Amarilla Divers Tenerife ~ Egypt Trip 2013

January is always a good time to go to Egypt for Amarilla Divers as it means that both Neil & Mary can have some time of together....yes a rare thing !

So this year we set off to our annual liveaboard trip with lots of divers and decided to do the Deep North itinerary that includes Dahab.

This allowed us to dive the famous Blue Hole, The Canyon, Ras Abu Galum and Gabr el-Bint.

Diving at the Blue Hole was one of my favourites as the life on the outside of the 'hole' was stunning and we also got our teeth and ears!! cleaned by the cleaner fish on the reef.

The Blue Hole is world famous for Apnea (Free Diving) and is an amazing place to be.

We entered via 'The Bells' and swam along the reef, finally entering the Blue Hole itself. there is not a great amount of life inside the hole, but it is still pretty amazing.

Another great dive was the Canyon with its rather large stretch of windy twists. This was a great experience and we also found lots of life here including the Pigmy Sea Horses and Goby's.

We also dived along Tiran Island which is always amazing diving with loads of colourful corals. This is one of the best areas in my opinion to dive when in the Red Sea.

We had some great times and not only with the diving but also with the guys having fun all day and evening, we even played 'ibbly dibbly' Yes we have to ask Mars Tanya about that!!

Here are some of the photos Neil took.

 Lucy did a tad a free diving form the back of the boat, whilst us divers looked on.

Lucy recently finished her AIDA 2 * Free Diving course here in Tenerife.

 Can you see the hidden Scorpion fish among the corals??

Ahhh BIG Puffer Fish and Mary. Very pretty fish and rather friendly too.

We run annual trips to Egypt and normally these are in January time. Next year 2014, this trip may well be in February and November. We will be giving out details soon.

Check out our Facebook Page for more photos and also for daily updates around the center.

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.