We left Luxembourg this afternoon and are heading to Frankfurt where we will take the GulfAir flight to Manama (Bahrain) tomorrow at 11:30 am. The weather is hot ad sunny. Rachel is travelling with 3 kg of medication in order to get rid of her angina. Keeping fingers crossed! All a very excited to get to Cocotinos:)

Today is a typical grey and rainy October day. But we had some nice sunny days last week which revealed the first warm autumn colours.

Early mornings were a playful game between the sun and the mist.
But the sun eventually came out and left some heat on our skins.

Water temperature is still high which resulted in an high amount of algae in the Upper Sure Lake.

“A few days ago I walked along the edge of the lake and was treated to the crunch and rustle of leaves with each step I made. The acoustics of this season are different and all sounds, no matter how hushed, are as crisp as autumn air.”

- Eric Sloane

As many of my friends told me to go on with doing wallpapers I decided to do one for this month of October

I took the picture of this little anemone fish in Bunaken, Manado end of August.  I discovered the joy to play with a wide angle lens after the macro trip to the Philippines earlier this year.

I hope you enjoy!

as usual here are different sizes available :

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1440 x 900

iPhone

For the month of June I chose a cute little frogfish from Anilao.

I hope you like this little fellow

Choose your favourite size here :

iPhone

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well I thought i had posted this one but as it seems so i didn’t.

well here it is. Enjoy this little hawkfish from Anilao for the rest of May

click here to download : 1280 x 800

Bags are packed and I’m ready to board the plane. Right now I’m sitting in a hotel room in Frankfurt and I’m using my last 5 minutes of internet connectivity to write this update. Tomorrow at 12:35 the Singapore airlines flight will head to Manila via Singapore. I’m keen on using my new Fuji S5 Pro and meet with lots of new people as well as some friends. I’ll try to update as often as possible, posting some new pics as well.
Hasta la curva!

For this month’s wallpaper I chose one of my favourite sunsets. This one was taken on Pandan Island, close to Mindoro island in the Philippines. Diving is great there as you can organise trips to Apo reef.

Golden colours

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Busy times! More on that later. Here is the overdue March wallpaper!

A colourful hiding place of a lionfish

Enjoy!

My colourful home

Here 2 different sizes :

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1280 x 1024

Hi everybody!
Here’s my wallpaper for the short month of February. It shows the famous waterfall “Schiessentumpel” in the Little Switzerland here in Luxembourg. It’s one of the highlights of a visit in the country. It has many colour faces, I prefer by far its winter cloths

Schiessentumpel

Here different sizes :
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1024 x 768

Diving is for most people synonymous to sand, sun, sea and summer. Well that’s why I decided to take you to the dark side of the moon. It can be all different and still be fun!!!

January, Saturday 3

Our local lake, which actually is a drinking water reservoir starts to freeze. Ice develops in the western parts. These are the parts where the river changes into a lake. The parts closer to the dam rarely freeze. The changing of the water level and the constant running of water prevents it most of the time.
But the constant negative temperatures over the last days, even weeks brought ice up to a spot called “Fuussefeld”. It’s a lovely place in the summer time with large green areas. The area around Lultzhausen and the Youthhostel is still free of ice,  but the weather forecast makes me being optimistic. Maybe next week-end…

January, Thursday 8

I decide to take a walk around Lultzhausen to check the ice. In the dam area I can only see water. I continue my way up to Lultzhausen 5 km west, and there some turns away from the tiny village I can see it. Yes the ice is there! The sun shines over the icy surface which is  covered with snowflakes. Chris tries to break the ice and we discover a thin ice cap of about 2 cm.

Lultzhausen beach

Ice diving was possible! Back home I phoned some friends to make them join the fun! Not an easy thing : I kept strictly to DM’s and above. Some of my students were keen on trying, but no way. It was the very first time I would enter the lake in these conditions and I needed reliable and experienced people for that.
Well the list wasn’t long.
Rocky didn’t have the choice, I put him on the list without asking him. He’s a Divemaster since this summer and logged almost 200 dives over the last 2 years. Most of them in this specific lake.
Chris is instructor and my buddy under water (and above).

The surface team was set up by Vicky, Claudine (Rocky’s better half) and Dan (Rocky’s son). Dan was VERY keen on getting in the water but at only 14 he has no choice but being patient

January, Saturday 10

-12°C at 11 AM
Bright blue sky and sunshine

Dr Bob suggested a chain saw which is quite logic given the circumstances. There is only one thing : Walking on the ice is strictly forbidden at any times! The police helicopter regularly covers the area and none of us wanted a discussion with them. Therefore Chris had planned to cut a channel from the beach,…with a hammer. We had tried it out on Thursday and it didn’t seem that difficult with 2 cm of thickness.
Well, the negative temperatures of the last 2 days increased the ice cap thickness to…12-15 cm!!!
I think these photos show how ridiculous our hammer was …

Rocky and the hammer

the first attempt

We had to change something if we wanted to get under the ice. Luckily we found another hammer at the youth hostel which, in combination with a strong male gave us a decent result

2nd attempt

In the mean time an audience of a dozen people watched our steps carefully. I don’t know if they were making bets. A 5 year old boy stood next to me before I entered the icy water. He looked at me and only said : Good luck!

Finally at 3:20 pm the three of us glided below the ice. here some impressions

Chris under the ice

The audience through the air bubbles

The audience is watching

Impressions

Below the surface

Icebergs

The Water temperature hovered at around 0°C. We didn’t explore the deep, only at around 3,4 m at the deepest. But there was no interest in going deep anyway. It’s just an amazing experience to follow your bubbles under the surface, see the sun rays and watch the ice formations. All of us were equipped with drysuits and two regulators fixed to a double valved tank. A rope was used and the “dry”team watched it constantly.
This kind of diving needs a lot of careful preparations and serious people you can blindly rely on, but if you can put up all these factors, you will be off for an extraordinary experience.