Posts in Category: Diving
Costa Rica via Stopovers in Canada = Costa RiCanada
In spring 2020 a friend and I decided to explore Costa Rica. We found flights with ~21h stopovers in Toronto on the way to Costa Rica and ~23h in Montreal on the way back. Here are some pictures from Toronto and the 11 days for the western part of Costa Rica and a map of our tour. (Unfortunately, Montreal greeted us with rain so I didn’t take my camera out)
Originally, we had planned to go south from Samara to Montezuma and cross the bay by ferry but we really wanted to go diving and none of the 3 diving schools in samara was operating during the days we spent there. Then we changed plans and went to Tamarindo for diving before heading over to the national parks on the more southern pacific coast. Manuel Antonio, one of the most famous national parcs, allowed us to see sloths and different speciesof monkeys.
Ps: some of the aerial photos appear in the previous post about my new mavic mini as well since they were just too beautiful 😉
Lanzarote – Christmas on the beach
This was a first for me РChristmas far from home. We decided to take a family trip to the canary island of Lanzarote to catch some sun over christmas. As you can expect Рnot a really christmassy-feeling Рbut we explored the island, whose architecture and art was mainly influenced by C̩sar Manrique, by bus car and bike, chilled by the pool and I event went diving.
Koh Tao and Singapore
After being land-locked in Chiang Mai, we flew to Surat Thani to get to Koh Tao for some diving. We decided to do a few specialties and I got deep & nitrox certified. As previously, Phoenix Divers Koh Tao and their fish-pointers (divemasters/guides :-P) did a great job at taking us to beautiful divesites although the visibility wasn’t as good as the last time. I bought a small rubber whaleshark dive-buddy which now rides the bubbles above my tank when I dive – so far it hasn’t succeded in calling its mom so I’d see a whaleshark again :D. We also took pictures from the 360° viewpoint and tried our luck to see turtles or sharks at shark bay (but didn’t). After Koh Tao, we spent the last nights of my 3 week trip in Singapore to re-visit some (rooftop)bars and meet some old friends.
Unfortunately, my Sony SEL16-50 lens broke during the time in Koh Tao and I could only partly fix it on the go so there are only a few pictures. After the replacement parts from china found their way to germany, I managed to get the lens working again =) .
Koh Chang – Diving and Waterfalls
In november 2019 I did a 3 week trip to southeast asia. Some friends planned to join later so I decided to go to cambodia to visit the temples of Angkor Wat before returning to Bangkok to meet them. But first, I wanted to chill on a beach and go diving – so I went straight to the eastern thai island of Koh Chang. I went diving, scootered around the island and enjoyed delicious food on the beach with new friends. The island also has a few waterfalls and is famous for elephant “sanctuaries” (which I didn’t visit). Long story short, here are some pictures from Koh Chang, above and below the surface.
Volcanos, temples and Manta-Rays – Indonesia 2019
In February 2019 I went back to Indonesia – but this time with a plan :D. I tried to convince a few friends to ‘join my trip’ with a 1-pager filled with pictures of vulcanos, manta-rays and temples.
So in February, we flew to Denpasar, Bali and started our trip via Ubud and back south to Nusa Lembongang for the Manta rays. After some nice dives and driving around the island we left for permuteran – a small village near the national park of Menjangan in northwest Bali.
We enjoyed some more dives and visited the turtle hatchery to send a small turtle (Sgt. Miau) on it’s way into the big blue ocean. Afterwards we passed the straight and slept a few hours near Mt. Ijen before hiking up the crater at night – and even saw the famous blue flames.
The next day, we took a train through the Indonesian landscape towards Probollinggo to get close to Mt. Bromo. Due to cloudy weather we didn’T go for the sunrise and we walked around the planes near Mt. Bromo in the late morning hours. We also hiked up to the craters edge where we could hear the rumbling and see the smoke coming out of the partly active volcano.
As our final stop of the trip, we went to Yogyakarta and spent the last days visiting the UNESCO world-heritage site temples Borobudur and Prambanan as well as the city and its surroundings.
I put the diving pictures in a second gallery below.
Mexico
In autumn of 2018 my company declared a limit to the amount of holidays I could transfer to the next year so I had to squeeze in a short holiday. After checking flights to wherever, I noticed there were direct flights to Cancun, Mexico or the island of curacao. I decided to book a 1 week trip to Mexico due to the possibility of a mixture between diving and seeing some mayan cultural heritage sites. The amazing Mezcal hostel turned out to be the perfect spot to stay in Cancun and meet people to spend the evenings with.
Despite the short time, I managed to see the heritage sites of Chichén Itzá and Tulum as well as dining on the beach in Playa del Carmen, see some baby turtles on Isla Mujeres, swim in the pristine waters of the cenotes in the middle of the jungle and party in Cancun’s famous Hotel/nightlife area. Of course, I also went diving in the ocean and a cenote to witness the halocline (border between sweet and saltwater) that give you the impression of fish and divers flying in the sky while raising your head out of a lake. Unfortunately, diving is relatively expensive in Mexico and they try to make money by selling pictures (80$ for ~5 pics the professional took of me and none showing the incredible ) so I couldn’t take any pictures in the cenote Chac Mool. If I were to fly to Mexico again, I’d definently make it a multi-stop trip and slowly travel down towards Belize and the other neighbouring countries.
Malta
I’ve been wanting to dive in Malta for a few years now but everytime I tried to organize a trip with a few friends oder a long weekend, flights were really expensive. This spring I finally managed to spend a 4-day weekend on this mediterranean island and dive some of it’s wrecks.
The Philippines N°2
As mentioned in the previous post, I went to the philippines again!
This time, I took some friends who also dive and flew to manila. From there, we went to coron, oslob and moalboal to spend a few days island hopping and diving – but see for yourself!
I (finally) bought a GoPro Hero 5 black and took this, instead of the chinese actioncam (e.g. during my Corfu-Trip) or the canon Powershot D20 (Komodo) – but honestly, I’m really disappointed with the photo-quality. Some of the distortion might be due to less clear water or higher currents but for taking pictures, the GoPro Hero 5 is definetly not good enough – above and below the surface. (And way less good than Ads or influencers make you believe; I’m not even sure it would win in a standoff to a 50€ china actioncam. This counts for PHOTOS – the GoPro Series-Camneras were designed for videos anyway.)