I was on a palm-fringed island in the Maldives when I saw two girls, both instructors with the dive centre at Vilamendhoo, coming in from the beach and looking happy in their bikinis. One, Leila, was Swiss married to a Maldivian while the other, Sylvita, was Spanish and partnered an Austrian. I asked them to … Read more
If you’ve ever dived off a liveaboard in Papua New Guinea, chances are Dickie Doyle came aboard to greet you and your fellow passengers, and invited you ashore to visit his plantation. I met Dickie that way, had a couple of beers with him, laughed at his pet pig, which slept under his bed, and … Read more
My dear mother will be 91 years old this year, the same age as my father when he died two years ago. She lives alone in the family home in England and still looks after herself, and complains that she cannot remember things quite as well as she used to. But she does remember the … Read more
April May Precious and her Turks and Caicos Dive Resort is clearly a diving icon. We first reviewed her magnificent resort with untouched reefs and fishes in 1992 when it was in the Caymans and provided a phone number to call for information. We received 600 phone calls. We reviewed her T&C operation online in … Read more
I get all sorts of input from readers and I welcome it. Sometimes it’s to tell me about some great new dive site, to tout a particular dive operator, or simply to grind an ax or two after some youthful divemaster tried to perform an unappreciated rescue on them because they dared to place their … Read more
