but that included the staff carrying your tanks onto the boat, so no heavy lugging involved. The best thing about diving in the Maldives is that the dives are never overcrowded; there were no more than 10 people on any boat dive. The sea is crystal clear and the Marine life is fantastic, every dive is a new experience. You have to dive with a computer in the Maldives, but personally I would not dive without one...

MALDIVEDIVER 21.08.2003 · Read review
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Review of Maldives (Dive Sites)

Blue water, sun - and brilliant diving!

Advantages: Fairly warm, easy to get around, plenty of wrecks
Disadvantages: Lots of deep sites - make sure you're qualified!

...I recently came back from my first diving trip to Malta. It's been heavily promoted in recent years as a rival to the Red Sea for British divers, and they've sunk a number of wreck deliberately as artificial reefs. It's only a 3 hour flight away from here, and as an already popular destination makes for a pretty easy trip. The water temperature ranges from about 25C in summer to 14C in winter, with good visibility at most times. Due to the size of the islands you're not particularly tied to any particular sites. The main choice initially is whether to stay on Malta or Gozo (there's also the option of staying on Comino, the smallest island - though it only has one hotel). I actually got round that by staying a few days on each of the 2 bigger islands. While Malta has a large number of resorts with plenty of restaurants and clubs, Gozo...

cathy_m80 06.11.2008 (07.11.2008) · Read review
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Review of Malta (Dive Sites)

Northern Diving

Advantages: Loads of wrecks, varied and interesting diving on offer
Disadvantages: Cold, far north

...As I live in Shetland and also visit Orkney when the chance arises, I’ve written an opinion mainly about the diving in both groups of islands. As a bit of background I’ve done about 130 dives in Shetland and 30 in Orkney. There’s also some tourist information at the end, because most people wouldn’t come this far purely to dive. The diving up here on the edge of the map is fantastic, and there's plenty to see and do as well, so please read on and see what you think. THE DIVING - SHETLAND Shetland, if you weren’t aware, is situated to the extreme far north of Scotland, 50 miles to the North of Orkney. Although the mainland is only 70 miles long, it has about a thousand of miles of coastline, due to the number of Voes (mini fjords) and smaller islands, over 100 in total. An interesting fact I...

jambo6 04.09.2001 · Read review
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Review of Scotland (Dive Sites)

World-class diving on our doorstep

Advantages: Good visibility, fairly cheap, huge range of destinations
Disadvantages: Boats can be crowded

...I'm not an experienced Red Sea diver (been twice) but I've dived around the world a fair bit. I think the availability of the Red Sea to European divers means we sometimes look down on it. Many people are biased by either visiting or hearing about the built up resorts such as Sharm el Sheikh. But there's a huge amount on offer here, only 5 hours flight from the UK. My first dive trip was to Sharm itself. Despite being touristy and built up, it's the jumping-off point for a huge range of world-class dive sites. The Straits of Tiran and Ras Mohammed stand out. The Straits comprise a number of reefs (Jackson, Gordon, Thomas and Woodhouse) which offer exciting dives in strong currents. Two of our group saw a tiger shark here (unfortunately - and I do mean it that way round!) I missed it. Ras Mohammed is now a National Park and as such...

cathy_m80 19.08.2008 · Read review
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Review of Red Sea (Dive Sites)