Archives: holiday

Remember that notebook I talked about you getting? Now is the fun part, from here on in it’s all research and narrowing down the perfect location and itinerary for you! Get your multi-coloured pens, magazine cut-outs and graphs ready NOW!

The Weather – The tropics are divided into the wet and dry season, La Nina and El Nino. And no, they aren’t some Spanish travel duo you think you’ve heard of…

Essentially when diving, rain isn’t a problem, though it can dampen (oh snap) your spirits if you were planning on laying in the sun between dives and instead are trapped in a humid cabin while mosquito larvae thrives and prepares to – well you get the idea. Similarly, cyclones are going to make things potentially problematic. Finding out ‘the best time to travel in (insert country here)’ is one of the first entries on your graph. Global warming has made this a little more difficult to determine, and tropical rain is just a thing that happens. Sometimes there is no avoiding it. So embrace it!

 

The Water – While low water temperatures may not be a deal-breaker, poor visability is. If you have established a diveshop/divesites you are interested in, their website should have a chart listing the monthly temps and viz. From there you can judge the months that will be most suitable to travel in and dive in. Alternatively, divers will review if they have had a great experience somewhere, so take note.

 

The Tourist Season – School holidays or the best time of year will amp up the prices in some more touristy locations. Avoiding these peak periods will not only enhance your experience with less crowds, but also keep money in your pocket for dives and other adventures! This will be less of a problem off the tourist trail.

 

The Price – Snoop around before you purchase air tickets. Some sites are guaranteed to find you the best deal, while other flight centres often post great deals that you may blink and are gone. With all these so-called deals though, remember to read the fineprint, as a great ticket price is useless if it doesn’t include baggage.

 

The Events – If you are planning on things to do other than diving, checking the events schedule for your holiday destination is a must. It will be worth your while if you can correspond with local markets, festivals, shows or events like whale migration, within your timeframe.

 

Final Thought – It can be so exciting planning a trip, it is one of the lovely things to look forward to when your current holiday is sadly drawing to an end. Keep your little notebook handy, it can be useful to have a wishlist, or travel locations on hold for a later time. For instance if one has worked out to be too expensive yet, wait a while, choose something small and achievable for this trip. Weekenders or even making the effort to drive an extra couple of hours North for a new divesite close to home is still listed as travel in my world! As I said before, take what you can get and make the most of your time and money.

And all that research and information on another place can wait until next time. Then it’s just a matter of getting to tick it off.

 

Missed the first bit? Click here to read ‘How To Plan A Dive Trip Part I – What Do You Want?’

 

Don’t be fooled by the low rating of ocean and diving content in this novel, I mean, just look at the cover! And she’s in a cocktail for goodness sake. I’m sold.

 

 

Helen Fielding’s quick-witted yet over excitable protagonist is reminiscent of perhaps the author’s most famous character, Bridget Jones. But I personally like Olivia Joules better. Coz she dives. But also, she just has more…. attitude? 

First of all, she does things like this, ‘Sixty feet below the surface, it was like being in a dream or on another planet. Olivia, dressed in a red swimsuit and diving gear, was on the edge of a precipice, a sheer cliff falling away a thousand feet into the abyss.’ And then describes backpackers like this, ‘The standard dress was faded, threadbare clothes which might have fitted when they left Stockholm or Helsinki but which, after six months of diving, rice and peas and dysentry, were now two sizes too big.’

Oh, and then there’s this -

Yes! There are a few well placed illustrations throughout the book, that bring frivolity to her seemingly ridiculous situations. Not since childhood have I been this excited about book illustrations.

So the plot is pretty much her racing around the world following a journalistic lead but thinking she is caught up in a terrorist conspiracy… Good Summer holiday read including ‘The white heat of Miami, the implants of LA, the glittering waters of the Caribbean’ and ‘the deserts of Arabia.’ (taken from the blurb). Definite chick lit, meaning guys may not relate to her as much, although she does talk about shagging a lot. 

Click here to buy!