There is a plane wreck between Playa Kalki and Watamula. Althought the buoy can be seen from the beach at Playa Kalki it is in fact not advised to dive this wreck from shore. So normally a boat dive is needed to get there safely. Ocean Encounters West does regular trips to that site. Maybe you can do it from shore, but, if you reach the wreck, you will definitely have not much time to stay there. And, because you have the current working against you on the way back, you will also have a hard time to reach the shore before you are out of air.
Today we tried to do it in another way. Trunkdivers (trunkdivers.com) has rental underwater scooters, so we took three of these and went to Playa Kalki. After we got there I first spoke with Andreas to get the exact location of the wreck, the time it would take to get there and information about the current. He showed me the buoy and I told him about our plan.
Then we geared up and started the dive. The scooters worked flawlessly. It is a completely different experience to dive with a scooter. And Alice in Wonderland is just the right spot to do this. You can easily steer between the mountains of coral.
We saw a lot of big fish among which some very large groupers. I had never seen groupers of this size except in the Seaquarium.
After 19 minutes we reached the wreck. Or better, what is left of the wreck. The wreck is in bad shape given the fact that it is only a few years old. It is broken in several parts. The middle section lies upside down and almost the whole side is gone. I don't know if this is caused by the recent storm. This is my first visit to the wreck, so I cannot compare with the past. Maybe Andreas can shed more light on the storm damage.
We stayed about 20 minutes at the wreck site. After these 20 minutes we all were at half tank and we decided to head back to the beach. It took us about 25 minutes to reach the beach because of the current. Reaching there we had about 400 psi left. So definitely an indication that you better don't do this from shore without scooters or boat.
You can find pictures of this dive on my Dutch web site. The Dutch shouldn't be a problem because the pictures speak for themselves. There is also a video there.
Today we tried to do it in another way. Trunkdivers (trunkdivers.com) has rental underwater scooters, so we took three of these and went to Playa Kalki. After we got there I first spoke with Andreas to get the exact location of the wreck, the time it would take to get there and information about the current. He showed me the buoy and I told him about our plan.
Then we geared up and started the dive. The scooters worked flawlessly. It is a completely different experience to dive with a scooter. And Alice in Wonderland is just the right spot to do this. You can easily steer between the mountains of coral.
We saw a lot of big fish among which some very large groupers. I had never seen groupers of this size except in the Seaquarium.
After 19 minutes we reached the wreck. Or better, what is left of the wreck. The wreck is in bad shape given the fact that it is only a few years old. It is broken in several parts. The middle section lies upside down and almost the whole side is gone. I don't know if this is caused by the recent storm. This is my first visit to the wreck, so I cannot compare with the past. Maybe Andreas can shed more light on the storm damage.
We stayed about 20 minutes at the wreck site. After these 20 minutes we all were at half tank and we decided to head back to the beach. It took us about 25 minutes to reach the beach because of the current. Reaching there we had about 400 psi left. So definitely an indication that you better don't do this from shore without scooters or boat.
You can find pictures of this dive on my Dutch web site. The Dutch shouldn't be a problem because the pictures speak for themselves. There is also a video there.
