We made an early start and were down at breakfast not long after 7.30. Paul ended up with an unexpectedly chilli omelette and I had yoghurt and honey and a couple of pancakes. Behind the omelette/pancake area there is a shelf where they put the rejects and all the sparrows come and eat them up. Funny that there is such an amazing variety of life under the sea but above it there are only sparrows and the odd dove. It's very barren and there isn't much for them to live on I suppose, apart from reject omelettes and pancakes. They even bring in most of the water and food for the humans in tankers and lorries so life doesn't really seem to be sustainable here.
We were in the dive centre at 8.15 and were allocated to Ghazala 3 and our guide for the day who was called Georgy and comes from Romania. Like yesterday we were transferred to the boat except that magically our dive gear had gone there by itself (we had to leave it on Ghazala 5 last night). Most of the others on the boat were German or Swiss and were a range of experience levels. Even the youngest one, a Swiss girl who must be about 16, had about twice as many dives under her belt as me. That didn't matter really though as the boat guys are very nice and helpful when you are getting ready and the sea was pretty calm and things were nice and relaxed.
Here is a map of the local dive sites around Na'ama Bay. All our dives will be in this area, not around Tiran Island or down in Ras Mohammed because we (especially me) are not experienced enough.
The first dive we did was at a place called Ras Bob. It's named after a guy who was the first to go down and visit the reefs after an earthquake in 1980-something. There is also a Ras Katy - she was Bob's girlfriend. It was a drift dive which means you start at one side and go across with the current and come up the other end of the plateau. I felt like I was floating much better and enjoyed the dive. The visibility was really good and there were loads of fish. My favourites were lots if butterflyfish (colourful big flat ones) and the small orange ones with blue eyes which I think are anthiases. There were lots if damselfish too which come right up to you. I had to buddy up with the swiss girl at the end as she was low on air. Georgy dis the 3 min safety stop at 5m with us and then we went up together and returned to the boat, sorted our gear ready for the afternoon then lay in the sun and had a chat.
We had a really tasty lunch, lots of different dishes, all egyptian style, including my 2 favourites which were a sliced aubergine dish with some tomato on and mince with courgette slices in it. The boat guys had cooked the whole lot in the gallery which is so small I hadn't even realised it was there, down some steps at the front of the saloon area. We gave them a tip and Georgy told them we had said it was the best food we had had in Egypt so far, which was true. They were very pleased.
In the afternoon after a bit of lounging around on the sun deck we arrived at our second dive site which was called Amphoras after some amphorae which came from a boat years ago end are still on the bottom. Paul accidentally trod on his mask while we were getting ready and broke the little clip that holds the strap in place. There was a spare one in the box but it wasn't very supple so didn't make a good seal. One of the girls on the boat was snorkelling rather than diving so wasn't going out at the same time, and she kindly lent her mask, but it turned out to be really small and was squashing Paul's nose. Georgy lent him his own and took the small mask even though it was squashing his nose too. I was impressed with that.
We were in two groups of more or less experienced divers and the more experienced ones went off to see the area where the pots are which was lower down. We didn't, but did come across a lone broken one - it was so covered in coral that I didn't realise what Georgy was trying to show us anyway. Doh. It was a great dive though, we saw some very bright yellow fish (about 20-30 cm long, not sure what they were), a napoleon wrasse in the distance, loads of colourful parrotfish and a lionfish hiding (still haven't seen one out in the open). There were some shoals of shiny fish going by in the blue, I think trevallies our maybe tuna? I was re-buddied again at the end and P stayed down for ages. It was with the same swiss girl and I had to hold onto her to stop her going up too quickly.
When we got back we had a beer with Georgy in the diver bar in the dive centre (I had a girly shandy). We finished filling in our dive logs which are little books or folders where you keep a record of what dives you have done, how far down you went and how long for, and something about what you saw or the conditions or what you learnt or practised with your diving technique. When you're training, like I was in Turkey, your instructor has to fill it in, but now either my buddy can (Paul) or the divemaster, so today I got Georgy to sign and he showed us where the Sinai Divers stamp is on the desk. Paul pretended he was too manly to want a stamp but he did really because he let me take his log book and stamp it when I did mine.
It turns out Georgy is the most amazingly experienced diver having not only done cool things like professionally filming underwater but also done things for research like going down to 150m on a dive, where he was underwater for 7 or 8 HOURS and had to eat and drink down there (apple juice and snickers apparently) and take several different tanks down, all carried by himself, filled with different things appropriate for the different depths. He is a bit of a cheeky chappy but must have biiiiiig balls.
We came back to the room for showers (nice not to have messy hair, although there is a shower on the boat in the loo you can't really wash your hair in it, just rinse the salt out) and lazed about on the bed while Paul put the clips he'd taken in three water onto his laptop. While we were looking at them (and trying without success to put some red back in them), there was a little rumbling which must have been a small earthquake. I started thinking about which doorway would be best to stand in if a bigger one came along but fortunately it didn't.
We had a very nice mojito in the beach bar (huge improvement on their calamari) during their 3-hour long happy hour, and shelled and ate a whole bowl of peanuts. Then we decided to try the Brazilian restaurant in Ghazala Gardens which turned out to be the wealthy sister to Ghazala Beach - much more modern and glamorous, although not such a good location for diving and the beach.
The restaurant was amazing and as Ghazala Beach residents we were entitled to the budget set menu which was four courses for 140LE (about £14). I had salmon cerviche and smoked salmon and paul had massive smoked prawns, then we had spicy peruvian shrimp soup then a surf and turf main with a little very tasty steak with 3 sauces and half a lobster. I had grilled pineapple for afters but Paul passed. We shouldn't have eaten all those peanuts. We decided to come back on the last evening for a nice romantic meal ü
We were in the dive centre at 8.15 and were allocated to Ghazala 3 and our guide for the day who was called Georgy and comes from Romania. Like yesterday we were transferred to the boat except that magically our dive gear had gone there by itself (we had to leave it on Ghazala 5 last night). Most of the others on the boat were German or Swiss and were a range of experience levels. Even the youngest one, a Swiss girl who must be about 16, had about twice as many dives under her belt as me. That didn't matter really though as the boat guys are very nice and helpful when you are getting ready and the sea was pretty calm and things were nice and relaxed.
Here is a map of the local dive sites around Na'ama Bay. All our dives will be in this area, not around Tiran Island or down in Ras Mohammed because we (especially me) are not experienced enough.
The first dive we did was at a place called Ras Bob. It's named after a guy who was the first to go down and visit the reefs after an earthquake in 1980-something. There is also a Ras Katy - she was Bob's girlfriend. It was a drift dive which means you start at one side and go across with the current and come up the other end of the plateau. I felt like I was floating much better and enjoyed the dive. The visibility was really good and there were loads of fish. My favourites were lots if butterflyfish (colourful big flat ones) and the small orange ones with blue eyes which I think are anthiases. There were lots if damselfish too which come right up to you. I had to buddy up with the swiss girl at the end as she was low on air. Georgy dis the 3 min safety stop at 5m with us and then we went up together and returned to the boat, sorted our gear ready for the afternoon then lay in the sun and had a chat.
We were in two groups of more or less experienced divers and the more experienced ones went off to see the area where the pots are which was lower down. We didn't, but did come across a lone broken one - it was so covered in coral that I didn't realise what Georgy was trying to show us anyway. Doh. It was a great dive though, we saw some very bright yellow fish (about 20-30 cm long, not sure what they were), a napoleon wrasse in the distance, loads of colourful parrotfish and a lionfish hiding (still haven't seen one out in the open). There were some shoals of shiny fish going by in the blue, I think trevallies our maybe tuna? I was re-buddied again at the end and P stayed down for ages. It was with the same swiss girl and I had to hold onto her to stop her going up too quickly.
When we got back we had a beer with Georgy in the diver bar in the dive centre (I had a girly shandy). We finished filling in our dive logs which are little books or folders where you keep a record of what dives you have done, how far down you went and how long for, and something about what you saw or the conditions or what you learnt or practised with your diving technique. When you're training, like I was in Turkey, your instructor has to fill it in, but now either my buddy can (Paul) or the divemaster, so today I got Georgy to sign and he showed us where the Sinai Divers stamp is on the desk. Paul pretended he was too manly to want a stamp but he did really because he let me take his log book and stamp it when I did mine.
It turns out Georgy is the most amazingly experienced diver having not only done cool things like professionally filming underwater but also done things for research like going down to 150m on a dive, where he was underwater for 7 or 8 HOURS and had to eat and drink down there (apple juice and snickers apparently) and take several different tanks down, all carried by himself, filled with different things appropriate for the different depths. He is a bit of a cheeky chappy but must have biiiiiig balls.
We came back to the room for showers (nice not to have messy hair, although there is a shower on the boat in the loo you can't really wash your hair in it, just rinse the salt out) and lazed about on the bed while Paul put the clips he'd taken in three water onto his laptop. While we were looking at them (and trying without success to put some red back in them), there was a little rumbling which must have been a small earthquake. I started thinking about which doorway would be best to stand in if a bigger one came along but fortunately it didn't.
We had a very nice mojito in the beach bar (huge improvement on their calamari) during their 3-hour long happy hour, and shelled and ate a whole bowl of peanuts. Then we decided to try the Brazilian restaurant in Ghazala Gardens which turned out to be the wealthy sister to Ghazala Beach - much more modern and glamorous, although not such a good location for diving and the beach.
The restaurant was amazing and as Ghazala Beach residents we were entitled to the budget set menu which was four courses for 140LE (about £14). I had salmon cerviche and smoked salmon and paul had massive smoked prawns, then we had spicy peruvian shrimp soup then a surf and turf main with a little very tasty steak with 3 sauces and half a lobster. I had grilled pineapple for afters but Paul passed. We shouldn't have eaten all those peanuts. We decided to come back on the last evening for a nice romantic meal ü
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