My Scandinavian adventure started on the 4th April when I arrived in Copenhagen at 6.30am. I had just travelled overnight from Bali via Bangkok and on arrival in at the airport I was met by Jamie and Eline, the other two scholars. We had not seen each other since New York, so was great to catch up again. They had already been in Denmark where they attended the International Association for Handicapped Divers course for three days.
We jumped a couple of trains with all our luggage and arrived at our backpackers accommodation at Helsigor, it was a nice place with views looking over the channel to Sweden. Once we unpacked our gear we were picked up by Christian Rasmussen from Fotodyk (www.fotodyk.dk), he escorted us to his photography shop and showed us around then took us for la great unch. We were here to do the PADI underwater photography course, PADI Nordic had generously supplied us with free course materials and certification costs and Christian spent a couple days off work to teach us some underwater photography.
The plan was to dive with Kjell Evensen from Master Dive (www.masterdive.dk), however the weather was terrible and visibility would have been next to nothing. We did manage to get one dive in the local pool which was good fun plus I also was able to test out my new TUSA drysuit and Fourth Element undergarments.
The next day after a scrumptious dinner at a local restaurant, regards from Kjell, we packed our bags and travelled by ferry, bus and train to get to Kristiansand in Norway. We left Denmark at 10am and arrived in Kristiansand at 4am the next morning. Carlo Golfetti was our host here and picked us up from the station, he is a classic guy, so friendly, excitable and full of jokes. Originally from Italy, he has run many successful diving operations all around the world. He provided the use of his apartment for the duration of our stay and it was great to have somewhere to call home and relax from the all the travelling. But no time to relax when there is diving to be done, and that morning after a few hours sleep we were taken to One Ocean Dive Centre (www.oneocean.no) and straight on a boat to dive the M/S Seattle. This was a German cargo ship that sunk in the 1940s and now rests with her stern in 22m and bow in 72m. It was a great dive and a good introduction to green water drysuit diving.
The water actually wasn’t cold, at 20 degrees on the surface we go through a few thermoclines and gets down to 15 degrees, but that’s warmer than Sydney at this time of the year! We spent the next five days diving with Carlo, with one wreck dive in the morning and after an awesome lunch that Carlo cooks up while moored up at one of many islands, we were straight back in the water for a nice deep water wall dive. There is some cool wildlife here with lots of starfish, crabs, lobsters and some nice fish life.
It was great to spend time with Jamie and Eline again and share some of our scholarship experiences; we get along really well and are super excited about our next destination, Iceland! If you want any more reading, Jamie also has a blog website that he does himself (http://jamiebrisbin.blogspot.com/)
