Marielou Cruz and Iain Black, both living in Qatar are visiting Coco Beach and Coco Divers once again… or should we say for the sixth time in 5 years.

First time they came to Coco Divers they were both PADI Open Water Divers but last year they finished their PADI Master Scuba Diver certification. In-between, they took a lot of courses with Coco Divers such as PADI Advanced Open Water Diver, Emergency First Response, Rescue Diver and the specialties: Deep Diver, Nitrox Diver, Drift Diver, Underwater Naturalist and Boat Diver.

Tambja affinis.

This time the vacation was planned as a relaxing holiday without to much reading and making all kind of skills. And what better way is there to relax; then diving. So they booked 60 dives for the next 10 following days… 3 dives a day for both of them. That is some relaxing vacation…

During the 10 days they managed to visit all their favorite places: twice they went to Verde Island where they made 4 dives, three times they went down to M/V Alma Jane – their favorite wreck and three times they went to the Canyons - one of the best dive sites around Puerto Galera – where they saw big schools of sweetlips, batfishes, groupers and even octopuses. They were also lucky to see 5 turtles in 4 days.

Painted sweetlips gathering in Canyons.

At Boulders they even found a tambja affinis sea slug which is reported to grow to a maximum length of 7 cm… but the one they saw was around 11 cm.

On all their dives Rex was their personal guide and Darwin their personal boat handler, and they all had a great time in and out of the water.

The “Team”: Darwin, Iain the Scuba Cowboy, Rex and Marielou.

For their next visit - in 2011, they are planning to take the PADI Divemaster course. Normally the course takes 4 weeks, but since PADI introduced all Divemaster theory as e-Learning, the course can be made within 2-3 weeks.