Here we go again :)

Well it's been a few years and a lot of water under the bridge but I'm off to Truk again. So what's different I hear you ask? 

Well since my last bit of bloggery I have started diving a Poseidon 7 rebreather so there is potential for some longer and deeper dives and this trip will be much longer. Starting with 2 weeks diving with the wreck specialist Lust4Rust follows by another 5 weeks staying independently at the Blue Lagoon hotel to get to know some of my favourite wrecks even better. 

With one week to go the packing has stated and one of the great things about the Poseidon 7 is it fits in your hand luggage :) 

End of the holiday :(

Well I'm sat in Kuala Lumper airport waiting for the flight home at midnight local time so it's about 3 hours to go. I've had a good walk round the various shops & restaurant, has a coffee to kill some time but time drags in even the best of airports when you are waiting for a flight.

I suppose I'd better say thank you to a few people.
First of all a very big thanks to Jonkey and Mac our dive guide & boat driver for the week, I'm still amazed how he found all those wrecks. All the staff at the Blue Lagoon Resort and Dive Centre for making us all so welcome.

Steve for helping organise the trip with Graham Weston at Plymouth Dive Centre and Phil North of Dive Worldwide. Rob for being such a great buddy and bothering to drag his twin set gear all the way it there to do the San Francisco. Bill for being a constant source of amusement and taking it all in good heart. Harriet for letting me steal a couple of her photos and Lisa for putting up with a bunch of divers all week even when she did not dive.

Well thats all for now but I will add some more photos over the next week or so once I sort them out.

Manila on the way home

This will most likely be the last post of the blog from foreign shores, I don't know if I will get wifi on stop over in Kuala Lumper or if it will give enough time to send anything.

Anyway we are back in the Dusit Thani in Manila and this time I get to sample more than just the pool as we are all booked in overnight because there are about 19 hours between the flights. The hotel really is very good but that is to be expected from a modern 5 star hotel, that has won a number of Hospitality awards including hotel of the year. The service is exceptional as well which is a nice change and everywhere you go the staff greet you with a cheerful smile. A modern hotels become larger and quite impersonal this hotel is a welcome change.

For some reason the pick up for the next flights at 11:30 about 4 hours before its due to depart which seems a bit excessive as the airport is only about 20 minutes away, still time will tell if we are hanging around the airport for ages again as we did on the way out.

Yep we are stuck in the airport for ages so here are a few more photos of the Manila traffic to help pass the time

Flights home the first legs

Well the last day started of raining and grey, trying to make us feel better about going home :). After a morning of finishing the last minute and hanging around the hotel it was off to the Chuuk International Airport. At 5 flights a week it's not exactly the busiest in the world. Check is a little odd as they do a bag search before you check in then your bags are taken from you then hang around in the check in area till just before flight and then the usual hand bag & body search takes place.

The flight to Guam was again a United 737 and rather full and loading seemed to take an age, but the same United cabin staff who flew us in did well to settle every one down even those that seemed to be unable to work out which seats they had been allocated. The good news in Guam was my ESTA US visa seems have sorted it self out and I sailed through immigration this time with out any issues. Passing back in to departures Guam is not the most exciting airport in the world but there is a good noodle bar and the usual connection of duty free shops.

The stop over in Guam was quite painless as was the next short ish flight to Manila where we have just arrived and with a beer in hand I bid you good night for the evening

Last morning

And it's raining.
Off to the airport in a couple of hours

Truk the last day :(

Why are the last days of any holiday always the same. You arrive thinking you have loads of time, halfway through it seems like paradise then all of a sudden it's all over:( Bills to be paid, dive kit to wash and bags to be packed.

Our last day pretty much like that but we did get he chance to go off on as small tour of some of the islands old Japanese relics. The first stop was Ettan where we had been having our stops between dives most days. During the war the Japanese turned Ettan into an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" blasting away most of the mountain and building a huge air strip control centre and bomb storage. Today it is all overgrown and home to a few local family's. After leaving the boat we had a sticky 15 minute walk through the jungle to the old command centre this two story building of heavy ft think concrete was destroyed during the war and only the bomb scared bottom story remains.

After Ettan the took the sort boat ride to Dublon that had been the main Japanese base during the war and after an even longer walk, and it was really hot there too!!! past the local church and small village the came to the derelict old japanese hospital, for a short stop for photos. Then on to the Japanese school a building that is still in use as local government offices. This ended the short tour and I for one was glad to see the boat with the prospect of a nice cool breeze on the run back to the resort.

Sunday update

Well no diving today, there was the chance to get one last dive in on the Fujikawa but my dive buddy got a bit worse for wear at the BBQ last night and was not really up to it, still it give me a chance to so some catching up on the blog, pay my gas bill at the dive shop and take a look round the resort.

So the last dive was the shark dive yesterday afternoon the dive was on a small Tila, a small reef that doesn't quite break the surface and lasted about 40 minute. The guide took down a bag of fish an placed it under a rock for the sharks to find. In all we had about 8 small black tip reef sharks feeding and swimming in and out of the divers so there were lots of good photo opportunities. The only down side is I managed to set my Hero cam to still so I did not get any video of the action.

In the evening the dive guide organised a BBQ for the group which was a lot of fun and ending up adding another wreck to the lagoons list namely my dive buddy Rob.

The plan for today now is to sort the last things out over the dive shop and then Jonkey the dive guide is going to take us on an island tour of Dublon which was the main base for the Japanese in WW2 so there are lots of relics and sites of interest, it should've a good tour so I'll keep you posted.