Venezuela, coastline with Jurassic Park feeling, cars with 6 litres or more cubic capacity and a full tank for eight bucks. Fast food impressions. Out of the city no more asphalt, winding roads through the mountains just wide enough for one car. After two hours of jumping around with the car a small fishing village with sand beach. Fairytale feelings. Houses with high walls, each one in varied colours, radiating a comfortable kind of welcome.
Inside the house simple, clean and cosy. A first hello with Carlos and some other Venezuelan freedivers. Appointment for a training session tomorrow.

Next morning meeting at the local dive school, opened only on weekends, but Carlos has the key. We dress up for diving and swim out to the centre of the natural harbour, taking a float with us with only some meters of rope, where a secret training cable is anchored in about 70 meters ending with a float in 8m depth. We connect everything and voila, training can start. Carlos is using a monofin and his style is not perfect by far, but he is doing some impressive dives in a total relaxed way.

Heading down for the tag

Thursday, 3.10.02 is attempt day. Everybody is up early. We enter the boats and take the one-hour ride to the place of the attempt - Puerto Cruz - a wide and protected bay. The boats are anchored in row and the cable with the final plate and the tags on it is lowered to the target depth of -90 meters. Carlos is soon in the water, taking his 45 minutes warm up routine. Several times his monofin points to heaven when he starts the duck dive and leaves the surface for a warm up dive. His body stretching and breathing techniques he did already on land, before we left the small fishing village.
Already when he announced the attempts the question raised, who is this guy and will he be able to dive a world record??? Some facts come in mind.
Carlos started apnea diving 1997, only 5 years ago
The signal for the safety scuba divers to start their dives.
Carlos first international appearance was 2000 in France, during the Apnea world Cup in Nice, where he performed a -57m dive.
Carlos pumps as much air as possible in his lungs and starts the dive.
His next international championship was Ibiza 2001 where he showed a
-68m dive
One of the safety freedivers holding on the float, face in the water, signals with out stretched arm a ok sign, this means he still can see Carlos descending. Then the arm goes down, he is disappeared in the blue. The expected dive time is something a little bit over three minutes.
In 2001 he also did two national records, Constant Weight with -73m and Free Immersion with -74m, but will this be enough to be a world record man today...
The arm is up again, already 3 minutes 18 gone. 15 seconds later Carlos surfaces. He is totally exhausted but clear, and he celebrates some seconds for himself staring to heaven before he looks at the spectators and takes off his mask giving an ok sign. Holding up the tag that he picked at -90 meters gives him a big applause.

Three days later, on Sunday is the Free Immersion attempt. In opposite to Constant weight, where you have to swim up and down with your fins and you are only allowed to grip the cable one time at the turn, in this discipline you are not allowed to use any fins and you have to pull yourself up and down on the cable.
Again we are making the boat trip to Puerto Cruz. After having his first world record in the pocket the mood of everybody is much more relaxed as last time.
Sitting together at dinner yesterday evening, a lot of joking was done, especially about Carlos secret record prepare meal. A big Hamburger with French fries and a lot of ketchup and mayo.
Soon Carlos jumps in the water to prepare his body for the dive. The start float, a combination of anchor float and the inner tube of a car, holds the cable on the surface. A bottom weight of 40 kilos stretches it. Today he has not to bring up a tag but he has to touch the final plate at - 93m clearly. The depth will be verified by the official depth gauge he is wearing and the touching by the video of the bottom divers, which will be checked later. The scenery is similar to the first attempt and as Carlos arrives again on the surface 3 min and 52 seconds have passed and he looks like just having done a -20m dive and not a new world record. He climbs on the start float and big celebration water party starts. A national flag is suddenly folded out in the water and everybody is singing Venezuela, Venezuela.....