Sunday, September 13th. - Scuba Diving in Madeira
Sulana's Voyage
Alan and Sue Brook
Tue 14 Sep 2010 11:58
32:44.5 N 16:42.7 W
Time for Fiona and Alan to test out the new “Sulana” dive gear!
First though, there is the small matter of once again overcoming any irrational fears of heights, and getting down to the dive site by cable car!
The capital city of Funchal is just a speck on the horizon.
The “beach” below is made of solid, giant black pebbles, of a size we might easily call boulders. The Dive Shop was a large room simply carved (literally – not joking) out of the cliff face at the bottom. It was impossible to stand at the entrance and not look up to check and see if any stones/rocks were breaking away from the rock face, made up apparently of ancient compacted and very friable, volcanic ash.
When it comes to describing the quality of the beach at this local attraction, suffice it to say, the beach café below hires out little, long wooden ‘pallets’, that hundreds of local people come down to use, for sunbathing on their Sunday afternoon!
A lonely local widow appeared to have sponsored this giant statue to Christ, at the top of the Garejau ‘teleféric’ cablecar.
Funchal harbour and its pretty city of red-tiled rooftops and whitewashed walls simmers gently in the morning heat.
All the harbours in Madeira face the South Coast and are well-sheltered from the prevailing North-Easterly breezes.
To our great surprise and pleasure, below the sea here, at approx. 25m depth, around the Garejau rocks, we had the great, but expected pleasure, of meeting ‘Elvis’, and his friend “Vaselina’!
And you thought ‘The King’ was dead!
These two Giant Groupers are about 1.20m long and come along to swim with divers on a regular basis, it turns out. Next time we will not forget to bring along the underwater cameras, though, for proof!
Diving in Madeira was a different experience; first getting to the site by ‘teleféric’, changing in a hole in the cliff, then walking into the water wearing full kit, across huge stones that made it quite hard work. But the experience underwater was fun, if not a bit short on sealife, as there is strictly no coral here. There were a lot of fish and many Fireworms here to be seen, though.
It was a good job the favoured local eating fish, the Scabbard Fish (‘Espada’ in Portuguese) was nowhere to be seen, though. This ugly denizen of the deep may be good to eat, especially done in a banana and passion fruit sauce, but it certainly looks frightful, being long and black, with fearsome teeth, set in an eel-shaped head that makes a Monkfish look pretty! This is best left at its preferred depth of 1,000 m in our view!
Fish seen were mainly small Wrasse, the odd Trigger fish and shoals of Brown Chromis, finishing with a nice brown Moray Eel at the end, whose white eye, peeping out from under the pebbles, just caught Fiona’s attention, just as we were starting to stand up and get back out. A couple of different starfish and an Arrow Crab, together with s small shoal of Striped Barracuda, all made it worthwhile, but just for the one dive. Coming back for a second dive, after a standard Madeiran 2 hour lunch break, didn’t seem best use of our time, even at only €28,00 each, per bottle.
However, we rated it a good starter for our future Scuba exploits and a successful test for the new gear bought from Wayne at Diveline, in Ipswich.
Today, September 13th, has been a day of cleaning and laundry, getting beds changed and everything ready for the arrivals from home. It will be great to catch up on all the news from Mersea and for Sue and Alan to be able to start the real adventure together now.
More from us after our return from Porto Santo………..