This first post comes to you straight from Malta where I am completing my Dive Master course with Dive Wise based right in the heart of the beautiful town of St Julian. The blog has been a long time waiting on the back burner as has the DM course. Anyway here goes;

I decided to come out to Malta to do the DM course because I have heard good things from a lot of people that have been here I am also running the London Marathon for charity this year and as result thought training in Malta would be more enjoyable (please sponsor me here - http://www.justgiving.com/Benjamin-Curtis123). Dive Wise also has a sister company Tech Wise which concentrates on everything techie which is my real passion. I'm hoping while I am out here doing the course I will have a chance to dive some of the deeper wrecks and do a spot of cave diving. Malta is a very small island 60miles south of Sicily and 160miles north of Libya. The dive season really kicks of in May and ends in October. Ryan Air and Easy Jet do very cheap return flights for less than £250 including an extra 20kg sports bag of which I managed to squeeze and extra 0.2kilos smashing apart my preconceptions of Ryan Air and their baggage policy.


The journey out to Malta was fairly uneventful after a rush through the Luton airport due to my perfectly on time (not early enough) arrival I boarded the plane with not a second to spare. I had reserved seat 1a right next to the front door. I'm not sure why but this gave me a sense of some increased safety at a premium. I think in reality the fact is that, if we crashed no one would have gotten off but I still felt safer knowing I wasn't going to have to barge my way through cattle class in some vein ditched attempt to save myself while the plane turned in to something from a hollywood special effect scene.  This feeling was increased when the safety demonstration was performed the row behind us out of site of us, as if to say, "you guys next to the emergency exit don't need to hear this safety briefing because your the only ones who are going to survive." The flight was slightly delayed as they had to de-ice the plane. I say de-ice what I actually mean is defrost the frozen layer of snow that had settled on the plane from the previous night. Good bye minus something degrees Celsius.


I arrived in Malta airport to find that no one was there to pick me up which in reality is probably my fault for a lack of communication. After some wandering around I decided to find the dive shop on my own which, fortunately didn't turn out to be too hard.  I had an enjoyable bus journey through some beautiful but slightly unfinished parts of Malta. I'm taken away by how at home I already feel here. The buses are all Arriva as they are at home and everyone speaks better English than myself. I arrived in Schlim (?) where I stopped at a cafe´ and caught my breath. Fortunately for the sake of breath catching it was blowing a force9 so this required little to no effort and was more to do with opening the air way than actually forcing oneself to breath.Breath caught I got taxi to dive wise. €17s the taxi driver charged me to travel all of about 1km but I wasn't going to let this deter me from feeling epic. 

I met Viv and Alan the owners of Dive Wise. Alan was playing with JJ's outside the centre with Richard Stevenson who for some reason I became to embarrassed to talk to. To anyone who knows me that will come as a shock as usually it is shutting me up that is the problem. I really hope I get a chance to post more here about the JJ, what I'm saying is I hope if I beg and plead they might let me have a play. This might come as another shock to anyone who knows me as I have been a die hard GUE (http://www.globalunderwaterexplorers.org) / DIR diver for some years now and since discovering the ways of the force haven't looked back and as such haven't done training with any other agency in a while. GUE have a very clear policy on eCCR (electronic closed circuit rebreathers) they feel that the technology isn't there yet and the risk is not out weighed by the rewards, this is easy to say when you live in Florida where Helium is half the price than it is in Europe. They do however use a SCR called the RB80 which has many of the benefits of CCR without some of the major pitfalls.  Alas I can see the future, the futures black and the futures JJ, or at least bubble less.

Alan returned to JJ land while Viv showed me around the centre. The centre is great they have two class rooms, a massive kitting up area, two compressors, loads of tech and rec kit to hire and all the usual jazz. Viv showed me the kit room and the compressor and Helium, "you know the stuff that makes your voice go all squeeky," :) I'm sure my ego will recover later today at some point. I was some what alarmed to find out that I would be starting at 8:30am every morning and finishing at 6:00pm 6days a week. Woah! Here was me thinking I was on a jolly holiday. Still I know this means I will get absolutely everything out of the course that I can.


After the very thorough guided tour of the dive centre and the standard form filling in session Viv showed me where the hotel was that I would be staying in. I had booked the Hotel myself and was remarkably impressed what you get for €9 a night in the off season. I had a TV, heater, air con, balcony and 3 beds. Yes I said 3beds. From this moment forth I'm going to introduce myself to the local talent which, there seems to be an abundance of probably due to the 3 international language schools in close proximity to the hotel, as Benny 3 beds. More on this to follow.



On the way to the hotel Viv said when it rains in Malta it rains really hard and really fast. All of 30seconds later and we had a quick 5 minute torrential down poor just to make me feel like I'm abroad and some what in awe of Viv's weather girl skills.


I parted company with Viv at 3PM and agreed to meet back at the centre at 6PM. The centre was literally a 1-2minute walk from my hotel. I decided to quickly lay down and recoup post travelling. This was not a good idea although I feel somewhat more alive now some 6hours later after a fully clothed sleep, shoes and all. Fortunately for me I still have eyebrows as none of my friends were here to witness it.



A greasy chicken and chips to make me feel at home, a quick message home to counter tips the balance, the obligatory smug facebook update and off to bed to write this.


Lessons learned above ;


Ask Taxi drivers for the price first.
Call ahead and confirm arrival times.
Don't have a 5minute lye down with out setting the alarm.
Ryan Air aren't all bad. I think I had a total of 51.5 kilos so was over by 1.5kg and they didn't bat an eye lid. No excess charges and even a smile from the lady behind the counter when I expressed my concern.



Lessons learned below ;


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