Word Of Mouse

We are currently holed up in Albufeira, on the south coast of Portugal, having a little break from cycling. We have rented a small apartment: small is definitely the operative word here, but the compact size is more than made up for by a spectacular view from the balcony.

The main purpose of this couple of weeks (at least one of them anyway) was for Ali to do her PADI open water diving qualification. She is currently doing the third of her lecture and pool training days, so meanwhile I am on shopping and food duty, and writing this in a small cafe on the way back to the apartment. She had the first two sea dives on Friday- a mixed experience for her: she more or less enjoyed the dives, I think, despite some nervousness about some of the exercises, but the day was rather marred for her by seasickness. We are hoping that with a little chemical help she can overcome the seasickness for the next couple of dives on Monday, but as we will be in a much smaller boat, we are also hoping that the sea will be calmer and flatter than it was on Friday. She feels nevertheless quite pleased to have made her first dives: to 18 metres, no less. (I remember when I was learning to dive with BSAC, a different organization and one which requires a far longer training period, and can imagine how horrified my friends there would have been at the idea of someone with only a few hours experience in the water being taken down to 18 metres in the sea. This is and has been for a long time an ongoing cause of contention between the two organizations. Still, that is the way PADI train people, and as the world's largest diver training organization they must be accorded some respect).

Albufeira has been for us something of an eye opener. Very much a beach resort dominated by Brits, with a smattering of Dutch and Germans here and there, there was once an old town here and no doubt a pretty one too. That is now well and truly buried beneath endless lines of shops selling inflatable crocodiles, cheap restaurants, pubs with wide screen all-day football, and bars offering such delights as a "screaming orgasm", "urine sample" and "kiss the barman". Apparently there are still some fishermen who run their boats out of the harbour here, and no doubt they make a very attractively quaint photo opportunity for the sunburned hoardes. I cannot help thinking that if I were a Portuguese fisherman who had grown up here I might well feel some degree of resentment against the annual invasion of foreigners, many unfortunately seeming to lack any basic modicum of respect for the local culture. The worst thing is that here we are, part of the huge tourist money machine along with everyone else. (So far neither of us has got drunk enough to throw up in the flowerbeds, though). The place is still expanding, too: everywhere you look new hotels are going up. The thought of the number of people that must fly in and out of Faro airport weekly in order to populate the beds and bars of Albufeira (and all the other resorts of its ilk) is truly mindblowing. What will happen when the oil runs out? Has anyone thought of that?

In any case, we find that by far the nicest place to be in Albufeira is sitting reading on our little balcony, watching the evening sky over the sea slowly darkening to night: high enough in the air to baffle the mosquitoes, not a single ant to be found, and tea and water on tap. Having saucepans and a two-hob cooker has greatly expanded the range of our cooking, too.

Tuesday 19 September

Ali is writing up her dive experiences beside me as we speak. We had a curry in town last night to celebrate the end of the course with the other divers from Monday's boat, and as we discussed the day, it became clear that there were many aspects of the way the course had been run which were either not as good as they should have been or were indeed downright alarming: the worst of these maybe the fact that dives one and two were falsely entered by the trainer (a qualified PADI Dive Master Trainer) in the student's logbooks as having been to a maximum depth of 12 metres (the PADI maximum for an unqualified diver) despite the fact that they were in fact down to 18 metres at least. (BSAC trainers will not take a diver below 6m on their first sea dive). The small and newly opened dive centre is obviously struggling to accommodate the needs of trainees and experienced divers on a single boat and this compromise must be the result.

Still, we had at least one dive that was worth it: I saw pipefish, damsel fish, a triggerfish, a small orange fish that watched me from its hole with a comic expression of anxiety, and something that might or might not have been an octopus tentacle. And, best of all, a red-haired strakerfish that emerged from the water with a big smile. That made my day.