Diving Holidays
A diving holiday for an experienced or a beginner diver is a great way to explore the world that exists under the water in the seas and oceans around the world. Diving will open your eyes to a whole world that exists beneath our seas where you will discover many new sites of fish and sea life combined with the excitement of seeing ancient ship wrecks. Diving is a fantastic way to spend some of the time on your holiday. It is not possible to dive for more than a couple of hours each day, therefore it still leaves you plenty of time to look around and explore the country you are visiting. If you are looking for an adventure holiday with a difference, then a diving holiday might be just what you are looking for.
Where To Go Diving
It is possible to go diving in many places around the world. At Packyourbags, we concentrate on the main world dive sites. Some of these are situated in Europe or the broader reaches of Europe and others further afield. In Europe, there are many diving opportunities on holidays in Malta, Cyprus, Canary Islands, Red Sea diving holidays, Egypt and Turkey. Malta has some of the best diving in Europe and is famous for its caves and grottos that make diving more interesting. The Red Sea and Egypt offer clear blue warm waters in a sunny climate all year round. The warm waters attract a wide variety of colourful fish and marine life. Turkey has a good mixture of ancient ruins buried under the sea and fish life, making the overall diving experience in Turkey a very interesting one. At Packyourbags, we offer many opportunities to get to these countries on cheap package holidays, for example a cheap holiday to Olu Deniz in Turkey or Hurghada on the Red Sea.
If you can travel further afield, then places like the Maldives, Caribbean and the Great Barrier Reef offer some of the best diving in the world. Again, at Packyourbags we have lots of special offers to the Islands of the Maldives, and those in the Caribbean like Antigua and St. Lucia where diving belongs to the main activities available on these Islands.
Diving Holidays Qualifications
If you wish, you can go to any of the resorts that offer a certification course in diving. The most common one and the one recommended by Packyourbags is the PADI course. This comes at different levels but a beginners course on open water diving will take about 5/6 days to complete. This involves around 4 hours of your time each day. This will include being in a classroom style set up where you will learn the theory and the practical side that will initially be based in a pool or shallow waters. As the week progresses, you will venture out into deeper waters. If successful at the end of the course, you will have gained your basic qualification meaning that provided you keep up your hours under the water, you will be able to go to a resort and dive without an instructor. (In the early stages most people still choose to dive with an instructor.)
Some places offer what is called a resort course - this means that you learn to dive but with less emphasis on the theory and more on the practical side of diving, although some theory will be included. If you complete the course, you will not end up with a qualification enabling you to dive anywhere you want.
Some places also offer a "try dive" which enables you to get a taster of diving. For those wanting to progress on from the first PADI certificate, there are several courses beyond this level that you can do and most places, particularly those in the Maldives, Egypt, Red Sea, Malta and the Caribbean are well set up to cater for this.
