Cairo, St Catherine, Dahab, Sharm El Sheikh.
Day 324:
The hour was 7:00 when the alarm sounded and I got myself out of the comfortable bed and into the cold morning air at the Salma Motel Campsite in Cairo. The skies had cleared after the sand storm of a few days before and with my passport safely in the hands of the French embassy there was nothing left for us in the city. It was Friday morning and we expected a fresh bout of demonstrations in Liberation Square that day so we decided to leave before the Arab world woke up.
We braved the dirty toilets and shitty showers before packing up and hitting the road an hour after waking up. The streets were totally deserted and even the dreaded Cairo ring road was almost empty. That meant that we were making fantastic time and before long the city so many people see as the northern destination of their Trans Africa travels was nothing but a spec in the rear view mirror. The roads were good and empty and we reached the tunnel under the Suez Canal before mid day prayers could start.
It was like a mini border post. At first I thought that the presence of military personnel was because of the revolution, but soon realized that it was the norm. The man in charge (Obviously the one without uniform with really bad sunglasses) instructed his junior to walk around Maggie with a strange looking hand held device with small antenna. He explained that it was an explosive detector which was so sensitive that it could even detect a single bullet. I was suddenly glad that I didn’t buy that AK47 in Ethiopia. The junior had a look in the back of Maggie and got very confused. His English was not really worth mentioning and every stupid question he managed got an equally stupid and none committal answer until he got bored enough to let us go. That did seem to be the trend in Egypt: The more stupid you act, the less time you spend in roadblocks.
The tunnel we entered was long and had a curve inside so that we could not see the car in front of us. The lanes were quite narrow and I could not help but wonder what the emergency plan was if there was an accident inside it. I really could not see how any emergency vehicle could get in there or how they could put out a fire if there was one. None the less we made it through, passed the check point on the other side without as much as a look from the officials and drove onto the Sinai Peninsula and a totally different world.
Keeping in mind that we had spent the previous seven weeks in a desert of some description I was surprised to be impressed by yet another sand box. The desert on the Sinai was totally different though. We followed the Gulf of Suez for about an hour and a half being quite mesmerized by the size and volume of ships sailing up and down it. The landscape was dramatic and strangely clean compared to the rest of the rubbish tip known as Egypt. The mountains were inhospitable and almost angry looking rock formations and the valleys and dry river beds were defining lines separating them. When we turned inland, heading due north, it was as if we were being swallowed by the massive mountains.
The longer we drove the higher they got and the more dramatic until we finally came to a stop in the village of St Catherine, named for the nearby monastery. We stopped at the Farag Fox Camp on the edge of town and was greeted by the man Fox himself. The place was brilliant! It was in a deep valley between two towering rocky mountains and came complete with olive tree orchard, Bedouin tent and rooms around a small court yard. We were shown a place to park inside the compound and agreed on a rate for camping…. However the room rate was so close to the camping rate that it took no more than one smile for my darling wife to dismiss the idea of sleeping in the tent I found so comfortable.
In the gardens we met a couple from Switzerland who had been cycling through North Africa. They told us about a little hike to what we thought was the highest point in Egypt. They also told us that the St Catherine Monastery that we wanted to visit was only open between 8:00 and 12:00, so even if we wanted to we could not visit it that afternoon. So we ended up doing the only thing that made sense: We made some coffee, kicked our shoes off and watched the colour change over the magnificent rocks as the sun got lower and lower in the sky. In the late afternoon we walked over to a nearby paddock with some Camels in and took some hilarious photographs of the animals and the interactions. By the time we got back to Fox camp the sun was behind the mountains and the temperature dropped by several degrees. I was almost glad not to be camping that night.
We still managed a suitable dinner prepared right next to Maggie. It was bitterly cold by the time we were done and we were both ready to crawl under the provided covers on the bed inside the small room. When we started arranging the bedding we found a little surprise though: Although the base was for a double bed, there were actually two mattresses on there. Not only that, but the one was a good 30cm shorter and 5cm lower than the other one. All that would have been ok if it wasn’t for the fact that there was one very long pillow for both of us. It was as long as the bed was wide and stuffed with something that felt like hay or straw and there was just no comfortable way to share it over the two odd mattresses.
So there I was, inside a small stuffy room, lying on an incredibly uncomfortable bed with a ridiculous pillow wondering why the hell I gave in and agreed not to sleep in our own, warm and comfortable tent. I found an almost comfortable position after an hour or so but as I was about to fall asleep the first mosquito decided to gnaw on my arm. The next one came along and tasted my forehead as I had both my arms under the covers by then and before long a squadron arrived and were attacking every tiny bit of exposed flesh. I tried hiding under the heavy blanket covers for a while but gave up on that idea for fear of suffocating. I actually seriously considered getting up and braving the freezing temperatures outside while pitching the tent and sleeping there, but Catt seemed blissfully unaware of my troubles as her deep and slow breathing told me that she was fast asleep. I didn’t want to disturb her and I was fairly certain that I would eventually fall asleep… as soon as the squadron had drank its fill of my blood.
Day 325:
I never did fall asleep and the mosquitoes never did finish sucking all the red stuff from my veins. I was really happy to hear the alarm sound in the early hours and jumped out of bed at the opportunity to leave the torture chamber. My body was stiff and sore from the uncomfortable mattress and my neck was killing me because of the bad pillow. I made the coffee extra strong and decided to broach the subject of crap hotel rooms later that day.
Before long we were walking out the gate into the freezing mountain air and towards the monastery we were planning on visiting. We passed that about an hour before opening time and found a camel trail that the Swiss man described to us. The walk was steep and tough but absolutely breathtakingly beautiful! The monastery, by then far below us, was also built in a narrow canyon between the towering rocks. The camel trail we were on skirted what we thought was the highest of the mountains and zigzagged up and up, disappearing around a far away corner. We had been walking for about an hour before we saw the first people. They were tourists, a rare breed in Egypt at the time, and they were on their way down the mountain. The lazy ones were on the backs of camels and the rest of the group looked pretty tired. I braved asking them how far the walk was but never got a straight answer. The camel leaders asked us where our guide was but I avoided answering them as far as I could.
The trail disappeared into a crack in the rocks and when we got there we found some rough steps leading even higher. There had been small cafés and tea houses all along the route but once the steps started their intensity increased dramatically. It was like there was another one every fifty meters. By that time we were both pretty tired as well and I felt fairly ill equipped for the adventure. Neither one of us really knew how high the mountain was or how long it would take to reach it. In fact, I’m pretty sure the only thing that kept us going was the fact that we did not want to fail at our quest to reach the summit.
What stared back at us was a series of rough stone steps. We looked at them, then each other and without a word just carried on walking. One foot in front of the other and not looking too far ahead we eventually found the top. There were no less than six tea houses of which only one was open. The man offered us tea at ten times what it should have cost and actually seemed surprised that we did not fall over ourselves to hand over Euros. There was a locked up church right at the very top and around the building we saw not only a few mattresses where people obviously sleep at night, but also the all too familiar and very sad site of heaps of plastic and rubbish. We had found the highest point in Egypt at over 2 400 meters and not even that was spared from forming part of the world’s biggest land fill site. The view was pretty spectacular though.
After the obligatory photographs we simply turned on our heals and started heading down again. We found a sign pointing out an alternative way down and decided to follow that. It read: “Steps to Monastery” and it wasn’t lying! It was literally a natural staircase that followed a deep canyon down the mountain and spat us out right at the back wall to the St Catherine monastery. By that time the place was over run by tourists. Where did they all come from wad the question I wanted to ask until I saw the two massive luxury coaches in the car park. It was about two and a half hours after we had set off from there and the sun was high and hot by that time. The curio sellers and camel owners were out in force and you could not make eye contact with a single person without having to decline his services or goods. It was almost like being back in Aswan before the “revolution” and was quickly becoming a pretty nasty nightmare for me.
However, since we were there we obviously had to see the inside of the monastery as well. It was Greek Orthodox and beautifully decorated inside. Right at the door was a big sign prohibiting any use of any camera of any kind. The guard looked suspiciously at me as I marched past him with two professional cameras slung around my neck and I had to cover the lenses and promise not to use them before he let me in. From the roof we saw literally hundreds of brass and silver incense burners hanging down and the wall decorations and carpets and even the furniture was probably the most impressive that I had ever seen inside a church of any description. We were ushered along a walk way with a horde of other tourists and had very little time or opportunity to take it all in. On the other hand, we were both dead tired from our little morning adventure, so didn’t mind too much.
Once we found ourselves outside again we saw a few familiar faces and greeted the French family we had met in Luxor the week before. We had a quick chat about our different adventures before they started their walk up the mountain. A young local man came by and told us all that a guide was compulsory and that he was the best guide the world had ever seen. My answer, to the great delight of the French was that I was a Dhow captain which made me super human and that I did not require any guidance to find the very obvious, marked and sign posted path to the top of the little hill that was only about a third as high as the highest thing I had walked up. I wanted to start explaining that Umpa-Lumpas really do exist in the chocolate factory when he lost total interest in our little group and sheepishly announced that it would possibly be OK for us to walk up without his expert guidance. After he left I told our fellow travellers how to find the top and added that I had, by accident, discovered that humorous confusion was the best way to deal with perky locals in that particular part of the rubbish tip they call their country.
Back at Fox camp we had a quick shower before feasting on an early lunch. It was time to move on but we had to do it very slowly. The small hill of a mere 2 400 odd meters high had taken a massive toll on our frail bodies so most steps I took was followed by an “Ouch” sound coming from my mouth. We paid up and thanked our host and started heading down the mountain a shade after mid day. While driving and sitting comfortably with the aircon on and the music soothing I decided to broach the sensitive subject of bad hotel rooms vs. comfortable tents. I was half expecting a healthy debate but it seemed that I had been mistaken the night before. Catt also didn’t sleep at all and she had exactly the same thoughts I did. So it was settled! No more cheap and nasty shitty rooms with uncomfortable beds when camping was an option!
After about an hour’s drive we saw the Swiss couple on their bicycles fighting against another hill with a headwind and stopped to offer some encouragement. We chatted for a few minutes only before heading on and actually found that road was mostly down hill from there. The road seemed to split the desert in half with dry and unwelcoming rocky rises and mountains on either side. I remember thinking that the Richtersveld National Park would look just like that if someone ever decided to build a two lane hi way that followed some high power lines through the middle of it.
In the late afternoon we found the village of Dahab and stopped at the first sign posted dive operator we saw. It was Penguin divers and they seemed to be attached to a hotel with a small place to park Maggie over night. I had great plans for sleeping in our tent that night though but I did want to find out about their diving prices. The friendly lady behind the counter impressed me right away. She explained the prices and setup to us and it was almost too good to decline. When she asked where we were staying I started opening my mouth when Catt blurted out that we had not decided yet. Within a minute of that happening we were shown two rooms and decided on one. I was totally helpless and totally outnumbered. To be fair though: The room was really nice, en suite with very hot shower and massive double bed. The price was about what we expected to pay for camping in Egypt, so I had no valid argument against it.
So we checked in and decided to go for a walk. It really was like a village by the sea. The shops were small but seemed quite professional. We found a supermarket that displayed their prices for the very fist time since leaving Khartoum and there were even wine shops! There were millions of restaurants on the water front serving very similar things at very similar prices and we very quickly found that the prices were double of what the restaurants one street removed from the beach were charging for the same things. In one of the array of scuba equipment shops Catt invested in a warm top half while I was getting down to some serious wine shopping. For dinner we ate in a local chicken restaurant without getting ripped off at all and by the time we made it back to the hotel we both really liked the place! It was early still, but we were totally dead on our feet and sleep came almost instantly.
Day 326:
We had chosen a room rate to include breakfast and knew we had to be ready with bells on by 9:00. The alarm woke us fairly early and after abusing the nice shower we headed down to the Penguin restaurant on the water front. The place was totally deserted! We had been told that breakfast was served from 8:00…
By 8:30 I had boiled water at the back of Maggie and made our own coffee. We were sitting in front o the restaurant waiting for something to happen and by 8:50 we managed to place an order. We were ushered inside and were joined by at least 15 cats of various ages and sizes. They were begging for food even before we had any and the only thing more irritating than the cats were the hundred million flies zooming around us. I was not impressed! In fact, I was ready to pack up and leave until I saw the size and quality of the food that arrived in the nick of time. It was impressive! It was delicious and it was lots, but it just could not make up for the crap service and disturbing wildlife around us. When I looked up I saw our diving guide waiting for us but I really did not care too much.
We finished our breakfast at our pace, walked back to Maggie to get our gear and started getting ready to go diving. The lady from the day before told us that we would come back to the hotel in between dives, but the guide had a different story. That was almost enough to send me over the edge. I was already irritated by the flies, the cats and the unbelievably bad service of the staff and I was not about to be made uncomfortable by someone else’s whims. Catt and I stopped what we were doing, sat down, made the guide sit down and started discussing things from scratch. After about ten minutes we were both on the same page. We were an hour late, but at least we knew what we were letting ourselves in for. So we walked back upstairs and packed some water and fruit for lunch and after taking our time to make sure we were ready we set off down the road in a clapped out old pick up truck.
We had changed to the plan to go diving at Dahab’s two most famous sites: The Blue Hole and Canyons. People travel from all over the world to go diving there and our thinking was to simply see them on that day, sleep in the hotel one more night and leave without breakfast…
After kitting up and a short briefing at the first site we submerged ourselves into the Red Sea once again and followed Abdul, our guide over a sandy patch and onto a reef. I took one deep breath and opened my eyes and my mind was blown! It was incredible! It was unlike anything I had ever seen under water and I could suddenly understand why people travel there to dive. The water was crystal clear and bluer than blue and the visibility was similar to the training videos we had seen. There was an incredible amount of life and when I looked at my depth gauge we were still only at about 6 meters below the surface.
The dive took us to a deep canyon in the coral with a narrow entry into it. We followed Abdul as per our briefing on the surface and saw the opening into the wide open expanse of the Gulf of Aqaba. We were at 30 meters below and I could not believe how clear the view around us actually was. There wasn’t too much life at that depth, but the thrill of seeing so incredibly far under water certainly washed the upset of the morning off us both. On the way back to the entry point we passed some interesting marine life and on our compulsory safety stop we found a beautiful Lion Fish to occupy us while waiting the required three minutes. On the final swim out we spotted a Soul Fish and eventually surfaced with big smiles on our aces, totally relaxed.
We hopped onto the clapped out pick up truck and headed down the beach for about ten minutes before arriving in an area that is very hard to describe! There was a small dirt track separating the big blue ocean from a row of double story restaurants and lounges. It was easy to envisage how that place could be absolutely packed in the busy diving season and how no amount of fish in the Gulf could ever outnumber the amount of tourists that could be accommodated there. On our visit though we saw two other cars and about six other divers. The restaurants were closed and the tea houses seemed deserted. It was quite a sad state of affairs for anyone Egyptian. During our surface interval we sat down on comfortable cushions, hiding from the wind behind glass screens while drinking tea we did not order. Abdul came around for a chat and I told him how sad I felt for all those Egyptians that relied on tourism for their income.
It was very clear that our man Abdul was well educated and a thinking man and it took a while to engage him in conversation about the state of affairs in his beloved country. When finally he did speak I listened in awe and got totally and utterly shocked by the facts he based his opinions on. The one thing that stuck in my mind was this: If the Egyptian government shared out the profit they made from the Suez Canal only, they would be able to give every single Egyptian US$2 per day. In Egypt, for a family of six people $12 a day would be enough to buy food and pay rent in a village home. I admitted that I had not been watching news or reading papers in the time of the revolution in Egypt, but I was pretty sure that no news agency reported something like that! Abdul went on to tell us about the other multi billion $ projects the government owned and not a single cent of that money actually went to help the people of the country. Listening to him spill his guts on the shore of one of the most amazing dive sites in the world I felt angry and more than understood how the bulk of the country took the law into their own hands and forced the government out of office in the short time we had been in the country.
By the time we started getting ready for our second dive of the day the political debate was over and both Catt and I felt totally relaxed. Our guide explained the lay of the land and when we were kitted up we followed him along the coat past the end the dusty track. Where the road ended we found a herd of camels and beyond that we found a few local guys swimming in the sea. Abdul marched us right up to them and showed us the entry point… The place was called Ells Bells and it closely resembled a chimney. We hopped into the welcoming cool of the water at the top of it and descended rapidly in a tube with a 3m diameter until we popped out into the infinite blue water at a depth of about 26 meters below. It had taken us about a minute to get there and it was exhilarating!
Once we left the chimney of fun we had a massive coral wall on the shore side and nothing but blue ocean on the other. We were told that the wall went from about 5 meters below the surface to as deep as 200 meters; far exceeding the 40 meter maximum depth we were certified to dive to. The wall was fairly flat but by no means smooth and the amount of life on it was simply astounding! The current was very light, the visibility infinite and the colours in the water just unbelievable! Without a second of warning a massive Napoleon Fish swam by us. It was bigger than I was and although not aggressive by any means, still pretty intimidating to be close to. Toward the end of the dive we found ourselves in a totally pristine coral garden marking the opening to the infamous Blue Hole. We floated over the top of that and entered the arena like place where we saw other divers for the very fist time under water. There were some free divers training towards the middle of the hole where they could follow their cable down to a mammoth 150 meters. For us it was nearing the end of the dive, so we skirted the edge looking at the fish and coral and being totally amazed by what we had been privileged to experience for the preceding hour. We surfaced at the designated place, totally and utterly speechless. The first die of the day shamed every other dive we had done in Egypt. The second pretty much exceeded any expectations we ever had. It was incredible!
Back at the hotel we abused the shower again and headed into the village for some research. We were not entirely happy with our hotel, but we were very impressed with the diving. The only thing we then needed to do was to find a nice place t stay and a good dive operator to return to. I was amazed at the sheer number of operators though. Every place of accommodation seemed to have a dive centre attached to it and every dive centre offered the same things for the same prices and no one seemed to offer anything special. We soon found that the place where we were staying had the cheapest prices of them all, which was good for us at the time. However, it also became abundantly clear that most other places had much more professional outlooks on diving in general.
For our dining pleasure we selected a pizza restaurant which was one street away from the waterfront. We chose it because of its location which made it half the price of the sea front joints and also because it had a place to sit inside the building where there were no flies and no cats to be seen. The food was awesome and the prices very reasonable! We ate out fill and walked back to the hotel on still tired and sore legs falling asleep quickly courtesy of the excitement of the day
Day 327:
Our second day at the great Penguin dive centre started a lot better than the first. We understood the lay of the land a lot better and did not order breakfast. We woke up a little later, made our very own coffee and had an obscene amount of fruit for breakfast. By the time we met our second dive guide, Handly, it was before 9:00 and we were ready to rock. We hopped into the clapped out Toyota and were told that we were heading south of town. We passed a few police check points and eventually spilled out onto a beach half an hour after setting off.
The place resembled the site we saw the previous day. There were rows of restaurants and tea houses and most of them were closed. It was not the place the place we were diving at though. In fact, it took another ten minutes to reach our site. There was only one restaurant there and no one manning it was anywhere in sight. While kitting up nature called for a number one but when I walked towards the toilet I saw $1 written on the door. So I peed in between the rocks.
The dive was pretty cool. The place was called “caves” and the sheer drop into the water was only about three meters off shore. We swam back towards shore and into a massive cave, or overhang, cutting deep into the shore. The landscape was rough and interesting and the life was more than enough to keep us occupied. It was not anywhere as impressive as the day before, but by no means boring.
After the dive we decided to enquire about the restaurant’s menu. We were told that they only served drinks and when we asked the price of tea the man quoted us five times the price of what it should have been. So we declined, grabbed our water and sat down on some cushions on the beach, hiding form he cold wind. Before long the tea man came along to clear a week old ashtray and water bottle that had gone brown in the sun. He didn’t bother with the array of plastic bags strewn on the beach and proudly announced that we had to pay him the price of tea for two to sit on his cushions. I laughed at him, to his face without making any secret of it. I then made a comment about how he was trying his very best to chase away the lastly of the tourists left in Egypt, wished him the best of luck with his business and left. We sat on the desert rug provided by the dive centre, leaning against the boxes our gear was packed in and in the same sun we were in before. It was two meters away from “his cushions” and there was not a thing he could do about it.
While waiting for the compulsory hour to pass before our second dive we started chatting to Handly our guide. He was very interested in Maggie as his family had grown big enough to warrant a bigger car. He told us that in Egypt the school year was normally only 21 weeks. That was because the four months of summer was simply too hot for the children to sit in class rooms and the system had to keep every religious holiday of every religion in mind. It sounded absolutely outrages! He also explained that the schools had been closed since the revolution had started so he was fairly certain that his children lost a year of schooling because of it. I could not even begin to comprehend the national impact of a whole country’s school children missing a whole year of education.
The second dive of the day was suitably relaxing and pleasant but not really something I would fly half way around the world for. The day was fairly windy and quite cold and the water temperature was also not exactly tropical. We saw some interesting things none the less and managed another hour under the Red Sea without incident. When it was all done we took our gear off, got out of our wet suits and got into the car for the ride back to the hotel. On arrival we rinsed the salt water off our gear and ourselves and had a room made coffee by the dive centre.
As it was our last day there we were presented with a bill. There were no nasty surprises on that and all I needed to do was visit the ATM to pay them. While Catt was filling in logbooks I ran across the street, presented my card and…. Nothing… NADA! No explanation and no money. I tried another four ATM’s in town without luck before returning to the hotel. At that time I wasn’t too convinced about the cause of the problem either. It could have been that the ATM’s were just out of money or out of order, but then again, it could have also been my credit card company having a little fit about the card being used in Egypt. After telling Catt about our little predicament we visited another three ATM’s in town without luck and then returned to Maggie to count our secret stash of US$. Counting that as well as the money we had in the wallet we had enough to pay the bill, have dinner and make it back to Cairo, but no more. To top that all we had only one card to access money thanks to the utterly useless ABSA bank in South Africa and the courier company that failed to deliver Catt’s replacement cards in Kenya. Not exactly the perfect situation to be in at the time!
We still paid the hotel and diving bill and ventured back to the main street to find a suitable dinner location. We found the Quickly Restaurant. It was a rare find with great food at cheap prices and fantastic service! The place was brilliantly decorated and seemed somehow different to anything else in town. To top all that it was cat and fly free, making it my favourite place in all of Dahab! We walked back to our room with full and happy bellies, slightly stressed about our financial situation but tired enough to fall asleep before long regardless.
Day 328:
There was absolutely no need for getting up early so we didn’t. We had had a fantastic nights sleep and felt rested and relaxed by the time we did drag our bodies out of the comfortable bed. After making coffee and having a shower we took up position on the chairs in front of the dive centre and had some of our own fruit from breakfast. It didn’t take too long for the local animals to find us though. I put a piece of orange peel on the ground and every single cat that walked past had a sniff at it. It was obviously enough to satisfy them that we had nothing for them so they mostly left us alone. From our perch we could actually see Jordan across the gulf and knew Israel was only a little north of there. I could not help but wonder about the 10 deadly plagues the Israelis faces in Bible times. I was suddenly wondering why flies and cats were not two of them. Egypt surely did have them both in abundance.
We wasted little time in packing our gear into our bags, greeting only the friendly lady who greeted us on arrival and thanking the diving guides before we set off down the narrow road out of town. We did not have far to go at all as we had decided to stop in infamous town of Sharm El Sheikh, which was a mere 65km away. Our friends Andrew and Lucy had told us about a magnificent special offer a dive school there was running and as we were definitely not done with diving yet we decided to check it out.
The road took us inland again and through the familiar desert and when we started returning to the coat my jaw dropped! The city of Sharm el Sheikh resembled something out of a fairy tale. After we passed the airport we saw green grass, pedestrian lanes and row upon row of fancy all inclusive resorts. I had never been to Las Vegas in the US but I could imagine that that oasis in the desert was similar in concept to the ne I was staring at. Our first port of call was a place called Shark’s bay. The GPS maps indicated the possibility of camping there and the Lying Planet spoke about beach huts for cheap prices. That all sounded pretty much in line with what I was after.
When we arrived though it was clear that both our forms of information were horribly outdated and sorely mistaken! We saw something that resembled a waterfront complex where we had to park a few hundred meters away. We were security checked on the way in and were actually slightly confused by the sheer amount of businesses staring right back at us. We had a quick walk around and found a dive operator that seemed to offer what we were after. They had a fancy boat on the jetty and some nice rooms attached to the dive centre. They even had a place to park Maggie but when we asked about prices they were about 30% more expensive than what we were told by Andrew and Lucy.
We left the area and drove into Sharm el Sheikh proper. That was even more of a Costa del something with a double lane main road lined with palm trees and Hilton Hotels. I was so incredibly mesmerised by the total contrast of the place compared to anywhere else we had seen since the coat of Kenya. There were modern buildings and fancy cars and actually enough tourists to notice. The hotels seemed open and busy and the businesses lining the pedestrianized streets were lined with small cafés and shops that all seemed open. With the help of our slightly outdated maps we found the Ocean College in a small suburb close to the old Sharm el Sheikh village. It was slightly hidden and I wasn’t sure how others found it, but also knew that it was their internet presence that was their recipe for success.
Walking through the gate we entered yet another world filled with British divers and a big blue swimming pool used for training. The manager emerged from her office to greet us and I have to admit that I was impressed. The place had a fantastically friendly feel to it and oozed professionalism. It took only minutes to establish that they would give us the advertised “internet only” rates and that we could start diving the next day. However, in the spirit of thorough research I suggested to Catt that we visit at least one more operator before making a decision. The one we selected also had massive internet presence. They were called Emperor Divers and were allegedly located in the new Sharm el Sheikh town we passed earlier.
The slightly paranoid police would not allow us to drive anywhere near the dock or the town so we had to park at a shopping centre some distance away. We walked through the shops being touted for curios and food. With the third shop we tried we found an English speaking proprietor who helped us to renew our internet description, but not a single person we spoke to knew where the elusive Emperor Dive School was. We found an array of gear shops but they were all closed. In the confusion caused by the architecture and choice of business around us I almost forgot that we were still in Egypt. It was after mid day and before 17:00, so they were closed. It wasn’t Friday-Sunday, but it was time for chai and shisha.
Through pure perseverance we managed to find a shop that was open. It was Russian owned and run and although they also did not know where this dive school was they at least had a telephone directory and managed to track down a phone number. In fact, the shop assistant even phoned them for directions. It didn’t take long to find them after that. The school was also attached to a hotel and they also offered pretty magnificent online specials. However, the managed there blatantly refused to match the online offers and would not even entertain the idea of negotiation. It ended up being a monumental waste of our time to go there and to be honest; because of her foul attitude towards us I will probably never consider them again.
Back at the Ocean Club we made the deal and asked advice on accommodation. The local hotel charged $50 a room a night and it looked no better than our $18 a night room in Dahab. The 5 star Divers Inn close by advertised $135 a night but offered us a room with dinner and breakfast for $56 a night. It was quite sad to see how very desperate every business in the area was and how utterly empty the hotels were. After checking out a few options though we eventually settled on the four stars Tropicana Tivoli Hotel. It was five minutes walk from the dive club and the advertised rate of $90 a night was instantly slashed to $40 including breakfast. It was fairly hard to argue with. The room we got was more like a suite. It had a fantastically beautiful bathroom with phenomenal shower, kitchenette for self catering, lounge with flat screen TV, massive bed and air-conditioning. The room looked out over a crystal clear big blue swimming pool and the local music being broadcasted over pool side speakers was soothing, pleasant and at a reasonable volume. What we were paying for it all was totally and utterly ridiculous! As we had even found a working ATM that was all too happy to spit out freshly printed bank notes, we were set.
So that was it. We were suddenly transformed from hardened Trans Africa overlanders to luxury scuba diving holiday makers, but at a price that was actually in line with even our meagre budget. We parked Maggie in the car park, positioned the solar panel, packed a few things in an overnight bag and headed to our new home. I couldn’t actually believe the time when we eventually settled. The day ended up being much longer than we both had realized. The sun was low and the pool lights on and our stomachs were rumbling away until we made a simple but wholesome dinner. We sat on the comfortable couch while looking around at our new environment and I could not help but laugh at myself. I had spent the previous few days making argument for camping and against hotel rooms yet there I was in a 4 star hotel looking forward to the comfortable big bed and the magnificent shower the next morning promised. The weather was the warmest that it had been since Kenya and sleeping in the tent would have been pleasant and comfortable, but there was just no suitable place to do so…
Day 329:
The alarm woke us nice and early. Thanks to the well designed room and the thick curtains it was still very dark inside and we both managed a fantastic night’s sleep! We jumped out of bed like two excited teenagers, got showered and dressed and skipped off to the hotel restaurant for our breakfast. I was not disappointed! It was a full on 4 star hotel buffet breakfast complete with omelettes, fresh juice and as much coffee as I could manage. I did try to set a record on that score.
After making the three minute walk we arrived at the dive centre promptly at 8:00 as instructed. I’m not sure why we thought things would run on time as we were the first to arrive. To be fair though, it was only ten minutes later that everyone was there, checked and loaded onto a bus to be taken to the jetty. For that day’s diving we headed to the nearby Naama Jetty where we met up with another load of people before being ushered onto our dive boat, the Noble Sheikh. It was a little strange to have to pass through metal detectors and to be searched by police to go diving, but then again, it was Egypt, the land of the unhealthy paranoid. The boat itself was MASSIVE compared to anything we had ever dived of before. I counted about 15 divers and there were at least three cylinders loaded for every person. The boat had a crew of four skilled men and was probably around sixty feet long. It had three decks including courters for the crew and a fully functioning kitchen. We made our way up to the top deck where the rest of the divers were already sprawling out in the morning sun.
It was then that we met our dive guide: Jim was a former Royal Marine. His biggest claim to fame was that because of the way he fell out of a helicopter from 30 meters, he ended up being the example in the training manual of how not to do things. He was also fairly well known in diving circles as a highly skilled, highly respected Technical diver and instructor. He was typical British Forces material, but also knew that and played on it a little. I liked him instantly! In his briefing he explained that we were at a reef called Fiddle. He went on explaining that you had numerous sites to dive there including “near fiddle”, “far fiddle”, middle fiddle” “middle far fiddle” and so on…. When the briefing was done and I looked up I couldn’t actually believe my eyes! We were only about twenty meters from the shore and right by a fancy hotel. I’m pretty surer we could have ordered drinks from the pool if we wanted to. My brain could simply not compute the logic of loading a mass of people onto a £200 000 vessel, starting up two massive diesel engines, sailing for half an hour and ending up that close to land. We could have gotten there quicker by bus and at a fraction of the cost. Then again, it was Sharm el Sheikh and very few things in the area made sense to me.
Our first dive was incredible! The water was crystal clear and the amount of fish life was just mind blowing! We saw an unusual amount of octopus and the very elusive Stone Fish towards the half way mark. Both Catt and I were totally mesmerised by the life and colours under water and when Jim started surfacing with the first of the divers he simply signalled us to stay until we reached an hour of dive time…
Back on the Noble Sheikh, after taking our gear off and getting out of the wet suits it was lunch time. That was something that the crew did to earn a little extra money and cost about $7 a person including all your drinks on board. The spread that they put in front of us was totally incredible though! We ate our fill and then some more and carried on until we could simply not fit anything else in. By that time some of the other groups on board were already in the water fro their second dive, but we had a lot of time spare, so simply chilled out in the sun and out of the wind until we felt comfortable again.
The second dive was much the same as the first. The life was incredible, the colours mind blowing and we hardly saw another diver under water. Jim was with a student who used his air up in record time and once again we were allowed to stay submerged for the full hour. For the last half of that time we really were the only divers there. It was just not what we had been told about the place! In fact, it was arguably some of the best diving we had done… ever!
It was about 15:00 by the time the boat got back to the jetty and we started walking off it. It had been a fantastic day out and a rewarding diving experience for us both. Jim was one of those rare people who really loved what he was doing and he definitely added to our experience. The three of us were very likeminded people as well so there was an instant bond formed and Catt and I were very much looking forward to the next few days of fun.
That evening we cooked a bowl of Fuul in our little self catering kitchenette and washed it down with a bottle of Egypt’s finest red. We turned the TV on and watched the news for the fist time in weeks and were almost perplexed at how the world had gone mad since the last time we bothered to look into it. It was the day Gadaffi made one of his ridiculous speeches blaming alcohol, drugs and Bin Laden for the state of Libya. The oil price had shot up and it seemed like the whole Arab world had suddenly decided to take up arms and kick their leaders out of power. To top that off, there were riots in Italy, France and Greece as well.
We finished the wine just in time to turn the TV off again and spent an hour or so just relaxing and chatting about the day’s dives before crawling into the huge double bed and falling fast asleep.
Day 330:
The alarm sounded at the same time as the previous day and we got up with the same enthusiasm as before. The chef knew exactly what kind of omelette I wanted and had it ready with great efficiency. We ate our fill, drank some juice, packed our bag and ended up at the dive centre fifteen minutes early… It was obvious that we were getting too efficient and it was only day number two!
We were driven to the main Sharm El Sheikh jetty and after being searched and walking through some more metal detectors we got only a boat called Seagull. That one was about twice the size of the Noble Sheikh! The jetty itself must have had around 200 dive boats docked there and I could not even begin to imagine the madness of the place in the height of the diving season! Jim explained that the area was the quietest it had been since the 1970’s. There was a shark attack there on a snorkeler a few months before we arrived and then the revolution in Egypt kicked off, so they had experienced a fairly tourist free four months before we got there. He told me that the shark attack was at the place we dived the previous day, but made sure Catt wasn’t around to hear the conversation. Good man!
Our destination for the day was the Ras Mohamed National Park. It took the massive vessel about an hour to reach it and in that time we saw two sharks on the surface. The fist one was an Oceanic Reef shark, which was the same species as the one that ate the snorkeler and the second was a much less aggressive breed. The crew got all excited about the sightings and told us that it was a very rare privilege to see them like that. They contributed the total lack of boat traffic in the area to our success. I have to admit that it was pretty impressive to see the gentle beasts swimming around in the clear calm water. I was quite impressed at the way the captain of the boat did not hesitate to veer off course to show us interesting things and I mostly impressed with how incredible calm the sea was. In fact, it the surface had about as much ripples as an average bath.
The first dive we did was right on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. Jim explained that no less that three major currents meat right at that point. You had the Gulf of Suez, the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea meeting and he kind of indicated that it was the best dive the area had to offer. I was sceptical, but only until I managed to get off the boat and stuck my head under the water. There were fish called “Antheans” which resembled small Gold Fish, but they were there in their millions! The schools literally covered the reef and engulfed the divers. We were “ambushed” by a two meter long Napoleon Wrasse which snuck out of a hole in the reef wall within a meter of us and the variety and other life was just out of this world! The place was called “Shark Reef”, but we didn’t spot any more of those. We did however end up on a wreck towards the end of the dive and saw a Crocodile Fish right out in the open there. At the end of it, when we were bobbing around the 5 meter mark for our safety stop I reflected on what I seen and experienced and I had to admit it: My mind was blown! I could not imagine that diving could actually get better than that!
Back on the Seagull we were served another lunch that was five star quality. The captain powered the boat towards our next dive site and just as lunch was done with he beeped the loud horn and shouted something with great excitement! Dolphins! He turned the boat around and followed the two huge mammals around in the perfectly calm water. It was as if they were playing with the boat. They swam from side to side, posing for photos and breaching every once in a while. The captain had a fine time manoeuvring us around and it I got the distinct feeling that it was another fairly rare experience in the diving Mecca we found ourselves in.
The second dive of the day was not quite as great as the first but still very high on the list of mind blowing places to see and experience under water. By that time we had started to mingle more with the people on board and also realized that apart from the crew, I was the only none Brit there. Most of the others were on a one or two week package holiday and seemingly oblivious to the troubles elsewhere in Egypt. Jim and his fellow dive guide on the other hand were all too aware of the troubles else where and also felt the problems all the way in that corner of the country. Jim told us that they had a few weeks where none of the ATM’s in town worked. That made buying groceries quite interesting… He also told us that the major newspaper headlines reported that Sharm El Sheikh was running out of “basic goods like cigarettes and bread…”
After the captain expertly parked the big vessel back at the jetty we got off, drove back to the dive centre and walked out three minutes back to the 4 star Tropicana Tivoli. We had expertly prepared for our evening in with another batch of Fuul, some fresh bread and another bottle of the good stuff. That evening we did not bother to turn the TV on as we were fairly certain that the news would not have changed enough to interest us. Instead we opened some windows and softened the lighting so that we had a perfect view over the football sized swimming pool and almost empty hotel.
If I had to do it all again:
We really should have camped at Fox camp at St. Catherine. The rooms were not bad, but the one with the dodgy bed and mosquito infestation we had was just not anywhere near as comfortable as our trusty roof top tent.
The walk to the summit is hard! We were ill prepared and I think if we were properly prepared we would have enjoyed it more. In fact, that was the one place where I actually thought that hiring a Camel would have been fun. The view from the top was pretty special none the less and worth the effort. St Catherine monastery was also really impressive and definitely worth it!
In Dahab we really should have spent more time searching for suitable accommodation. The dive operator was really good and the cheapest in town, but we did scope out some really pleasant places for the next time. Bedouin Divers was the pick of the bunch for us.
I’m really glad we went to Sharm el Shark when we did. We were told that the diving there when we were there was the best it had been in 30 years and we absolutely loved it. Don’t get me wrong, it was tourist trap hell and everything was grossly over priced, but at the time, in our frame of mind it was perfect!
