Diving Tenerife update for January 2013 ~ Amarilla Divers

January 2013.

So January is always a rather quiet month for diving in Tenerife, however this does not mean that we are not busy busy busy.

We had divers from all over come and dive with Chris our instructor but we also had 3 new Divemaster Interns start their courses.

We have been joined by Laura from Spain, she joined us as an open water diver with only 8 dives and is progressing really well. Chris has spent a lot of time in the pool with her for her skills before embarking on her Advanced Open Water diver course.

Laura has now completed her AOW course and also her EFR course with Chris as well as racked up a decnt 43 dives. She has just successfully passed her Rescue Exam and will be doing her in-water training later this week. We are looking forward to taking her through the rest of her Divemaster training.

Next we was joined by Monika from Poland. She joined us a Rescue Diver but has also had a lot of training with CMAS. He husband is a PADI Instructor and he has been coming in to help monitor her skills and will eventually be the signing instructor for her course. 

Monika already had over 400 dives when she arrived but that has not stopped her dive dive diving!! 

Monika is an excellent diver and scored very highly in her skill circuit and will be taking her Divemaster exams this week. 

Monika will then be staying on to train for her Instructors course and will be taking that in May this year.

lastly we have Miguel who is from Spain. He joined us after completing his Open Water course with PADI but then went on to his CMAS 2 Star. We have been working hard with Miguel to help maintain his personal dive skills and he has been improving with a steday pace. 

Miguel is currently completing his Rescue Diver course with Chris and has also finished his EFR course too.

Miguel will be here for 8 weeks and will then possibly think about his Instructor couse as well.

So here are our 3 new Interns for the month of January.

Chris has been working hard with the Divemaster interns but was also helped by the Welshie himself, Tony. It was great to have such an awesome team working in the Dive center.

They went to a few sites but Yellow Mountain seemed to be the favourite for January.

So what else was happening.......

EGYPT TIP 2013.......... What a fabulous start to year with a nice trip away.

I will put details up for this on another blogg with some gorgeous photos as taken by our Neil.

Also details for any more trips that Amarilla Divers has planned.

Thanks for reading.

Ciao :)

Very delayed Update from Amarilla Divers

OK so I may have been slightly caught up with Christmas, Egypt and the UK holidays but I am BACK and so will hopefully be able to keep up to date with whats happening in the dive center and any special offers we may have going.

Also will be updating on and dive trips we are planning for the future.

So since we last spoke we have had Divemaster interns finish, leave, find jobs and start new jobs!! But we have also had a few newbies to the dive center as well. So here is a quick round up of the last couple of months.

December 2012.

At the beginning of December we had the PADI IE with Chris, Lucy & Nikki, all of whom passed with flying colours and we are very proud of their achievements.

 

Lucy has stayed with Amarilla Divers to gain some valuable experience and has been teaching PADI courses with our guidance. She has managed to rack up quite a few and has been teaching Discover Scuba Diver, Open Water and Advanced Open Water courses. 

Lucy was with us up until the middle of January when she then joined Amarilla Divers annual dive trip to Egypt. Which was excellent and I will be posting pictures soon.

Lucy has now taken on a position in the Cayman Islands and will hopefully be spreading the diving love there. 

We wish Lucy the very best of luck and hope we will see her back here at some stage.

Chris also passed his instructor exams and is now working with us here as one of our instructors. Chris has been teaching Open Water, Scuba Diver, Advanced Open water, Rescue Diver, EFR courses, Divemaster and has also been helping with a few specialties. 

Chris will be a PADI MSDT very very soon as he almost has his required 25 certs.

We also had in December our annual Christmas Eve dive. This year we teamed up with Ecological Divers and took our 14 Divers to Guimar for a nice Santa Dive.

It was a nice dive with lots of fish and we even managed to spot a very hidden Angel Shark!! Nice.

After we had some food and a few drinks. 

Here are a few pictures from this dive.

Kaz the little Elf

Kaz

Mary, Lucy & Hannah

The whole group of Amarilla Divers

Hannah

Welshie Tony

Tony Farmer & Mary

Lucy, Tony, hannah & Jonny

 

SO that was an excellent month of December and we had many different courses going on as well some great dives. We also was very happy that we had all our candidates pass their PADI IE and are now looking forward to the next PADI IDC that we will be holding in May 2013.

We have some excellent offers for courses coming in 2013 and we will also NOT be increasing our prices for the 4th year running.

We would like to thank all our divers and dive team for a fabulous 2012 and we hope to see you all soon in 2013.

Neil & Mary x

Diving Tenerife ~ PADI Instructor Development Course (IDC) Nov 2012

So Amarilla Divers was recently upgraded to a PADI 5 Star IDC Dive Resort YAY...this means we can now teach Divemasters of equivalent to become PADI Instructors. We can also run the PADI IDC Staff Instructor course too.

This is great news for us and for our Divemaster interns old and new :)

So over the last week we have had our very first PADI IDC here at Amarilla Divers.

We had our very own Platinum Course Director Mr Clive Albon here to conduct the course with the help of Master Instructor Neil :) We only had 3 Instructor candidates & 2 IDC Staff Instructor upgrades,  this time round, but this is an excellent start for our first one and helps us get the ropes a bit.

So the Instructor Candidates are Chris, Lucy & Nikki with Kornel & Tim the Staff Candidates

The IDC has gone very well and all the candidates have done an exceptional job and had some very high scores. The skill circuit was an excellent start and everyone got on well.

During the IDC the candidates are scoring well on every aspect of the course and they have to 'present' certain part to pass the course. With the Confined water, Open Water, knowledge Development, Rescue workshop & Skill circuit, the candidates have shone through on all levels.

They of course have been a little nervous, but this at times can strengthen your actions and makes you think a little more like an instructor.

With each passing day all candidates have shown improvement in their own abilities as well as in their teaching skills and are learning from every part of this course.

It is great to see a happy bunch of guys.



Our next PADI IDC starts on 26th May 2013. Contact mary@amarilladivers.com for more details.

Diving Tenerife ~ Divemaster update November

Quick update for November.

We have been very busy in the Dive Center and the Divemaster interns have been doing a fantastic job.

Both Carl & Thomas have completed their Divemaster courses with flying colours and will now be sent out in to the world of diving to find work :)

Carl has been busy applying for jobs all over the place and we have been searching high & low for job adverts.

Carl was a pleasure to have in the dive center and he has such a passion for diving and it shines through in everything he does.

Carl also manged to successfully complete his EFR Instructor Course with Neil and so now he will be even more of an asset to another dive center.

We wish him all the very best of luck for his future career and hope to see him back in May 2013 for his PADI Instructor course. :)

 So next for Thomas, he has been with Amarilla Divers for about 8 weeks and has successfully completed his Divemaster Internship. He will now leave in a couple of weeks for Paris and will  then go on to Brazil.

Thomas is still helping round the center and getting more experience with his guiding, which he is a master off now ;) and he is also on the hunt for the illusive Angel Shark !

Thomas has been great to teach and has been a huge asset for us with his many language skills. Thomas speaks English, Spanish, French & Portuguese and has been diving with clients from all over. 

We wish Thomas the very best for his continued success in diving and hope he finds a job somewhere very exotic.

 

We now have a new intern with us called Antony and he has been working in the Commercial side of diving in the Salmon Farms!!

We will update you on all things Divemaster soon.

Also with Amarilla Divers running their first Instructor Development Course here in our center, we will update you on how that all goes too.

Check back soon 

 

 

Diving Tenerife ~ PADI 5 Star IDC Resort

Amarilla divers has some great news to share with our divers. This month October 2012 we have been upgraded to a PADI 5 Star Instructor Development Course Resort. This is a very prestigious ranking in the PADI Dive shop levels and we are very very proud to share this news with everyone.

So what does this mean? 

Well we are now able to offer Emergency First Response Instructor courses, PADI Instructor Courses, PADI IDC Staff Instructor courses and PADI MSDT courses at our center. All our course will be at exceptionally competitive prices

We have our own Course Director to conduct these courses and Neil, our Master Instructor, will be on hand to staff the PADI IDC's too.

We may even have Mary upgrading to PADI IDC Staff Instructor in the near future!!

It also means that we can offer the PADI IDC via eLearning on the PADI website, which means you will be able to review the presentations in the comfort of your own home.

 Amarilla Divers will also begin to offer the PADI Instructor Internships, these will have fantastic savings and will last for a maximum of 6 months (depending on current level). You will get the benefit of on site training, theory sessions, practical applications and over 100 dives. 

This will be limited and will be on a first come first served basis.

So all in all a fantastic opportunity  for all our divers and staff.

We look forward to seeing you all very very soon.

Mary & Neil.

Diving Tenerife ~ Divemaster update October.

Well what has been happening with our Divemaster interns.

 

Walied is now nearing the end of his time with Amarilla Divers and has been here for 7 weeks. During this time he has completed the following courses.

PADI Advanced Open Water
PADI Rescue Diver
Emergency First Response Primary Care
Emergency First Responce Secondary Care
Emergency First Response AED use.
PADI Deep Diver
PADI Enriched Air Diver
PADI Divemaster.

Walied has also managed over 60 dives whilst here in Tenerife and has been diving with Turtles, Stingrays, octopus, Sea horses and much much more.

Walied has been working hard on his skill circuit and demonstrations as well his dive guiding and briefings and has come a long way since he first started with us.

We now only have a few parts left to complete and then we will say goodbye to Walied until next time:)

Next we have Thomas who joined our team as an Open Water diver. he has been completing many dives and has been great in the center. Thomas has been training lots and has managed so far to complete these courses.

PADI Advanced Open Water
PADI Rescue Diver
Emergency First Response Primary Care
Emergency First Responce Secondary Care
Emergency First Response AED use.

He has also been doing some skill practice and will now move on to some guiding and briefings. Thmas scored some exceptionally high scores for his stamina and this is great news.

Thomas has also been great in the center with his extra language skills and has been working with a lot of our French clients and even the Spanish ones too.

We will keep you updated on his continued progress.

At the end of September we was joined by Carl from the UK. He is a qualified life guard and wanted to add a few more 'watery' certifications to his CV. 

Carl will be with us for 8 weeks and has already shown himself to be a very competent and confident diver and we have high hopes for his continued success in our team. 

 We have already managed to complete his Open Water course, Advanced Open Water course and complete over 20 dives!! He has already seen the turtles, sting rays & sea horses....what can we show him next !

Well......it is almost Angel Shark season so hopefully we have a fair few of them to look at soon :)

Diving Tenerife ~ Amarilla Divers update

We have had such a busy September that we have not really had much chance to relax and upload the mountains of photos!!... However the weather has been great and we have lots of flat calm seas, which is highly unusual.

Here is a quick run down of what has been going on at Amarilla Divers.

We were joined by regular divers Karen, Pat & Doc ( Sam & Gareth). Karen was here to complete her Rescue Diver & EFR course with Neil, whilst Pat & Doc where here to sign off their Boat Specialty, Deep Specialty and Master Scuba Diver certification too.

We also had Rachel westbrook back with us for a weeks holiday, she was with her friend Cara and they had a couple of dives with us here in Tenerife.

Rachel is one of our interns from last year who is now currently working as an Instructor in Cambodia. She is doing a fantastic job and loving every minute of it. We miss her loads but are very very proud her xx

We have had lots of courses going on in the center and we are now preparing ourselves for the Half term holidays. We are looking forward to doing lots of diving and finding more sea horses :)



September also brought us a new Divemaster intern called Carl and he will be with us for 8 weeks to complete all his courses to Divemaster. We will update you loater with his progress.