I remember being in Florence's
Uffizi Gallery and looking at Botticelli's masterpiece
The Birth of Venus. Her modesty was protected by her flowing hair. I never loved the picture, though to be honest I'm not a fan of Renaissance painting.
My final day of diving with
Dawn Dives brought back that memory. You see, we were diving in the North East of the island at a nudist colony - fortunately we still got to dive in wetsuits! One of my buddies for the day - a fellow Scot - reassured me that it was a great dive and one of the few in the world where you're almost guaranteed to see both tentacles and testicles on the same dive.
We kitted up and headed down the carved cliff staircase to the rocks below without seeing a single nudist. I assumed nudists, unlike divers, were late risers.
The site is actually pretty barren in terms of fish life, but the steeply tumbling white sands provide a home to a a number of rays. However, most divers come here for the topography and the opportunity to go deep quickly.
It was pretty spectacular on both dives, yielding torpedo rays and stingrays on both dives. Hervie's eyes were good at spotting them too.
However, the Venus memory was brought back to me at the end of the dive when I came up from three metres at the long swimming pool style stairs onto the rocks. As I looked up, at the top of the stairs stood a German Venus - proud and unabashed with no clam shells or long hair to cover her modesty. Yet it was me that was emerging from the sea.
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| Ski slopes |
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| Torpedo Ray |
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| Octopus |
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| Stingray |
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| Stingray |
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| Buddies |
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| Buddies |
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