Portugal 2023

Today began the same as the day before, up early to the dive shop! Excited to see what this day would bring. Steve was our dive master today. Quick to get out to miss the bad weather, we were in the water by 9:30 at a site called Santa, the water was still nice and warm with awesome visibility! We stayed shallow at 12M.

As we descended down the anchor line, many small sunfish appeared out of the blue depths to come investigate us. Their funny way to swim with only their dorsal and ventral fin, no tail, makes them non-mistakable. Exploring around the reef turned very rewarding as we came upon more octopi, and squid. We all settled down to the white sand bottom out in front of the octopus’ garden and Steve gentle tapped his fingers on the roof of the cave. The octopus reached out with one of its 8 suctioned cupped arms to grasp him by the wrist and tried, luckily unsuccessfully, to pull him into the cave. Octopi are incredibly intelligent, curious animals. Both Steve and Jo remarked that octopi would take over the world if their lifespan was any longer. Octopi live an average of 3 years and female octopi are some of the most devoted mothers. When she has her eggs, she stops hunting and starves herself to ensure they are constantly being guarded. When the eggs finally hatch, her emaciated body is their first meal. Not something I would ever be willing to do for my potential future offspring to say the least!

This dive, I finally figured out my buoyancy and my oxygen lasted over 1 hour underwater, extending my underwater exploration to the longest of the group. Perfected weightlessness transforms you into an aquatic animal, who’s natural habitat is 20m underwater. This serenity with the environment around you entices animals to interact with you. One of the more elusive creatures of the Portugal reefs is the ** cuttlefish.

Masters of camouflage, these short skirted, long tentacled creatures were something I desperately hoped to see on this trip. Luckily, I was rewarded and between the two dives today, we saw at least 4 different cuttlefish. The first appeared in front of us as though he was one of the divers in our group. He emerged from his hiding spot and began to follow Vanessa before stopping and coming to eye level with me. I was able to be within inches of his tiger striped, ever colour changing body. His tentacles reached towards me and when I reached back, he suddenly released a jet of ink and water and zipped across the reef. He stayed across a small opening of white sand from us and hovered like a futuristic car as we floated on with the current away from him. The next were much less curious about us, but equally as colourful, perfectly blending in with the sand or reef, depending what was adjacent to them.

When we came up from our second dive, the wind had really picked up. We had to battle 1.6M swells to get back in the boat. I was so giddy at seeing the cuttlefish that I rode the waves as if some fun ride at the fair, and not powerful crushing strength of Mother Nature. Back in the safety of the boat, I was able to see the waves for their true dangerous force, and held on tight as we sped back to the marina. Many tickle bellies along the way as we launched off the waves.

Back to the AirBnB for lunch, a shower and then to the beach. The crashing waves lulled us to sleep until the sand fleas came out and chased us away from the water.

We grabbed dinner at an amazing restaurant called **** and had a bowl of delicious octopus ****. After splitting a bottle of wine, we were ready to get back on the “horse” and explore the Albuferia nightlife. Located near to where we were staying was “the strip”. A stretch of road 4-5 blocks in length with over 40 bars. We started out with karaoke, where Mr Brightside got us up dancing and singing along with a group of 17 year olds from Amsterdam. We chatted further with them, turns out, European high school exams just let out, so the vast majority of the bar goers were almost 10 years our junior. For the first time in my life, I felt too old for the party. That didn’t prevent us from making a few more stops along the way back to our place, pulled into one bar or another by the music that was playing. These clubs did not hold the same addicting electricity of the Porto nightlife so we retired to bed much earlier than expected, in bed by 1AM!Read more