A hopeless lake

There is a lake very close to my home. I had my very first open dives here and it's just 10 minutes drive from me. It sounds I'm lucky, doesn't it? Well, if you remember my post about freshwater diving, I mentioned this place where the instructor needed to touch my face to check the mask removing.

The lake of Budakalasz (or Lupa Island lake) is a quarry. Although swimming is forbidden here many people use to spend summer days on its shore. There aren't toilets, showers, good roads, anything. Just water. By the way: plenty of water, this lake is deep, 6-7 meters, and as it's a normal quarry, there aren't shallow areas. Sometimes we hear sad news when not so good swimmers submerge in a second. No life guards, no ambulance, no visibility, no chance to survive...

When I arrived to this lake for the first time I prepared for my dive. I was excited on the surface and horrified under water. Is this the diving? Swimming in the water which similar to a thick soup, without seeing any fish? I know certification is not about fun diving but this place don't make you mad about the underwater wonders. The only wonder is when you surface and you aren't too far from the entry point.

I came back to this hopeless lake only once. A buddy and me joined an underwater cleanup here. I told her to hold strongly the big bag as this will be the 'lifeline'- we wouldn't see each other. We really didn't. I sometimes felt a pull on the bag, she found something and collected. Our dive was about 30 minutes long and although we barely used air from our tanks we didn't go back. There weren't animals under water but trash. The people from the nearby village brought many useless things to the lake. They knew nobody would see them here. To see the bags full of trash was really disappointing. To see the murky water was even worse. I don't feel I am lucky anymore because I live so close to that lake...