No steps at all - the club holiday to Lake Garda

After a four and a half hour journey from Zürich, we arrived at the Garni Onda accomodation in Torri del Benaco. Our glorious leader had already checked in and was waiting for us on his balcony. Once all of us had arrived, we managed to get all our gear into Luca's van, so that he could take it down to the dive base, which we later found out didn't exist anymore, and was just a rather complicated compressor in the middle of the beginnings of a building site. After a beer supplied by the Onda owner, we went in search for something to eat. To our surprise, this turned out to be the restaurant Osteria (del 4). But the pizzas were not as good as our beloved ones from after the weekly swim training.

The next day - feeling hungry after the very small portions in the restaurant, we rushed to breakfast, and then after filling up for the morning, headed off down to the 'dive center'. Luca has already set out the tanks and kit on the benches, so all we had to do was to pair them up and get changed. After the briefing, we then set out for the first dive site, and started the holiday in earnest.

After two or three dives that day, we headed for a local restaurant that was only (and I quote) 1 or 1 and a half kilometers away. After climbing up a hill for what seemed like an eternity, we eventually arrived at the Vista Lago, which, unsurprisingly, offered a nice view of the lake. Thursday was called off because of the rain and potential heavy weather and winds, so that day was spent either wandering around the town, or in the hotel room studying or watching TV. In the afternoon, we discovered the Rotondo, a restaurant that provided portions of food more suitable to hungry divers, that needed enough calories to last then through the night. It also did very good pizzas, so this then became our 'go-to' eating place (and also because the prices were very reasonable).

Friday seen us do three dives - the second one was one diver short due to an unfortunate equipment malfunction, and one of which was an 'early' night dive, even though we got back to the boat in day light.

Our final day - Saturday - seen another equipment failure, so again there was one missing diver for the two dives. This was when our glorious leader, left us and departed for a business trip, after getting a 'jump-start' for his EV!

We set off back to Zürich on Sunday after breakfast, and after an uneventful four and a half hour journey, we made it back to Zürich,

Overall, we visited the same sites as last year, but some of the dives were done in a different direction, so were different dives. The visibility wasn't as good as we were led to believe - especially at the shallower depths, but still it was very good a bit deeper.

So the balance:

One set of fins forgotten when jumping out of the boat
One broken p-valve
One dropped mask
One forgotten Deco-Stage
One punchered wing bladder
One large headache
One flat (12V) battery
Lots of fun

BTW:

1. It turned out that the beers on the first evening were not a gift from the owner as was first thought.
2. The restaurant was over 2 kilometer away (see google maps), and there was a short cut that was only 500m long.

Alle Eindrücke von unserem Club-Urlaub am Gardasee vom 01.05. - 05.05.24 findet ihr in der Bilder-Galerie.