Going Diving
As part of my week of rest and relaxation in Greece, I booked an excursion through Thompson to go scuba diving. For €61 that got me a single dive including all gear rental and boat fees with Waterhoppers dive team.
I was collected from my hotel and taken to the dive boat based in Rhodestown. The boat is practically a small cruise ship! It is fully self contained with everything you need onboard. We set sail from the harbour and we would be diving just outside of Kalithea Springs.
The journey from Rhodes Town to Kalithea Springs is about 45 minutes.
The dive centre has a floating platform installed which they moor up to. We did both dives at this site, but did we went in different directions for each dive.
We were to be using 12 litre steel tanks which surprised me, in such a warm country I would have expected aluminium. I personally wore a 2mm shorty wetsuit. Now normally my core temperature is never an issue when I dive, if my extremities get cold to make me uncomfortable then I might call the dive, but I've never called the dive due to getting cold before someone else already has long ago. As a result when I said that I was starting to get a slight chill by the end of the 60 minute dives, if you are a person that DOES feel the cold easily, then I'd recommend using a full wetsuit, and probably 3mm at a minimum.
Out of the entire boat, only 5 of us were qualified divers so we were split between two instructor / guides. I was with Marie and the others were with David. Both are a good pair.
The dives were fantastic, average depth would have been about 6m. Both dives were nearly an hour but they felt like less than half that. At Kalithea Springs there are several swim-throughs and short caves which make for interesting sights. My favourites would be mushroom rock, which is a giant rock that is mounted on several other rocks to give you room to swim underneath.
Also the other is called the blow hole, it is a tunnel that runs up at about a 25° angle to eventually surface in a cavern from a depth of about 12m.
Dive Video
I made a video of the two dives, hope you enjoy!
