Tag Archives: snorkeling

Back From Holidays

Back from holidays after a couple of weeks in Ibiza. Was going to go a few days to Marrakesh before but ending up just doing two whole weeks in Ibiza. The holidays were excellent and managed to completely disconnect from the “city-life”. Basically went to the beach almost everyday, did some snorkeling in some amazing coves and ate well, really well. Definitely some excellent holidays and for anyone who’s up to date with Ibiza news, the oil spill reports were greatly exaggerated : it was almost all cleaned up in less than a week. As always, there are some funny sites and contrasts in Ibiza as the summer months attract all kinds of non-indigenous human fauna and over sized nautical vehicles but, also as usual, we mostly managed to steer clear of all this. Also went to Formentera for a couple of days which is really amazing and still relatively unspoilt. Hung out with Cris’ friends loads and managed to see a lot more of the island than on previous visits which was great : there are some really good trekking and biking routes out there. I didn’t take too many photos (as is becoming usual lately) but I did get some which are up in this set. What I do have is an ever growing collection of photos of Eivissa and Formentera.

Back in Barcelona, August is a great time to be in the city as it seems to literally empty itself of people and cars. Work is very quiet at the moment and I’m taking advantage to look into some music courses : I’m between MicroFusa and SAE Institute at the moment but really want to do some sort of audio course.

This week is crazy for a calm August with plans all the way up to Sunday! Hoping to go up to Illes Medes soon for a dive which should be amazing : its a protected area where you pay a supplement which goes towards the maintenance of the area and has all kinds of restrictions (which should mean its not annihilated by building and development). Also ended up not doing any dive in Ibiza due to extreme holiday relaxation (although did get some snorkeling done which is pretty amazing round there anyways)!

Anyways, enjoy the August calm if you’re stuck in a city!

SCUBA Diving, biking, possible car putting-to-sleep and music

This weekend Cris and I almost made it to the end of our Padi Open Water Scuba Certificaiton, which we’re now finishing off with the Alpha diving school in Barcelona, but didn’t manage to finish it off due to a minor technicality : my trusty steed (a.k.a. Opel Corsa) looks like its finally given up on me. There was a general engine warning light followed by the engine stopping and refusing to start again. We were on our way back from Tossa, were we’d been doing the first two of four dives we had to do to finish it all off. Anyways, its not the end of the world as this way we get a rest before doing the last two, which we’ll be doing this Sunday, which might not be such a bad thing seeing as the week’s runup to the dives had been mental with long classes, an exam and several pool dives that left us, by the end of the day on Friday after the sea dives, completely exhausted and generally aching. Its quite a lot of fun but the amount of equipment and the weight of it all is pretty mental.

As far as the car is concerned, I’m still talking to the insurance to try and see what to do about the car. Its kind of at the point were if the repair is too expensive, it might be time to send the old Corsa up to the place were my turtles and budgies went, so now I need to find a massive toilet and… :P

The long easter weekend ended up being quite chilled in the end as lots of resting was done. Still been out on my new bike and getting more and more into it. Been getting a bit more fluid on the downhill tracks I’ve been doing and started getting into dirt jumps a bit, albeit small ones at the moment, and still trying to get my landings dialed proper. Its good fun though and the fact that catching the train and funicular gets you pretty much to the top of the hill makes it all that much easier to evolve as you can keep going back even with just a couple of hours to spare.

Been getting more and more into the home music making and hope to have some more tracks done soon. Still have my tracks pretty much split down what I consider electronic and analogue/acoustic which looks like the way I’ll be going for the time being.

Hope everyone had a good long weekend…