Marc's Public Blog - Trips to other locations

I think I managed to wake up 11-ish after the tunnel trance party, which was pretty nice, and dragged my butt to the beach for the dive pickup. On the way there, I was finally able to take one picture of guys that didn't look underfed for a change (the complaint I've had so far; sorry, I've done the best I could with what was available :)


After talking with the diving instructor, I decided to pass my advanced open water diving certification this week (aka PADI level 2). No, I don't have grand ideas of becoming a divemaster, but basically level 1 is limited in several ways, including 18 meters when I had already been certified for 40m during my deep dive saturday, but would probably never have been allowed past 18 in some other countries without the advanced cert for insurance reasons.
Since advanced open water is actually a piece of cake to get, I figured WTH (I've already done 3 of the 5 required dives). The only small thingy is that it will cost another 300 euros, for a total of 700 euros for both certs (250 paid by UCPA, and the rest for me to pay).
Once I got myself used to the idea that PADI had a near monopoly on diving certification, and basically can charge that money and that without it, I wouldn't be allowed to dive at most places, I just made peace with the fact that I was going to give them 3-400 euros just for two paper certs (the rest of the money does go to the dive center for the actual rentals and other associated costs).
Unfortunately, the wreck dive turned out to be boring/mostly useless because the visible part was at 25 meters, and UCPA (the organisation I'm in Ibiza with) doesn't allow divers past 20 meters to avoid decompression accidents. Grr, I was pretty pissed and got it straightened out for next time if there is a next time (i.e. the UCPA guy couldn't change the main rules, but agreed to leave it up to the instructor should this situation occur again, and let me dive deeper if it's safe)
As far as the "I felt stupid" category, I asked the divemaster if there was a problem with my equipment, because I noticed that my bottle pressure had dropped by about 20 bars since we had left the shop (I was in the water). He proceeded to point out that gases retract under colder temperatures. Duh! never mind all the thermodynamics I had learned in school... He gave me some slack saying that I didn't have to think about that since I was on vacation, which is true, but still... :)

That evening, some of us went to the Restaurant de Paris before heading for Manumission, the biggest party in Ibiza at Privilege, the biggest club in the world (more than 10,000 people). After managing to smuggle my camera in for the second day in a row (don't ask for details how :), I got a bunch of cool picts from that evening (for some reason they are very strict on not allowing pictures).



Manumission is an interesting party due the live performances that you get to see



The party was a bit like last year's except that it was slightly easier to move around (maybe 20% people less). I headed back around 5-ish, when I was all partied out.
I'll see how many MB I can manage to upload while connected (more than 60MB of new pictures and videos)

Pictures from Monday