Jebel Ali: You will not find ‘Ali’s Cave’ with its sleeping bats hanging from the ceiling and the ground littered with spent bullet shells and quartz stones, in any tourist brochure or off-roader books.

It is nestled amid the vast expanse of orange and white sea of sand east of Jebel Ali and 30km from downtown Dubai. Jebel Ali, which means Ali’s Mountain, is not really a mountain but a stone hill. There are no human prints in the sand at the entrance to the cave, but if you look closely, you will find traces of fox and lizard prints and claw prints of birds. Nearby you can see the huge dishes of the satellite receiving station.

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The Arabian Gulf is the largest natural pearl diving area in the world, according to Captain Mohammad Khalifa Bin Thalith from Dubai Ports at Jebel Ali Ports, who spent 4 years putting together a map of pearl dive sites.

The original map, which dates back 69 years and represents some of the most popular dive sites, was used to recreate a more legible record of places sought out by pearl divers.

"Some locations are 500 miles away. It was a great mission to go there.

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Once again we made a two-nights trip up the Musandam peninsula. Once again Tour Operator Al Marsa from Dibba did a great job. Once again we were lucky with the weather and the conditions of the Indian Ocean.

It started a bit scary with rain and thunderstorms when we went up North the Omani coast line on Thursday evening. But a bottle of rum and some conversation helped to fall asleep anyway around midnight.

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There is a lot more to free-diving than just holding your breath under water and once you learn the right way to do it, it can open up a whole new world to you for underwater photography, spear fishing, or just moving comfortably under water.

Emma Farrell, 33, British and one of the world’s leading free-diving instructors and one of only 10 Instructor Trainers in the world, believes that free-diving, when done properly can be healthy and help with breathing problems or panic attacks. "It helps you control your breathing. If you do it safely it can be healthy. It invigorates every cell of your body with oxygen," she said, adding that everyone can do it with practice.

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Already since the last two weekends I’m training on the PADI Rescue Diver course.

First the Emergency Responder training in one day (incl. the kids course) and last weekend the practical stuff of the rescue diving in the pool and at the shore of the Jumeirah Beach Hotel. It is real fun and very recommended. Every diver can and must use these skills to prevent accidents and to be able to help in a case of emergency. There are easy skills like awareness and more difficult ones like panicking diver rescue, but all of them are great. I hope I will never really use these training but I will exercise them in future for sure. And next weeken I’m hopefully qualified.

UPDATE:

Since yesterday 23. March 2007 me and my wife are qualified PADI Rescue Divers. In our final scenario session we went for a boat trip at the West Coast of the Gulf up to Sharjah to the wreck of the Miriam Express, which sunk last year only. We had a nice short dive there and as the current was really strong, we went back into Dubai waters to the wreck of a cement barque, to do our final exercises.

Everything worked out well and we finally got certified Rescue Divers.

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