Diving in Dubrovnik

Planning
Going to celebrate my mother-in-law's 60tieth birthday in Dubrovnik, Croatia, I saw an opportunity to do some nice diving at the same time. I contacted a GUE center elsewhere in Croatia and asked if they knew of a GUE friendly diving center in Dubrovnik. They said Dubrovnik-Diving was such a center. I contacted them, checked the prices, and confirmed that they had D12 for hire. Everything looked good.

All that remained was to pack the gear, and escape the family get-together long enough to blow some bubbles. At least that was the plan.

Saturday
Arrived in warm Dubrovnik and had a nice day at the beach. Took the opportunity to confirm that I had an arrangement with the diving center and that they would pick me up the next day. Didn't get a reply. Enjoyed a slow day on the beach, the water is about 22 degrees, visibility is pretty good. Really looking forward to the diving part.

Sunday
Still no reply by e-mail, when I finally reached them on the phone they have filled the boat up with snorkelers... so no diving on Sunday. That left me some time to be a tourist and see the old town of Dubrovnik and visit the beach again.

Monday
All diving is canceled because of problems with the steering wheel on the boat. Well it was back to the beach again. The closest I came to diving was some free-diving on the beach. But the beach is just a endless stretch of sand bottom, so not much to see while free-diving.

Tuesday
Still no diving, but they assured me that they will start up diving again on Wednesday. Another day on the beach. Did I mention that I'm not a huge fan of beaches?

Wednesday
The first day of diving. The dive center picked me up outside my hotel, with just some delay due to traffic. When I arrived at the dive center I was told that there would be a English couple and a bunch of cruise guests going on today's trip. Actually they told me about the cruise guest / snorkelers the day before. At that moment I didn't care, I just wanted to get in the water. It turned out that the English couple had been diving with the center all week. I'm still wondering why exactly they canceled my diving the previous days, but took the English couple out anyway.

The boat was spacious with a large area for divers to prepare. And a equally large dry area where people could sit and rest. In addition there was a large sundeck. Actually this is a boat where it is possible to bring your entire family. To my surprise they served lunch between dive one and two. It was a nice "homemade" lunch. Nothing fancy, but it was tasty. I had no idea what the lunch was going to cost me at that time, but when I picked up the bill later it was only 70 kuna (=70 NOK).

The dive sites were not awesome, but they were nice. The woman from the English couple was really good at spotting interesting thing in the sea. So she was able to find a lot of nice things to see.

When the day was over I had done 3 dives. Taken a bunch of images, none of which were very good. The dive center took me back to my hotel when we were done and it was time to enjoy some Croatian food.

Thursday
Again I was picked up by the dive center. This time it was only the English couple and me going diving. Which meant we had the entire boat to our selves. We had two nice dives. This time I had brought my macro lens, and some of the images turned out presentable. I got to see a couple of moray eels and two squids (or were they octopus, who knows?).

I got two nice dives this day. One of which was rewarding in a photographic sense.

I payed 70 kuna for the transport back and forth to the hotel. 218 for each of the dive, and 70 for each of the lunches. A very reasonable price, I think.

Summary
Dubrovnik is a nice place to dive, but I would not have traveled here again just for diving. It would have to be in combination with something else. The reason for this is that, based on what I saw, there was not much variation in the sea-scape. However, Dubrovnik has a nice old town, with a lot of museums. There are some nice beaches, the water is warm so there is plenty of other stuff for your family to do if you need to distract them while you go diving.