Don't miss our Opening Special!

Our new scuba diving centre has just opened in Gordon’s Bay (Cape Town, South Africa).

Ok, so we haven’t had the “Grand Opening” yet, if you’re wondering why you haven’t received your invitation (check your mail box soon!).

To mark this momentous occasion, we are having an opening special… The first 20 customers to sign up and complete their Scuba Diver course with us before 30th November 2009 will pay a special price of R1 500 for the course (please note that an additional R200 will be charged for your NAUI registration fee).

Don’t miss this fantastic opportunity to learn to scuba dive in a relaxed, friendly and safe environment. If you’re already a qualified diver, encourage your partner, your family, your friends and colleagues to contact us and within two weeks they could be joining you on all your dives and sharing your excitement. Far better than having to listen jealously about the amazing dives you’ve just had...

Scuba diving is a way of life and there is nothing better than sharing it with those you love (just ask us – we know!).

If you hadn’t already noticed, we are passionate about scuba diving. At Indigo Scuba, we want you to enjoy the entire diving experience - from the moment you first put on your mask, to when you dive some (or all!) of the most beautiful and exciting dive sites around the world. At Indigo Scuba, we make sure that happens.

Give Deon a call today (phone 083 268 1851 or email info@indigoscuba.com) - we look forward to having you on board!

First of this season's summer dives - Coral Gardens at Rooi Els!

With the South Easter having blown strongly this past week, we decided to dive Rooi Els this morning. The South Easterly wind blows during summer in the Cape, bringing clear water and great dives to the Eastern side of False Bay.

One of our favourite shore entry dives here is Coral Gardens. The entry is in a narrow channel which can sometimes cause a bit of a swell, so getting in and out of the water needs to be timed quite well.

After a short climb over the rocks, made easier by a special clip (new to our dive shop!) that enables you to attach your fins, mask and gloves to a D-ring on your BC (freeing up your hands to steady yourself on the rocks), we kitted up and entered the water.

We had a fantastic dive, exploring gullies and cracks in the reef running close to shore. Visibility was about 8 metres and water temperature was 15˚C.

This is the first time we’ve dived Rooi Els this season and it was great to see new corals and sea fans taking root on the sides of the gullies and many varied eggs waiting to hatch. There was so much to see – forests of feather stars with their waving arms adorning entire walls, pale orange lacy false corals delicately covering huge boulders; overhanging walls covered in sinuous and flagellate sea fans and stubby pink and purple noble corals growing in sheltered parts of the reef.

We were followed on our dive by smaller hottentot and, for quite a while, we were accompanied by a small shoal of yellow strepies. We came across a “baby’s toes” snail which is rarely seen, and spotted numerous orange and blue gas flame nudibranchs. There were also many crabs and crayfish of different sizes hiding in holes amongst the rocks. The marine and plant life here is colourful, diverse and prolific with colours ranging from bright blue, bright pink, purple, orange and red.

Hopefully this is the start of summer diving and many more visits to this top dive site!

PS - Don’t forget to subscribe to our mailing list so that you can be kept up to date with our forthcoming dives!

Indigo Scuba does some hoovering!

This weekend was spent vacuuming a swimming pool.

We’d heard that a newly-built municipal swimming pool was unable to open to the public due to a large amount of sand and fine building rubble lying on the bottom that could not be picked up by the filtration system.

This was one of those typical situations where the local municipalities spend millions of Rand building facilities for the public, only to refuse additional funding for the cleaning and upkeep of these facilities once completed…

So, we pitched in, donned our diving gear and spent Saturday hoovering the bottom of the pool.

Hoovering was not an easy task as the make-shift “hoover” we’d been given to use comprised on big, heavy pipe with a life of its own…

Kate spent most of her time swimming on the bottom, picking up bits of gravel and stirring up the sediment in the hope that the lighter particles would be sucked up by the filters. The others "manned the pipe”.

This was slow and arduous work, but we were cheered on in the knowledge that soon, the locals would be able to use the 25m long pool for much-needed swimming lessons, swimming galas and family outings.

Who knows, perhaps one day the pool will be used for teaching confined water classes to scuba diving students!

Another great dive at Castle Rock!

Yesterday morning we met with some of our recently qualified Advanced Divers at Long Beach in Simon’s Town, and drove through to Castle Rock, where we had decided to dive.

As it was still early in the morning (8 a.m.), there were very few scuba divers out and about. After kitting up alongside the road, we took a gentle stroll down the cliff path to the beach. It was low tide and there was much hilarity in getting into the water, but eventually we were all ready for the short surface swim before descending.

Our divers had just returned from a diving holiday in Madagascar where Ella (real name withheld!) had gotten so used to diving without a hoodie, that she totally forgot to pull hers up until just before we descended, when we reminded her that the water temperature was 14 and not 26 ˚C!!

When we reached the bottom, there was a bit of surge, and we spent the dive being gently washed to and fro on our swim around the main rocks. Water temperature stayed at a warm 14˚C (yes, there is such a thing!) and visibility ranged between 5m and 8m.

We finned past Red Roman and were followed by a few of the more inquisitive ones; came across beautiful orange noble coral on the rock walls, huge orange wall sponges, brown and yellow elegant feather stars, beds of dark, banded brittle stars, purple, green and red Cape sea urchins, thousands of small red-chested sea cucumbers with their bright green feeding tentacles extended and beautiful salmon gas flame and chocolate-chip nudibranchs. We discovered a huge octopus hiding under one of the overhangs and found a very large evil eye blassop resting on a rock.

There was so much there, that it’s hard to remember everything that we saw!

After our dive, it was a short climb back up the cliff to our cars. The sun had come out and after we’d packed away our gear, we headed for a toasted sandwich and cuppacino at Dixies where we enjoyed the springtime sun and watched a huge flock of cormorants skimming over the surface of the water. Another great experience!