Luckily I had enough money from working to take off for a week of freediving in my Easter holiday. At a later point, I hope to make myself write about my trips more thoroughly, but there's no chance I will get to do that now. Even so, I will post a few lines and pictures from last year in near future.Back to Easter! I had got my (not so cheap) flight ticket in good time and for some reason I was lucky enough to have my holiday corresponding with a small competition held by Freedive Dahab. I had planned to dive with Lotta and Linda anyway (after all, I got to stay in Linda's guest room...), so this was just a great opportunity to get more competition experience.
Quite a lot of people happened to be in Dahab this period, both for training and for the competition. This included Thomas Grindevoll, my only fellow competing Norwegian freediver, Karen, his saving angel of a girlfriend who helped out together with Pia (another sweet girl), my not-that-sweet-although-dear friend Daan from the Netherlands and my new friends from Mad Cup, the swiss guys: Joakim and Cédric. There was also some Italian guys competing and Swedish Rolf presently living in Sharm which I was diving with last summer(!).
Oh and NOT to forget the sweet sweet monofin goddess Natalia Avseenko and friendly Patrick who was the our guides to an unforgettable dive-through of the Canyon (please check out Peter P's video on youtube to get an idea of what I'm talking about, you find it among the links).
Of course there were all of the Dahab natives present, Annelie, Sebastian (not really native, but close enough), Emil, Andy, Sara, Ali, Mahmood, Noseclip and Frenzel, all the camels and the goats...
Arriving on Sunday, I had my first training the next day. One day was not really enough to get used to depth again before the competition, which was Tuesday and Wednesday. My body and especially the ears were not really cooperating with my mind the two first days, but on the wednesday, I made a nice and easy dive to 45m and got a white card. Then on friday I finally did some more depth, hitting 51m twice. I was really happy about these dives as almost everything was working fine, counting the kick cycles, gliding, equalisation (even though my mouthfill is still running out at 50...) and I felt strong.
For the second session Friday, we dived the Canyon. I simply have no words for it other that it was the most amazing dive I've done so far and I will keep the memories in my heart.
