Gozo, August 2005

We had already booked our dive holiday for 2005. But we’d gone and bought a housing for our video camera – more than enough justification for an additional trip to try it out before the main event in Raja Ampat.

Underwater video

Having watched photographers over the years, we’d seen many good (defined as good divers first and foremost, good photographs second) and many bad. We’d had a couple of experiments with basic equipment over the years and never really had great results.

I always remembered the great video that another diver had captured back on a liveaboard in the Maldives in 1999 on a Sony Mavica (as I remember – it had a large LCD screen right on the back of the camera, making it very easy to shoot with), and decided that video was probably the best way to go.

Hence the trip to Gozo was the first outing with our Sony HC1000 and Ikelite housing.

Change of plan

We booked our hotel and flights with Expedia. A colleague at work had recommended the Kempinski San Lawrenz very highly, and that was where we had booked for 4 nights over the late summer Bank Holiday weekend.

About three days before departure, Expedia phoned and said that there was a problem with the hotel: the construction work (of which we had been forewarned) was apparently running late and a number guests had been complaining about the noise and dust. Expedia recommended changing to another hotel.

They booked us into the Ta’ Cenc instead, located on the south of the island. In retrospect, and having spoken with other divers who stayed at the Kempinski, we should have stayed put: the Ta’ Cenc room was very tired indeed (*** rather than *****), although the public spaces were pleasant enough.

The Diving

Diving was booked with Blue Waters Dive Cove who we found via the internet (here’s where having a nicely presented web-site makes all the difference: poorly designed web pages suggest poorly run dive trips).

The diving was all from the shore. We were collected from our hotel and driven over to the dive shop located in Qala on the east end of the island (not particularly close to the water!). The plan for the next three days was two dives per day at sites all around the island. Franco and Onno led the dives. The largest group was around eight divers.

I would imagine that there is very healthy demand on Gozo for car suspension parts, as the roads are bone-shaking at best, almost bone-breaking at worst. The journeys to and from the dive sites were the toughest part of the day by far.

A close second was the entry into the water. We had to get kitted up on shore, out of the back of the truck. The sun remained pretty hot at that time of year. For some sites (Reqqa Reef, for example), we had a short walk over sand, rock and salt pans in the blazing sun. The water never looked more welcoming!

Mgarr ix-xini

Our first dive was at Mgarr ix-xini, a sheltered bay to the south. This was the first outing for the video camera (as well our first dive in over a year). Entry was relatively straightforward down a shallow sloping beach.

Once in the water, I checked out the camera for leaks, fumbled my way around the controls (still haven’t mastered more than about three of them) and began filming. At this stage, about all I was able to do was point and shoot. That said, the results were not bad – and therein lies the difference between video and stills photography underwater! Jellyfish made nice slow moving subjects to try to capture in the shallows. The flying gurnard proved more elusive, sadly.

The West End

Gozo was the farthest away from the tropics that either Alice or I had ever dived. We were very pleasantly surprised by how good it was. The water temperature was perfect at 25°C, visibility was excellent throughout the trip and there was plenty to see underwater. For sure, the variety of life was less than the tropics, but some locations were just as colourful.

Our final three dives were all out at the west end of the island, near the town of Victoria. The Blue Hole, Coral Cave and Inland Sea provided some of the most spectacular underwater architecture of the trip. Visibility was better out here than it had been at Mgarr ix-Xini and Xlendi Cave (both located in inlets or bays), but not quite as good as at Reqqa Reef on the north side.

At the Coral Cave, Franco located a yellow seahorse on the cave wall, which I managed some shaky video of. This was our very first seahorse sighting underwater: he (?) was very co-operative and mercifully (from the point of view of a novice videographer) quite large (4cm long).

We’ll be back…

To sum up, the short break to Gozo was excellent from a diving perspective. Blue Waters looked after us very well indeed – thanks especially to Onno, with whom we spent most of our dives. If, as we did, you think the closest acceptable dive location to the UK is the Red Sea, then think again. Gozo is well worth a visit.

Stephen · Saturday, March 18, 2006, 11:06 · Permalink

Next report: Raja Ampat 2005 Part 1: getting there