Cyprus - Day 9 - The Zenobia wreck

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Zenobia 1979

Totally amazing, without any doubt whatsoever these were the best 2 dives I've ever done.

A little bit of background information on this dive site. The Zenobia was a ferry, 200 metres long that it was on its way to Syria carrying 104 lorries all loaded with cargo. Due to a recurring problem it never made it to its destination and it sunk off the coast of Cyprus very near to Larnaca.

If you are curious about it, you can read all the history here: Zenobia History

It was a bit of a long drive from Lachi (which is close to where I am staying right now)

If you force your eyes just enough to see the two red circles one on the top left corner of Cyprus (Lachi), the other on the centre south-east, you'll be able to see Lachi and Larnaca.

It took us about 2 hours by car to reach Larnaca and we were 3 divers, the dive master (a nice and very easy-going Italian girl) a Dutch girl called Daphne and myself.

 Dutch on the left, Italian on the right. :-)

The minimun depth for the Zenobia is about 18 metres and it goes from 18 all the way to 41 metres deep, so in order to be able to go to the Zenobia you need to be certified to a minimun of 30 metres or you can take a two day course to get certified up to 40 metres. Unfortunately this time I didn't have the time to do the course and 30 metres were good enough for me I had no intention of doing any dive through.

Below you can see an artist represention of the wreck and how it stands on the bottom.

It is a very popular diving site and it is considered one of the top 10 in the world, quite rightly in my humble opinion although I haven't been on any of the other nine to compare...just give me time. ;-)

The place is amazing and it's hard to describe the feeling of diving through the wreckage.

I was a bit nervous at first since this was the first time I was doing a dive so deep and for so long. On the first dive we went down to 30 metres and dove by the propelers and the side of the boat from which you could see the life saving boats, full size trucks, we even put our heads through a window that had a pocket of air in it.

Another thing worth mentioning, specially after yesterday's diving experience, is that it is forbidden to fish in a radius of 3 miles around the Zenobia so the place was full of fish of all sizes and colours, it looked like a fish tank and they are very used to divers since there are always lots and lots of divers at all times so they weren't scared of us and they would go and get really, really close to you, so close that sometimes you had to scare them a bit so they would let you see what's in front of you.

We saw several huge barracudas and a morrey hiding on the back of the ferry.

The other good part about the Zenobia, specially if you are prone to sea sickness, like myself is that the trip on the boat to get there from the harbor takes less than 10 minutes and it's on a very still water so you can leave your sea sick medication back home. :-)

Another thing I found really amazing is that the wreck is full of divers at all times and they are everywhere some inside, others outside, some by the side...everywhere so sometimes when you are diving over a window you can see the bubles of someone diving through the inside of the boat it's truly a magical experience.

Unfortunately, I didn't managed to get a camera for the ocasion and although Daphne had one and took some pictures at the time of writing she still hasn't past them on to me so I'm afraid I'll have to use some pictures I found on the internet to ilustrate this blog entry...I'd wish I had the photos, some were really cool.

Here are some of the photos

After the first dive they took us back to the harbor where we stayed for 1 hour or so, changed the equipment and went back for the second dive.

I removed a couple of kilos from my weight belt since on the first dive when I started the descend I was dropping like a stone and had to make quite an effort not to sink too fast. So I took a couple of kilos and then it got easier to get my buoyancy right. I was also far more relax so I enjoyed it even more than the first one.

This time we even went through one of the windows and got inside the ship control room and then went out through another window, we had a peek at the canteen and some other rooms. You could see the curtains and the electrics, some people diving on the inside and again lots of fish everywhere.

Another thing that drew my attention were some of the other divers, some were diving with two 12 l tanks one under each arm, others had a 15 l tank on the back and a smaller one under one arm. I am not sure how they use these extra tanks but they surely need more than the standard 12 l tanks if they start at 40 metres and spend quite a little bit of time at that depth. I also got the impression that some of the divers were coming very often like several times a week they seemed to know every inch of the ferry.

All in all it was a fantastic experience. Had I stayed longer in Cyprus I would have gone back despite of having to get up at 5 am. I would totally recommend this dive site to anyone who is into diving. It is one of the top 10 diving sites in the world for a reason!