The build up - the excitement, anticipation and, of course, the baggage allowance!
My Uk diving buddy asked if I wished to go along on a weeks diving holiday with himself and his two brothers.  It was a bit of a celebration as both of his brothers had had birthdays within the past few weeks so it promised to be a fun celebration.

We were not flexible with our dates so we bided our time hoping to get the cheapest deal possible.  We waited........and waited.........and waited some more but the prices were just not coming down.  We had been looking at prices on the web and hoped that we could put a cheaper deal together ourselves with flights and then a diving/accommodation package.  We found a great deal with Shark's Bay, through Oonas, and found some reasonably cheap flights with Monarch.  The day after we paid for the flights all the prices came down by about £150 per person - bloody typical.

We then had to sort out the baggage and baggage allowance.  Well, we were told one thing and then another but in the end we finally managed to work out that we were allowed 20kg each plus an extra 5kg for dive equipment(!!) if we produced a cert card.  £8 per kilo excess if over this or we could pay £20 for an extra 15kg but this could not include clothes (which were part of the original 20kg) and we could not mix the allowances up.  Are you following....

We trapsed off to Gatwick and joined the queue with 50 other divers all of whom were having their bags weighed and re-weighed and then parting with hard earned cash just to take our equipment overseas.  Ho hum.

We were all excited, especially Brian who had just completed his open water course in the lochs of Scotland in a dry suit - excellent.  Only a week which never seems long enough but we were going to make sure that we enjoyed every minute of it - on land and under water.