Fiesta in Ponta

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Written by Annelle Geldenhuys

Yes, we are back and we have recovered… finally! 

We had a phenomenal weekend, thanks to Bryan’s organizing well in advance.  The fishing, Dolphin watching and diving went without much incident… unlike the pub crawling!  A special thanks to Sharon who arranged, set up and oversaw the games which was a huge success.  Also thank you very much to Phil and Estelle on the effort they did to get the t-shirts, mugs and caps done on time.

Getting to Ponta proved to be challenging...

Some of us took a shortcut via Malongane while others had to specially drive for site seeing.  The South African roads conditions are a bit better, such that we are quite looking forward to future trips!  A few guys decided to go via Sodwana Bay, while others opted to stay over along the way.  All in all everyone eventually arrived safe, in time for our first 2 launches in overcast weather, with excellent ocean conditions.

We only had 16 launches in total from Thursday to Sunday, thus if anyone feels they didn’t dive enough, our next trip is in December to Sodwana :-)

On our dives, we were fortunate enough to see White Tip Reef Sharks, a Zambezi, some Hammerhead Sharks… some claim they saw a Tiger Shark but since I wasn’t on the dive, I believe it didn’t happen.  We also saw few Devil Rays, Spotted Eagle Rays, even an octopus, a large number of turtles, some dolphins, humpback whales, a few cheeky Remoras (I’m still wondering where their sharks are), HUGE Potato Bass, some devil fire-fish, a variety of eels, a sea snake, and my personal favourite, Parrotfish, to name but a few.  Some photographs have been posted to Facebook, most have still not yet found their way to the web.  Come on guys, diving is a buddy sport – share your photos with us!

Even though there were major power dips, lightning and storms at night, and a few issues with the compressors, our divers never once complained, and in return were rewarded with genuinely awesome dives.  Let’s go back!!!  But this time, let’s try not to mark the ghost crabs with cylume juice?  The locals thought they were genuine Ghost Crabs!

Looking back, I know we had fun and we learnt a lot.  We learnt about TT law – also known as R&R law.  The Tipo Tinto law states that the time needed to recover from intoxication is directly proportionate to the amount of Tipo Tinto consumed by the intoxicated individual, but progressively longer than the time needed to reach the intoxication saturation level.  In other words, it takes longer to ‘offgas’ than to ‘ingas’ Raspberry bubbles.  Some heard "Siesta" when we said "Fiesta" and took a longer afternoon nap.  No worries, we'll make up for it next year!

Finally, just a note to say thanks to Kelvin, Shaun and Mark for your assistance and leading dives.  Without your assistance this weekend wouldn’t have gone as smooth.  Thanks everyone.  See you all at nexts years Jamboree in Sodwana Bay...Book your spot NOW!