Scuba Diving Destinations, Scuba Diving in Africa

We are on Bananas!

Listen to this article Children in Africa are not white, they are not black, they are LARGE! This is what a colleague living in Mali once told me, but the same can be said for adults too – after landing in Lungi, a suburban airport on the outskirts of Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone,

ByTomasz Andrukajtis

Published: November 22, 2012 - 19:44

Updated: July 22, 2023 - 04:30

Listen to this article

Children in Africa are not white, they are not black, they are LARGE! This is what a colleague living in Mali once told me, but the same can be said for adults too – after landing in Lungi, a suburban airport on the outskirts of Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, where we arrived late at night on 9 November.

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A thousand brave hands rushed towards our 12 big bags, sacks and suitcases and rushed to help (for small amounts of money). By some miracle – and thanks to the cleverness of our ‘local contact’ Mr Tamba, we managed to get out of the airport quickly and with all our bags – without even paying any ‘gifts’!

– You were extremely lucky, they usually shave people as much as they can and give even higher rates for diving equipment,” Greg, the manager of the mini hotel and fledgling dive base where we stayed, told us.

And there were many reasons to “tax” our bags! We brought with us not only wetsuits, sonar, fishfinder, ropes, metal detectors, but also bottles (12 and 15 litres) and even a 45 kg compressor disassembled into several parts!

However, the happiness could not last forever – a night trip through the Freetown peninsula ended with being stopped by the police and a donation of… four dollars! Small, but happy! – This is the magic of Washington! – laughs Romek!

In the morning we sailed with all this stuff through a small strait separating the town of Kent on the African continent from Banana Island. Barely 20 minutes of sailing and it was like being transported hundreds of years back in time. There is no road, no car, no electricity or running water on the island. But there are huge baobabs, palm trees and golden beaches.

Our mood was improved by the weather station – typical for November – 29 degrees Celsius! Wonderful! Put on your sandals!

Starting tomorrow, we’re going on a survey with sonar – we’ll be sailing a local boat and “combing” the bottom – watching, thanks to the acoustic waves, what lies on the Atlantic sand around the island. And if the sonar shows something interesting, we’ll dive right in and verify it. We can’t wait!

You can read more about the expedition here.

Source: Organiser

About author

Tomasz Andrukajtis

Editor-in-chief of the DIVERS24 portal and magazine. Responsible for obtaining, translating and developing content. He also supervises all publications. Achived his first diving certification – P1 CMAS, in 2000. Has a degree in journalism and social communication. In the diving industry since 2008.