Dahab 2015

The below trip report was written by Hannah… you can find more of her writing here


 

The Red Sea has always held some attraction to me.  I think it appealed to my younger self because I believed, albeit briefly, that the sea was actually red, and red was my favourite colour. Later, after my favourite colour had changed to green, my interest in the Red Sea reignited as I heard about the coral and fish living there. Almost everywhere I’ve dived, the instructors have said either how good the Red Sea is for Scuba or how much they want to go.

In November last year, one of my wonderful musical friends, Charlotte, casually dropped into conversation that she was planning to go to Egypt to Scuba dive in the summer. Then she uttered the magic words I was hoping for: ‘do you fancy coming too?’ Of course I did! It took less than the four seconds to tell me the price for me to agree and start figuring out how I would pay for the flights.

Party in the Blue Hole (picture by Chris)

On June 7th, I stood outside Charlotte’s front door.  My phone was pressed to my ear, still ringing. ‘Welcome to the…’ I put the phone down on the answering machine and resumed pounding on the front door. The most convenient place for those of us driving from Exeter to Gatwick had been agreed as outside Charlotte’s house. Liv, Iain, Jon, Leo and I were all stood on the pavement. There was one notable exception.

‘Charlotte!’ I bellowed through the letterbox.

‘Welcome to…’ The answerphone started again.

Iain, our trip organiser, joined me on the front step looking at his watch. 7:17. We were due to leave at 7.

‘Welcome…’

I pressed call again and resumed my pounding. Bangbangbangbang!

‘Welco-…’

Bangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbangbang!

‘Alright! I’m coming!’ A muffled voice answered the phone.

‘Come on! We had to leave half an hour ago!’

‘Mnmph.’ Charlotte hung up the phone.

‘Okay she’s on her way down!’ I called to the small crowd gathered on the pavement.

Two minutes later Charlotte emerged from her house to a round of applause and gave a wan smile.

‘I did warn you that I was going on a work night out last night!’

‘I know,’ I said, ‘the jumbled message at 4am was excellent. That’s why I started ringing you half an hour ago!’

‘I messaged you? I must have slept through my alarm. Look, I took a picture to prove I set one.’

Charlotte showed me the screenshot on her phone of an alarm set for 6am.

‘One alarm, 22 missed calls, 3 texts and 20 minutes banging on a door right under your window. That was one good night!’ I laughed.

She grinned and whispered, ‘I think I might still be drunk! Let’s listen to Mulan!’

The first ‘Dick of the Day’ (picture by Nick)

We arrived at Sharm El Sheik airport late at night. It would take an hour to drive us in minibuses to get to Dahab. As soon as we were off the plane the heat hit us. Even at night Egypt is hot. Damn hot. Even with the windows open as we started driving it was hot. And I knew I had brought a battery powered fan for this exact situation but could I find it? Not even close.

I sat back in my seat and looked up at the stars. Because there are no lights lining the roads, the whole sky was clearly, impressively visible. It is rare now to be able to find a place you can see so many stars. Pure darkness is a gift. Only the headlights of the minibus showed that the landscape was not the flat sandy desert I had expected but jagged and mountainous. We curved around the hills, staying mostly on the right side of the road and wondering what the occasional beeping sound was. I realised toward the end of the holiday that the cars beeped when they were breaking the speed limits, a feature that was at once potentially useful, terrifying and intensely annoying. I learned not to look at the speed dial.

We arrived at the hotel and were immediately ushered to sit under a roof of palm tree leaves in a cushioned seating area. The back wall was the brick boundary wall and the other two were simply woven and then draped with patterned fabric. The floor cushions formed a square around two short tables with a break at the centre of the open side to let us through. All of these things were new and interesting to look at, but the best thing about this area were the two fans that blew a cool breeze over our shoulders. We all sank to the floor in bliss.

The group at the Blue Hole (picture by Nick)

Our first dive was an easy going ‘remember how to dive’ kind of dive. The aim was really just to get in the water, stay under the water and see some fish if you can manage to get your buoyancy right for more than a couple of minutes. We were all using kit borrowed from the University Dive club which had been a nightmare to pack, and now it was here and under the water, I couldn’t get my BCD to agree with me at all. I know it’s probably come up before, numerous times in fact, but my own in-built flotation devices were causing a bit of a problem. In order to get a BCD that would fit around my bust, I had to get a size bigger than I would have otherwise needed. This meant that while my boobs were quite content, the rest of the jacket floated just above my lower back, not to be tightened any further. To add to the problems, I just couldn’t get the knack of dumping air properly. Needless to say, there are no fish recorded in my log book on my first dive, though I was assured that there definitely were some in the vicinity.

We drove out to the Islands for the second dive. The Islands, as the title suggests, are lots of islands of coral, each one teeming with fish, accessed through a break in the rock that forms a small archway. My buoyancy problems continued here, though I mastered the rather artful technique of dumping air by pushing my bum up and releasing the air using the lower valve: the BCD equivalent of a mighty fart. It was not especially elegant but it was more effective and less time consuming than having to wiggle about while hanging upright to persuade the air to vacate. Though the BCD still wasn’t doing its job properly, I did see a blue spotted ray and some other fish. The coral here was amazing. Big fans and bright colours, all surrounded with tiny electric blue fish and golden antheas all wearing blue eyeliner. The water was so bright with such fantastic visibility that I kept forgetting about my BCD woes and finding myself rising rapidly among the bubbles.

Beautiful Coral (picture by Elly)

By the third day of diving, my BCD troubles had become tedious and I decided that I would just hire one that properly fitted me rather than continue spending all my time figuring out where the damned air was. Of course, the experience of having a poorly fitting BCD had given me a crash course of sorts in really concentrating on my buoyancy in the water and so dive number five made me feel like I was flying. It was suddenly so easy! I could turn in any direction and find that I was still in roughly the same position in the water! There were so many more fish around me and so much I could see!

 

On this dive, we visited the underwater statue of a horse and a man-shaped chair, both sunk in Mashaba Bay, just in front of the dive centre. Now I knew what I was looking for, lion fish were everywhere with their black and white manes of spines.  Bannerfish were also hanging around in schools, trailing their distinctive banners. More difficult to see, even with my buoyancy sorted, were the stone fish which, as you might have guessed, looked exactly like stones. Even with our guide, Dave, pointing directly at each stonefish we saw and pulling me in by the jacket to really focus my view, I only actually saw one of the many he determinedly tried to show me. It was the same with the scorpionfish, which, apart from a beady eye, looked uncannily like the coral it was hidden underneath.

One of my favourite fish were the clownfish who would congregate in little families around anemones. (Also known as ‘anemenemones’, ‘amemonemones’ and ‘you know, those things’ according to Charlotte.) The clownfish lay their eggs in the fronds of the anemones and then guard them adorably grumpily for such a sweetly comical looking fish. Clownfish are the ocean equivalent of the yappy terrier who thinks he can take on a boarhound. As you approach, the adult fish will leave the anemone and swim right up to your mask as if to say ‘you what, mate?’ before rushing back to make sure its family is okay and beginning the process again.

Dave and the anemone (picture by Elly)

My other favourite fish to look out for was the parrotfish. A lot of this had to do with the fact that parrotfish are so beautifully multi-coloured they are distinctive in the water. This meant that even though I was surrounded with all sorts of interesting, yet rock-coloured fish, I was guaranteed to see a parrotfish and recognise it. It’s the small things, really, that make me feel like an accomplished and knowledgeable diver, and the parrotfish enabled that. Besides, because it looked so smiley, it was as if it was welcoming me into its patch of sea and then pointing out all the good bits of coral to nibble.

Grumpy Clownfish (picture by Elly)

 

We took a day trip in our second week down to Sharm El Sheikh to do three dives: two at the Thistlegorm, a world war two ship sunk by the Germans, and one at Yolanda reef. I purposefully did no research or googling before the Thistlegorm for two reasons. The first reason is simply that I wanted to be amazed by the ship. It sounds silly, but reading reviews that say how awesome dives are and what I should see can often make me feel underwhelmed by something I really ought to be overwhelmed by. The second reason is that wreck dives are probably my favourite type of dive and seeing a shipwreck emerge from the gloom is a wow moment I can’t resist. Avoiding pictures means I get the full effect on the dive itself. Having said this *SPOILER ALERT* for the next few paragraphs!

The Thistlegorm was sunk near Ras Muhammed in 1941. It was a British Armed navy vessel carrying weapons and vehicles and a surprising number of wellies from Glasgow to Alexandria. Jacques-Yves Cousteau discovered the site in the early fifties and since it was developed as a dive resort in the 90s, it is now a popular destination for divers.

The boat took us from Sharm to the dive site. Though our group was the large, there were also three other diving guides on the boat making it a little crowded while we all got kitted up. Because we were the biggest group, we let everyone else get into the water first so that we would have a little more room to manoeuvre. Most of the group paid an extra few euros to get larger, 15l, tanks to dive with. The Thistlegorm lies with a maximum depth of 30m and while there is no need for specialist equipment, to dive at this depth for a while creates increased air consumption. Only Iain and our guides, Dave and Joe, and I were air efficient enough to be happy with the regular 12l which was a nice surprise. I suspect that what looked like a heat rash on my neck was actually my body growing gills and I’m gutted that in Manchester drizzle, the rash has now gone.

On the Boat (picture by Nick)

To get to the wreck, we followed a line down from our boat to the Thistlegorm. At five metres there was a spare tank to guide us on the safety stop on the way up again. For the first dive, we swam around the boat and through the Captain’s cabin. The size of the ship was enormous and as we swam over the centre of the ship where the bomb blew it apart, there was a two man tank lying eerily on its side. On the second dive we swam into parts of the wreck to see the stacks of rifles, a whole level filled with jeeps and motorbike with their glass windshields still intact and wellies scattered everywhere. Even though the jeeps and the motorbikes and the tanks were evocative of the ship and the war, it was the scattered wellies that really made me think of the men who were on board at the time. It’s funny how such an everyday item can come to represent loss of life so keenly but also signify the human strength and determination to literally put boots on soldiers fighting far from home.

The fish were all much bigger in the open water and we saw lots of napoleons guarding the boat. There was a huge Moray Eel (like Ursula’s minions in the Little Mermaid) hiding in the wreckage but given its vast size and blatant positioning, I completely missed it even while looking right at it. Crocodile fish had also made a home out of the ledges created by the ship and they blended in with the dark grey in the dark water that I was right on top of one before I eventually saw it. As its name suggests, the crocodile fish has a long mouth just like a crocodile, and when I was altogether closer than I would have liked, I saw its heavily hooded eyes were the same too.

Now, before I continue, I need to pause for a brief interlude to explain about Leo. Leo was in my group for the whole holiday and had handily brought along a GoPro. While he was exceptionally good at spotting things and pointing them out to whoever had the good fortune to be his buddy, he also had the least underwater spacial awareness of anyone I have ever met. His ability to take a fantastic underwater photo compounded this problem somewhat.  As we all became more familiar with each other and the way we all dive, I also got used to being bumped and battered under water by Leo’s fins as he took said fantastic pictures. I never quite got used to realising I’d lost him and then discovering him between my legs, though. (‘Just ask her out, Leo!’ was Dave’s repeated advice!) By the time we were diving the Thistlegorm, I had become a pro at thinking like Leo and then grabbing him before he could act like Leo. He didn’t seem to mind and I got fewer fins to the head. Win-win. Well, mostly, anyway.

Coming up from the second dive at the Thistlegorm, there was a lot of current. This meant that as we all hung on to the line, we were all bouncing off each other on the same side of the rope. Picture a line of us all doing Superman impressions. As ever, I was just behind Leo, who, in his infinite Leo-wisdom, decided that as this side of the line was so crowded he would attempt to swim over and hang on the other side against the current. Because I too was thinking like Leo, I reached up to grab his fin to pull him back, knowing that even if he got to the other side, he wouldn’t be there for very long. This time, though, Leo was determined. He shook his fin out of my grasp and pulled himself over the line. For a fraction of a second, Leo was triumphantly on the other side of the line until, as predicted, the current swept him back over sending his fins into my face. Even though I knew this was going to happen and had braced myself for the impact, I was thrown off the line.

Fortunately, Jon managed to catch me as the current pulled me away and dragged me back to the rope. What Jon couldn’t have known though, was that now I was safely back on the line, a new problem had appeared: jellyfish. I am stupidly and irrationally jellyphobic. Even with the knowledge that jellyfish in the Red Sea don’t sting, there was absolutely no way I was going to let go of Jon’s hand while I tried to calm down and stop hyperventilating. With the current being so strong, jellyfish were zipping past us like a terrifying underwater version of the beginning of Star Was while we were stuck waiting to go up to the boat one at a time. Though Jon had no idea at the time that I was totally freaking out, he was a hero in accepting that I was going to cling on to his hand until I could get out of the water. When it was finally my turn to let go and then swim as hard as I could to get to the ladder, I was shaking with relief.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jsQ7ew-Uls

The Yolanda reef is a dive site located on the way back to Sharm from the Thistlegorm. And I know I keep using words like ‘amazing’ and ‘awesome’ and ‘magical’ but seriously, they all apply here too. The boat was not able to anchor this time so everyone had to get ready at once and then, as soon as we were within range, jump in one after another: go go go! The current underwater was strong and I struggled with my buoyancy initially because I kept getting thrown against a coral ledge by the current. It was so worth it though. The fish were all swimming into the current showing us which way it was going and the closer to the reef we stayed the less current there was to fight against.

On this dive, there were all the now usual brightly coloured fish, antheas and parrotfish, and I actually did manage to see a moray eel! Okay, it was tiny in comparison to the one on the Thistlegorm but it still counts. The absolute highlight was seeing a turtle gliding through the current towards the coral and settling in for the turtle equivalent of a tea break a few metres below us. The dive was tiring because of all the current but we still got in 44 minutes of exploration before Dave and Joss sent up the DSMB for the boat to come and get us.

The day after the long road trip to Sharm to do the three dives from the boat, we decided that it would be a good idea for the second group to do the night dive the first group did the previous week. The dive took place at twilight (as Helena kept pointing out- ‘it’s not dark yet!’) and by the time we were in the water with our torches on, the sun had fully set.

I’d never done a night dive before so I didn’t really know what to expect other than the obvious: it’s dark. It surprised me, then, to see that the day-time fish were all sleeping. Fish sleep! They were settled in and amongst the coral, occasionally flapping a fin or two to stop themselves from drifting. The only fish there were more of were lionfish with their impressive splay of spines and bright eyes shining in our torchlight. There were also fan corals out that would shrink in the light, a game Leo found immensely satisfying to the extent that of all the fan corals, I only saw one for a brief second before it shied away. I also saw my second turtle of the holiday sleeping under a coral ledge, like the fish, using one back flipper to maintain its balance.

Halfway through the dive, we all settled on a sand bank with our fins pushed into the sand for balance. I automatically pulled Leo down and into position as he started drifting off. We turned our torches into our thighs to dim the lights and sat in darkness. I was already amazed by just how dark it was when Iain signalled to me to make circle with my hand. As I did so, phytoplankton sparkled into life following the current I was making with my hands. It was like making an underwater sparkler.

As we emerged from the water, the tiny silver fish that I keep mentioning were out in their thousands, all attracted to the light from our torches. They bumped into our legs and arms like a kind of ocean massage. Because I still hadn’t mastered taking my fins off, I leaned back so that Charlotte could pull them off for me and was showered with tiny fish. They leapt out of the water hitting our faces and masks in their excitement. It was refreshing, exhilarating and disgusting to be assaulted by so many fish. After a few minutes in their vicinity, I was ready to get out and shower.

 

Perhaps two of the best dives in Dahab are the Canyon and the Blue Hole. To my delight we did both dives twice, the first week while being filmed by Jack, the second on our last day of diving while I was wearing the infamous ‘dick of the day’ penguin costume (my main offence was having not been nominated for the duration of the holiday among other minor things like forgetting to turn my air on and then forgetting to put my reg in while descending. Minor things.).

At heart, I think I might actually be a fish. I’d like to say I’m a turtle, but they are still far more elegant on land than I am and they eat jellyfish rather than freak out about them. When I’m in the water, it feels entirely natural. If anything, I think I’d prefer to spend the rest of my days in the sea than on land and judging by the intensity of the land sickness I get, my inner ears would agree. Though diving itself feels exactly perfect, there is always the small matter of getting into the sea while wearing what feels like my body weight in tank, jacket, weights and snorkel (they’re heavier than you think!). I fear that my complete ineptitude when it came to walking in shallow water across rocky ledges or wading into waves will be how I am remembered from this holiday. That, or maybe my utter incompetence when it came to putting fins on. One or the other.

Having said all of this, I actually only properly fell over once. On all the days that I wasn’t being filmed, I stumbled and wobbled and made my arms into propellers but managed to stay upright. On the day that Jack was filming my group diving in the Canyon, I stumbled and wobbled and made my arms into propellers and just about managed to stay upright and as I looked up to the camera as if to say ‘phew that was a close one!’ I completely misjudged my next step and fell over backwards. Like a beetle on its back, I lay in the shallow water, completely unable to right myself with all the weight on my back, crying with embarrassed laughter. Jack, who heroically ruined the footage by lunging forward to try and catch me, came over and hauled me up again to walk me to the rest of the group who’d managed to get to the deeper water just fine by themselves.

Emerging from the Canyon (picture by Elly)

The Canyon itself is amazing. The light under the water is magical and the fish gather around large ledges and spires of coral. The canyon is a break in the sea floor that goes down into darkness. We descended one at a time to about 30 metres. From here, you can really appreciate how deep 30 metres actually is. At the bottom (or at least the bottom at 30 metres, the split continues to descend into darkness) looking up and following the air bubbles into the light was breath taking. We circled back up again and around a pinnacle of coral and through a curtain of tiny rising bubbles formed by the air now trapped on the half roof of the canyon. Toward the end of the dive, we saw a large napoleon fish and a file fish in a squabble with a grouper too big for his fishy boots. In comparison to the rest of the fish life around the coral – the tiny silver fish that flit about in groups, the antheas and even the bigger parrot fish – these fish looked like they were on some sort of steroids. And bigger fish were to follow in the Blue Hole.

The Blue Hole was the perfect dive to finish on. It is spectacular. Google it. We descended through El Bells, a three sided tunnel looking out to the big blue, one at a time. At thirty metres, there is an archway that leads out to the sea proper taking you from a small enclosed space into a suddenly vast area. To the right, the reef wall plummeted down to the darkly invisible depths, to the left there was the potential for any big fish to appear. Where on most dives, I am conscious of not accidentally hitting coral with my fins, on this dive, with only water below me, it was thrilling to be free to play in the water. I did what anyone would do in this situation: I pretended to be an aeroplane. I threw my arms out and spiralled in the water making ‘neeeeooowww!’ noises through my reg. Chris joined me throwing his arms out too so that we flew in formation: an underwater Red Arrows style acrobatic team. We rolypolied and twisted and turned.

The Flying Penguin (picture by Chris)

On the first dive a remora joined our group, swimming in and out of our fins and underneath our bodies thinking we were a school of sharks. It had its own little black and white fish swimming with it too, making a babushka doll effect as we swam. On the second dive, there was a blue spotted ray swimming in from the deep to rest on the coral wall and a little cleaner fish that wanted to nibble at our ears. Over the ridge leading into the blue hole, there were clouds of tiny colourful fish. On the second dive, Dave led us away from the ridge a little and into the blue. Though we didn’t go far really, it was thrilling to feel like we were just hanging in the open ocean.

Blue Hole (picture by Chris)

I would like to finish with a few thanks. To Iain for organising the trip and running it smoothly. To Jon for rescuing me, firstly from Leo, secondly from the swarms of evil jellyfish. To Charlotte for telling me about the trip in the first place and for waking up eventually. To Elly, Chris and Nick whose fantastic photos I am using. To Jack whose video is amazing and lacks evidence of me falling over! To Leo who didn’t managed to cause any real damage and captured a beautiful video. To George (AKA Georgeous/ Cheesey G), Helena, Liv, Joss and Izzy for being great travel buddies. And finally, to Joe and Dave for guiding us, Hamada for making us so much delicious food and everyone else at Poseidon for being wonderful. It was the trip of a life time and I hope I get the chance to do it again.


Video Links

Elly’s video
Jack’s video
Iain’s video
Leo’s video

If you want to go diving in Egypt then these are the guys I would highly recommend!

Poseidon Divers, Dahan Poseidon Divers, Dahan
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