After two weeks spent diving and filming in Kongsjord, time has come to move to my next destination. I flew from Kirkenes back to Oslo, and visited there Nina Bratland and Jonas Lundberg (and their foster kid, Katrina) – they’re partners, working “normal” jobs most of the time, and in free time – taking diving groups to tropical destinations, or just teaching people diving on local sites. I joined them as they taught a PADI OWD course with Divestore, a dive centre located close to Oslo, in Drøbak. It was quite interesting experience – the happy group taking the course were of different backgrounds and jobs, with different time availabilities over Thursday-Sunday period, but everybody got to do these 6 training dives (or some more, actually), so the course was success for all! Our dive site was surprising, too – Divestore’s local reef is surrounded by underwater wall, that separates dive site from open fjord, and limits depth to 18 meters – perfect for the initial training! In the evenings, Nina and Jonas showed me around Oslo, that I turned to like a lot, as not-so-big but very cozy and friendly city. Nina and Jonas – thank you!
From Oslo, I travelled to Bergen, then with ferry – and finally I was picked up by Ørjan Sandness in his RIB, and travelled to Gulen Dive Resort. It’s a diving operation run by Ørjan and his wife, Monica Bakkeli, in this almost most-westerly spot in Norway. Gulen is located slightly north of Bergen, and it’s not really a city, but a commune – being a new concept for me, commune is community of several families, living over a large area, but not all at the same place.
Short RIB ride between steep slopes of rocky mountains, forming a maze of canals, bays, islands, penninsulas, makes a stunning impression. As it turns out, Gulen’s underwater is also just like that – only submerged! Huge walls that make you feel tiny (and make you check your depth gauge frequently), massive rocks or hills, and lots, lots of surprises. Level of complication of the rocky bottom might be the reason for the number of wrecks around – some of them sunk because of simply taking the wrong turn. One of them, quite famous – Frankenvald – is a pre-WW2 German steamship, in a calm and sheltered site which preserved it very well. No lives were lost when it sunk, but the level of detail of it’s last moments picture is amazing – you can even find captain’s wellington boots on the bridge! I surfaced from this dive bursting with laughter.
As there aren’t any businesses close nearby (it’s couple of kilometers to the nearest shop), therefore Gulen Dive Resort is very self-dependant. They have a dive centre, accommodation for divers – so-called cabins, with big kitchen and salon, including even a camera desk, also a dive bar (“200 BAR”), and some other small but cool amenities, such as hot tub for cold evenings!
Gulen is another dive destionation unique in it’s location, and diving it’s offering. It really nicely organized, and therefore hosts events such as high-profile Scandinavian Photo Workshop, or various tech-groups meet-ups. It’s been great to experience it myself – I already missed that place moments after setting off!
Thank you Monica, Ørjan and Lenny for this great week…
