Turkey 2006

Check out the Turkey photo gallery.

Friday

The first LUUSAC expedition to Turkey began early and we dragged ourselves and our excessive quantities of luggage to Manchester airport. To my surprise the Typexed flight tickets worked and the plane was fairly comfortable and there were lots of empty seats so we could spread out.

We landed in Dalaman at about 1700 and after a 45 minute transfer we arrived in Fethiye. After a bit of paperwork at the dive centre, rooms were handed out at the hotel and dinner followed shortly after.

Saturday - Rabbit Island

After breakfast at the hotel we headed back round to the dive centre. Our boat for the week, Zafer V (means Victory), looked good, although kitting up looked like it might get a bit crowded. We got all our kit on board, tidied it away and, following a boat brief from Mehmet the legend and his side-kick Besim, set sail for out first dive site.

Rabbit Island is very much a standard site for the week - a bay sloping gently down from 2m to 20m or so. This worked really well for us as you could always find a suitable depth to teach skills at. On the first day we had some Ocean Diver lessons to do, a refresher skills review and then the SMB dive. Everything went well and the first day seemed very successful.

We finished the day with a compass dry run on land near the boat. I think the locals were slightly confused by lots of people wandering around with towels draped over our heads!

Sunday - Dalyan Bay

Compass and DSMB work, and the planned decompression dive. It all went swimmingly (sorry for the pun).

Monday - Tunnels Bay

Today was rescue day and the instructors had to battle with a new syllabus.

Following this some of the instructors went off to check out the rest of the dive site properly to make sure that it was suitable for the next lesson :)

At last it was the final training dive for some people. The skills review went well and although there were a few dubious DSMB deployments it was successful overall.

Tuesday - Aquarium Bay

The instructors got let off duty briefly and the boat dropped us onto a wall so that we could have a dive and follow him in to the bay. A scorpion fish was spotted and much sea cucumber-bothering ensued.

We followed this up with a grand DSMB deployment taught by Paul and videoed by Chris. Kirsty floated around on the surface and deflated DSMBs when they weren't up to her exacting standards, encouraged by all the instructors who weren't in the water.

Then the moment of truth followed - we let some of our brand-new spangly sports divers go diving all by themselves. MOST of them were very good and stayed within their depth limits, however there were a few candidates for kit wash.

This was the free night and some of us had a really good meal the highlight of which was the Grouper baked in salt that was brought to our table topped with flaming toilet paper. I think you had to have been there to appreciate it properly.

Those of us who couldn't get enough of the water decided, instead of eating dog and fish, to embark on the exciting adventure of a night dive. This was the highlight of the week for many who came along. Pizza was provided at the dive centre before we set sail back out to Aquarium Bay. This was to be the first night dive for the majority so adrenalin was flowing high. After allocation of torches and a brief from Kirsty about the tactics of making fish eat other fish in your torchlight, we buddied up and got ready to go. Everything was so much more colourful in the torch beams - the big daddy sea cucumbers came out to play, Octopus were bothered (although I still hadn't seen one!), and the soldier fish glowed bright red. Possibly the best thing I saw on the night dive, though, was Tim's excited face in the light of the torch - in fact, everyone's excited and beaming faces when we got out after the dive. It was such a great feeling!

Wednesday - Cayas Bay

The final day of diving - sniff, sniff. Another nice site Cayas Bay (cayas means rock) and I had a great dive. Nick decided that it was time to display his dive leading qualities and led Janet and Kirsty all over the place. He did an excellent job although the female members of the party were slightly puzzled at our high speed return to the boat. Nick may be an excellent dive leader but his air consumption needs some work...although if we hadn't kept stopping to look at pretty flowers his dive plan would have been perfect :-)

I then spent a lazy afternoon supervising other people marshalling and was then dragged in on Kirsty's tenth dive of the day. I went on the promise that she would show me some exciting wild life. She did very well and showed me an octopus and then I found another so I was very proud. I was slightly dubious about the ethics of trying to shake the octopus out of his rock, but Ally seemed happy with the idea so it must have been ok. It turns out Ally wasn't entirely happy with the idea but she was too busy struggling with the conflict between excitement in her first octopus sighting (at last!!) and the desperate need to go to the loo. We then finished the dive by annoying a couple of cornet fish and admiring some cuttlefish. A very nice dive to end the week with.

Some took the opportunity to explore the ruin on the island above the bay and even spotted a tortoise!

The final big night out did live up to expectations. Following a meal of meat covered in sauce most people looked as if they were ready to call it a night. However a couple of Turkish coffees later (for future reference, sip delicately to avoid coffee sludge) people were bouncing off the ceiling and ready to dance (and drink) the night away at the Car Cemetery.

Thursday - Day Off

Our day off and no diving. We were very lazy and stayed in bed late before heading out to spend our money on Turkish tat and be harassed by Turkish perfume sellers.

A group of people who decided they didn't want to be lazy in the hotel went off on a trip to Oludeniz where they spent the day being lazy on the beach instead. Very much needed relaxing day all round.

Friday

Leaving day. Everyone was up and ready to go at 0400. (Except for the surprising absence of the trip runner and several instructors... who were busy rescuing small children from burning buildings.) We dragged ourselves to the airport and then on to the plane. We arrived back in Manchester at about 1000.

(PS Lou Whitehouse helped with the report too!)