The last few day of our leave for 2009 were spent with another summer holiday, this time in Gozo, Malta. Fortunately, the leave year starts again in October... so not long till we can start travelling again!
The view from our roomThe plan - go diving. Gozo is said to have some of the best diving in Europe and after 4 days of diving there we can't disagree. We had a great based in Xlendi Bay with a beautiful view out over the bay and the dive shop and dive boat literally on our doorstep.
Highlights for us were:
- Michelle finishing her Padi Advanced Diver qualification - now certified to 30m! Yee ha!
Blue Hole
- Bluehole, the Chimney and Coral Cave - a beautiful dive into a deep hole with underwater arch/window just off the coast, up a small tunnel from 24m to around 7m, then over a wall back down to 24m and into a large cave filled with beautiful coral. Stunning dive (I was lucky enough to do it twice).
- San Dimitri Point - a boat dive where we swum out off a reef which ran out from the Point midwater in 24m in search of Barracuda. We were lucky and came upon a huge school of them - long sleek silver fish cutting through the water. Once they dissappearred we swum in closer - through a horizontal tunnel before surfacing at the boat. As with all our dives - the visibility was incredible - 30m+.
- The P31 wreck - 52m Maltese Patrol ship sunk about 4 days before we dived on it in 18ms on a sandy bottom (pic above is obviously before it was sunk!). Quite a novel dive - both being on a wreck where you could do what you like without damaging the wreck or sealife on it and also because it is shallower than most wrecks so we had tonnes of time. There were a lot divers on it - all of us playing the fool a bit. Good fun!
The boy wonder - this kid could handle a boat while eating an ice cream like no other!
- Living in Xlendi Bay - they say the pace of life on Gozo is much slower than on Malta and everyone in Xlendi was very chilled out - 'Island time' prevailed. There were lots of waterfront restaurants lining the bay and food and local wines were pretty good. The highlight for us was the prawn and squid risotto at Ic-Cima restaurant - so good we had to go back to have it a second time!
- Exploring Malta - having spent all of our time sightseeing underwater in Gozo, we decided we had better see some of the sights above the water. We had day exploring the main island guided by Godwin. We visited the war museum in Valletta, had a seafood lunch in Marsaxlokk (a fishing village on the south of the island), explored the historic city of Mdina and Mosta church - one of Malta's many huge Catholic churches famous partly because its huge dome survived a bombing raid during the WWII when Malta was a target of bombing more intensive than the Blitz in London due to its strategic importance (for which the inhabitants of Malta were collectively awarded the George Cross - Britain's highest award for civilian bravery).
- The colours - boats and buses were all brightly painted up - very cool.
- The weather - sunny everyday, temperatures in the early 30s and very balmy in the evening - perfect for a relaxing summer break!
