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 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 Underwater Photography Competition

Well September bought us a new Underwater Photography Competition called 11 Foto-Sub Guimar Open. This competition was split in to 2 different catagories for the divers, being Compact Cameras and the manual SLR type camera.

Neil & Thomas,  our divemaster Intern, went along to try their hands at some photography. They were joined by their 'models' Mary & Chris.

 

Now the idea is that you have a buddy / model and take pictures that fit in to 6 different types for marking accordingly.


The 6 sections were

Whole Fish
Macro Fish
Macro Non fish
Ambiental no model
Ambiental with Model
Molussco

You were allowed to take up to 240 pictures and had 4 hours diving time in which to complete this task.

The dive was lovely and we have been back since to have a good look around.

Neil took some great shots and he eventually came 7th out of 11 competitors, which we think is great for his first go. Now he know what the judges are looking for he can only gain confidence and hopefully higher his grade next time.

Thomas came 10th out of 11 divers, which is excellent as it was literally the second time he dived with a camera.

This was a fantastic experience for both Neil & Thomas and we even made the news lol.

Diving Tenerife ~ September Divemaster Intern update

 This month has been a sad month for Amarilla Divers !!! ahhhh

We have said goodbye to the girls Suzy & Lucy and have also now said goodbye to Duncan too. The summer is almost over and the winter season is kicking in and we are still very very busy at the dive center.

So here is what has been going on.

Miss Suzy Carden-Noad was with us for 3 months and managed to complete all of this....

PADI Divemaster
PADI Assistant Instructor
She taught Scuba Reviews
Guided lots of dives
pulled LOTS of different faces !!! check out facebook for pictures

Suzy came as quite a shy lass who was always tired and took on the name of Snoozy....but soon she changed into a fantastic diver and Divemaster and we are very proud to have know and taught her.

Suzy now goes back to the UK to start UNI and will hopefully be back sooner rather than later to see us and be our 'mapper'..... yes this is a new word in the English Dictionary!!!!

Well done Suzy and we wish you all the very best of luck for the future.

Now we have Miss Lucy Weal who was with Amarilla Divers for 8 weeks. During her time with us she completed

PADI Rescue Diver
Emergency First Reponse Primary Care
Emergency First Response Secondary Care
Emergency First Response AED's
PADI Divemaster
PADI Assistant Instructor
PADI Enriched Air Nitrox Diver

She also conducted Scuba Review, Snorkelling excursions, Discover Scuba Diver course ( under supervision), guided dives, took try dives in the pool and lots more.

Lucy has gone back to the UK but will be with us again soon as she would like to complete her IDC and go on to be a PADI Instructor. This is excellent news and we wish her all the very best of luck.

Duncan came to us as a PADI Master Scuba Diver and was here for 7 weeks to do his PADI Divemaster & PADI Assistant Instructor course.

He successfully completed both these course and also refreshed his EFR skills and certification.

Duncan was very active with Chris our Divemaster on our Urchin project and was diving many dives to clear our reef.

During the time Duncan was here, he blossomed onto an excellent Divemaster and we now hope he is able to find some work in this industry. We wish all the best of luck and know we will see him back here in Tenerife some time soon.

New Divemaster Interns for September.

September has also bought us new Divemaster interns in the shape and for of Walied, a Doctor from the UK and Thomas from Brazil / France.

Both guys join us as Open water divers and so will be training through to Divemaster and possibly Assistant Instructor too. 

Walied has been gaining lots of experience with his diving and practicing his buoyancy and also now moving on to his Rescue Diver Course. 

Thomas has just finished his Advanced Open water course and is excellent in the water. We look forward to continuing with the Rescue & DM courses soon.

We will also be joined by another new intern Carl this month, so we will keep you updated with the guys progress.

Diving in Tenerife May 2012

WOW has it really been that long since I last blogged!!!! Well here is a quick round up of what has been happening at Amarilla Divers throughout May 2012.

You may have guessed we have been rather busy ! and yes we have been doing lots of diving and lots of courses. So lets start with the courses we have been completing.

We had some of our regular divers back for their Rescue Diver course and also some Specialties. Chris Kelly was here for 10 days and managed to complete his Rescue Diver, Deep, Navigation, Night, Project Aware & Digital Underwater Photography courses. All this amounted to Chris being able to achieve his Master Scuba Diver certification too. Well done Chris.

Chris was joined for his Rescue by Tanya & John who all did a great job and it was very lovely to them after spending a great week in Egypt back in January.

We also has a visit from Karen, Bob, Sam (Doc) & Gareth (Pat) during may and Pat & Doc also completed their Rescue Diver course and their Emergency First Response course too.

It has been a great month for course and had Gary doing his Open Water course, lots of Discover Scuba Diver courses, Advanced Open Water course with Sarah, Divemaster courses finished with Dannii, Hannah & Manon and also some Assistant Instructor courses with Dannii too.


We had lots of Specialties going on including Project Aware, Fish Identification, Deep, Night, Nitrox and lots more.


The Amarilla Divers Team has been collecting rubbish all month for their Dive Against Debris and managed to accumulation lots of debris and we are still logging this with Project Aware currently. We estimate that we have found over 60 Kgs of rubbish at various dive sites and this is only a small portion of the debris left in our oceans.  We will still be collecting on every dive and all our divers have been helping raise awareness of this cause.
















We have been to lots of dive sites this month but El Puertito has  been the favourite and here are some of of our divers enjoying seeing the Green back Turtles.

 

Divemaster Update.

OK So whats been happening with the divemasters here at Amarilla Divers in Tenerife!

Dannii who has been with us since October has completed her Divemaster course and also her Assistant instructor course. Dannii has been great to work with and has been a fantastic Dm and diver. She also completed 5 Specialties to reach her Master Scuba Diver certification too and now leaves Tenerife to travel to Thailand and then on to Australia & New Zealand. We are very proud of Danni and we wish her all the best of luck with her travels and we know we will see her again soon for her Instructors Course.

Well done Dannii xx

Hannah also completed her Divemaster course and went back to the UK for 2 weeks and is now back again and has decided to saty in Tenerife. She will be helping round the shop and gaining her 100 dives and experience in readiness for her Instructors course. Hannah managed all her courses from open Water through to DM and even some specialties too.

We also said goodbye for now 'abientot' to Manon after she finished her Divemaster course with Amarilla Divers too. Manon went away with all her courses to Divemaster and also her Master Scuba Diver certification after completing her Deep, Night, O2, Digital Underwater Photography, Nitrox and Underwater Navigator Specialties.

We are hoping that Manon may be back with us for the Summer as she is searching for a job now. We wish her all the best of luck and look forward tyo seeing her again soon.

Chris & Alex are alomost there and only have a few small tasks left to do before completing their Divemaster course and we will update you with that shortly.......well so long as Mary wakes up again !

Thanks for reading and if we have missed anything, I will update again !

Ciao
Safe Diving

Diving Tenerife ~ Divemaster intern update April

So what has been happening with our Interns lately???

Sam Black completed his Divemaster Internship and his Assistant Instructors course with Iain at the end of March and finally went back to sunny Scotland where it then decided to SNOW....Yes April bought Sam Snow. After 8 weeks here is Tenerife Sam completed his Avanced Open Water course, Rescue Diver Course, Emergency First Response Course, Divemaster course & Assistant Instructor Course...WOW Well done Sam.

Sam was an excellent candidate and we now wish him the very best for his future in Marine Biology. :)

Manon is still with us and has started to complete some of her Specialty courses with Neil amd also completed her Advanced Open Water, Emergency First Response course and has finished the Rescue Exam. 

Unfortunately she has caught and ear infection and so in grounded for 10 dyas !!! much to her disappointment. However she will be back in the water soon enough for her Rescue Diver course.

Manon has been learning lots of new things since she has been in Tenerife and with French being her first Language, she has been doing an excellent job. all her manuals are in french but she insists on translating it in to English as well. well done Manon :)

Hannah is staying for an extra 2 weeks to get the rest of her training completed and also to complete some PADI Specialties with Neil & Mary. Hannah has completed her Open Water course, Advanced Open Water course, Emergency First Response course, Peak Performance Buoyancy, Deep Specialty & Night Diver so far. She will be starting her Rescue Course this week along with her Wreck Diver Specialty & Nitrox Diver.

Hannah has been doing great and is gaining more confidence everyday. She has even been out for some 'fun' dives with the other interns. Well done Hannah :)

Alex joined us at the end of March and went on to complete his Open Water course, Advanced Open Water course and Emergency First reposnse course. He will now go on to his Rescue Diver course along with some Specialties. He has found a new love for photography and was having a great time with the camera as apart of his Digital Underwater Photography course and adventure dive.

He has gained a lot of confidence in the water and will soon make a great Divemaster. Well done Alex :)

We have also welcomed another new intern to the Amarilla Divers Family and this is Chris Botting. He is a resident here in Tenerife and lives in the north in Puerta De La Cruz. He is currently staying down South for his internship.

Chris came as an Open Water diver and has already completed his Advanced Open Water course & Emergency First Reponse course. Plus he is starting some of his Specialty courses too.

Chris has a passion for the water and is a keen Surfer. He loves the water and has been doing a great job with his diving too. Well Done Chris :)

Finally Dannii, now as you know Dannii is also a resident here in Tenerife and so is only in for 2 days a week, however this week could be the end of her training. Dannii has a few Specialties to complet but other than that she mainly needs her stamina, last part 2 exam and some DSD work shops. Dannii has grown as a diver and Divemaster and we are very lucky to her have her. She will be a great asset to any dive center and we hope she will complete her Instructors course soon enough too.

Well Done Dannii :)

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