As we’re just back from our beautiful holiday in Bayahibe, Dominican Republic. I’m glad to write that everything has been great during our stay in the Caribbean. First few days we tried to plan a few nice excursions including freediving and scuba-diving. After that it was just sitting back and enjoy the underwater life to the maximum.

Fortunately the surroundings of the hotel had quite a few reef-balls lying right in front of the coast line, so the first encounters with the fish had been made the first day. After that we’ve been scuba-diving a place near Catalinita, which was in the Atlantic Ocean. Fortunately we were able to meet 2 sharks whilst we were scuba-diving and unfortunately for me there were 2 plants blocking my picture of a black-tip-reef shark. Never the less I had been fortunate enough to even meet them, even if it was to see them in a glimpse.

Furthermore we have been snorkeling near the Chavon river, which was a shallow place featuring a lot of fish. Only down-side to the whole thing was that we had to wear an inflatable life vest whilst snorkeling. But we managed to enjoy the underwater life very much.

After that we decided to go and visit the Catalina Island which we heard had a few deeper coral walls to snorkel / freedive at. We had to convince the guides that we did not need the life vests and after that it was quite the place to be… After a few shallow encounters with a lot of fish, we decided to go to the coral walls. There I did a few deeper dives to -15m, -18m and -24m which was basically the bottom of the sea at that spot. My girlfriend did a nice easy freedive to -15m which I’m very proud of she enjoys the underwater life just as much as I do.

Later in the holiday we also made a nice night scuba-dive which was a first for us, but we both enjoyed it, although we didn’t get to shoot many pictures underwater that night. We spotted a few larger balloon fish and seen a big ray passing by.

 

The rest of the days had been filled with exploring the coast-line in front of the hotel which was a bit deeper further out the coast-line, about -8m deep. Featuring some nice coral towers, with a lot of fish… some of them protecting it to their maximum

All in all we had a good time in Bayahibe and with lots of video- and photo-material we can re-live the moment quite a few times more at home.

Here’s a clip of the Bayahibe trip: Freediving Bayahibe Movie

Today I’m packing my gear to get ready for a nice trip to the Caribbean. Me and my girlfriend planned this trip a while ago and now we’re getting ready to travel to the Caribbean Seas. Our stay will be at a resort in Bayahibe in the Dominican Republic, the resort has some nice reefs right in front of the door.

So we’ll be checking out the nice waters in front of the Bayahibe resort and we’ll be planning some excursions to do some scuba-diving and of course lots of freediving. Hopefully we’ll be meeting up with some sharks at Shark-point which is near the Saona Island. Saona Island is a so called Bounty-Island in the Caribbean, featuring white beaches, blue water and palm trees, so hopefully we’ll be able to put up a few nice pictures !

Furthermore the whole trip is about relaxing and having a good time, but that can’t be hard given the location

See you all later !

When visiting Indonesia to meet up with my girlfriend, who’s there for school purposes, I got the chance to dive in Lake Toba. The lake is situated on Sumatra and is one of the biggest lakes in the world. When looking for information at certain sites, they mention that the lake should be around 500m deep, making that a very deep lake.

During my visit to Lake Toba I visited the Samosir Cottages, which are located on the island Samosir. Our room had a lake view and we could almost jump in from our doorstep. I had to improvise a little to make a freediving-buoy, as there were no buoys of any kind. Only a few local fishermen setting out nets and marking them with a floating bottle. So based on that idea I managed to gather all the equipment to make my own buoy, from a rope (15m), an empty bottle and rock from the lake.

As I still needed to explore the lake, I had to be very cautious in my descent. There could be all kinds of nets and poles underneath the surface. My suspicions were some kind of right, as I was dragging out the buoy I almost got my rock stuck in a fishing net. As I was not trying to upset the local fishermen, I relocated my buoy and found a comfortable 15m deep spot.

The water being 23 degrees celcius, without an elios suit to protect me, made me shiver within the hour making my equalization not optimal. I’ve had this problem with equalization in lake Panheel as well, when Jorg and I made some CWNF dives in swim shorts only. So that be one of the things I want to get sorted in the coming time.

My girlfriend didn’t seem to have any difficulties with equalization and did her first dives in freediving very respectfully, making her dives controlled and without any problems. Her deepest dive in this 1st ever freediving session was 11m and when resurfacing I recall her saying: “I think I’m starting to like this very much!”. At the end of my holiday, I left her my copy of Umberto Pelizzari’s “Manual of freediving“.

We managed to take a few pictures with a underwater-camera I won at the Heemstede dynamic competitions. But the quality can’t be compared to the pictures we usually take with our Canon IXUS & underwater house.

Although the lake didn’t feature any colored fish or nice corals, we managed to enjoy freediving once again. Which states my pleasure in freediving, no matter where I am.