Take a break, take a dive!
Door: Yaisa
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Yaisa
23 November 2011 | Egypte, Caïro
25 -26 September 2011, Red Sea, Egypt
We’re on the road. On our way to Abu Dabbab, 250 km south of our starting point Hurghada. I came back to live in El Gouna (25 km north of Hurghada) end of August and this is my first dive trip since. After having worked on a liveaboard in the Maldives for eight months straight, diving was not my first priority when I got back to Egypt. But now I’m really looking forward to this little trip.
We’ve done the drive down the coast through the Egyptian desert several times before. Six friends, a couple of T-shirts and shorts, 120 kg of diving & camera equipment, two cars and good connections in the diving business are all you need for a great weekend away. We’re all dive professionals – I’m the most junior with just over 1.000 dives -, the weather forecast is good (we’re talking Egypt in September here) and thanks to our network, we’ve organized a cheap private boat and free accommodation, so it promises to be great indeed.
Halfway, we stop at Port Ghalib for lunch, 25 km from our destination. According to the website, “Port Ghalib is a waterfront premier integrated resort community situated on 18kms of virgin shoreline.” Not a place where I would want to spend my holiday, but considering this project of the “Red Sea Riviera” was built in the middle of nowhere, it’s impressive anyhow. We go to Tweety, a local restaurant where you won’t find a single tourist. It’s located in the staff quarter area of the resort and it serves typical delicious Egyptian food for a fraction of the prices of the other places in the resort. Our designated drivers top off the meal with a Turkish coffee (it is a good idea to be sharp when on the road in Egypt) and we continue towards our first diving spot: Abu Dabbab.
Long known as the place where you could spot Dugong, Abu Dabbab is a shallow bay covered in sea grass. In the bay, two dive centers have set up shop for shore diving, they are now both owned by Diving Ocean, an Italian owned dive operator. We have booked our tanks with the one on the beach, so one hour after parking the car, our cameras and strobes are prepped and we are ready to enter the water.
From experience we know that it is highly improbable that we will see the Dugong again. I was lucky enough to see it munching away at the sea grass about six years ago, but it is said that the one or two that were still there a couple of years ago, moved away after the female had a baby and we haven’t heard of any sightings since. However, Abu Dabbab has more to offer. I count at least on guitar rays and giant green turtles covered in remoras and some other nice surprises.
After swimming out for 30 minutes, we have barely reached a depth of 10 meters and we have indeed spotted several green turtles and a guitar ray. Unfortunately the visibility is murky, so I decide to pretend I’m muck diving. My efforts are rewarded as I start to find little green Flabellina-looking fuzzy balls (some no larger than 3 mm) on a certain type of leafy green plants. I’m happy. The rest of the dive is rewarding as well. A huge leopard sting ray, hovering trunkfish, a couple of lemon trevallies and after a good 80 minutes we wash ashore feeling fresh and satisfied. Not the most exciting underwater adventure ever, but after a long drive it’s just the kind of easy dive I like.
As Abu Dabbab Diving Lodge where we are staying is being renovated (planned opening October 2011), any form of catering is absent. Still, the new owners (the same Italian dive operator) accommodate us for free, provide us with a water boiler, tea and instant coffee and after a nice refreshing shower, we drive back to Port Ghalib for dinner. The service at TGI Friday is friendly and the food is good - although personally I’m not a big fan of American style cuisine, especially not in countries where local food is so much better. We have desert at Costa Coffee (the Egyptian equivalent of Starbucks or Coffee Bean) and drive to our private resort for a good night’s rest.
The next morning at 9.00 am I find myself at 31 meters depth staring at six or seven Scalloped Hammerhead Sharks circling 10-15 meters below me next to the crack of the North plateau of Elphinstone. The visibility is nice, the current moderate, the water temperature very pleasant (29 C°) and the Anthias, Groupers, Soldier Fish and other reef dwellers make for a very colourful end of dive. The second dive at 11.00 am on the South Plateau gives us a school of Barracuda’s, a juvenile Napoleon, a couple of Hawksbill Turtles, it’s a nice drift. But alas, no Longimanus in sight.
We disembark our private speed boat at the jetty of an abandoned dive center just south of Elphinstone. The Diving Ocean pick up transports our gear back to the dive center at the Sol Y Mar resort, at the southern end of Abu Dabbab Bay and we follow by car, covered in salt, hungry but satisfied. An hour later we are back on the road, a quick pit stop at Costa Coffee again for lunch and off we go, back to Hurghada, back to El Gouna, our home for the next few months until we find a new job for the winter season. Keep an eye out for the next blog, it could be from Komodo, it could be from the Maldives, it could be from Sipadan… Who knows where the sea will take us next?
PS. This blog was written to be published on a website for divers, hence the slightly less personal tone than usual… I don’t think it was published though!
We’re on the road. On our way to Abu Dabbab, 250 km south of our starting point Hurghada. I came back to live in El Gouna (25 km north of Hurghada) end of August and this is my first dive trip since. After having worked on a liveaboard in the Maldives for eight months straight, diving was not my first priority when I got back to Egypt. But now I’m really looking forward to this little trip.
We’ve done the drive down the coast through the Egyptian desert several times before. Six friends, a couple of T-shirts and shorts, 120 kg of diving & camera equipment, two cars and good connections in the diving business are all you need for a great weekend away. We’re all dive professionals – I’m the most junior with just over 1.000 dives -, the weather forecast is good (we’re talking Egypt in September here) and thanks to our network, we’ve organized a cheap private boat and free accommodation, so it promises to be great indeed.
Halfway, we stop at Port Ghalib for lunch, 25 km from our destination. According to the website, “Port Ghalib is a waterfront premier integrated resort community situated on 18kms of virgin shoreline.” Not a place where I would want to spend my holiday, but considering this project of the “Red Sea Riviera” was built in the middle of nowhere, it’s impressive anyhow. We go to Tweety, a local restaurant where you won’t find a single tourist. It’s located in the staff quarter area of the resort and it serves typical delicious Egyptian food for a fraction of the prices of the other places in the resort. Our designated drivers top off the meal with a Turkish coffee (it is a good idea to be sharp when on the road in Egypt) and we continue towards our first diving spot: Abu Dabbab.
Long known as the place where you could spot Dugong, Abu Dabbab is a shallow bay covered in sea grass. In the bay, two dive centers have set up shop for shore diving, they are now both owned by Diving Ocean, an Italian owned dive operator. We have booked our tanks with the one on the beach, so one hour after parking the car, our cameras and strobes are prepped and we are ready to enter the water.
From experience we know that it is highly improbable that we will see the Dugong again. I was lucky enough to see it munching away at the sea grass about six years ago, but it is said that the one or two that were still there a couple of years ago, moved away after the female had a baby and we haven’t heard of any sightings since. However, Abu Dabbab has more to offer. I count at least on guitar rays and giant green turtles covered in remoras and some other nice surprises.
After swimming out for 30 minutes, we have barely reached a depth of 10 meters and we have indeed spotted several green turtles and a guitar ray. Unfortunately the visibility is murky, so I decide to pretend I’m muck diving. My efforts are rewarded as I start to find little green Flabellina-looking fuzzy balls (some no larger than 3 mm) on a certain type of leafy green plants. I’m happy. The rest of the dive is rewarding as well. A huge leopard sting ray, hovering trunkfish, a couple of lemon trevallies and after a good 80 minutes we wash ashore feeling fresh and satisfied. Not the most exciting underwater adventure ever, but after a long drive it’s just the kind of easy dive I like.
As Abu Dabbab Diving Lodge where we are staying is being renovated (planned opening October 2011), any form of catering is absent. Still, the new owners (the same Italian dive operator) accommodate us for free, provide us with a water boiler, tea and instant coffee and after a nice refreshing shower, we drive back to Port Ghalib for dinner. The service at TGI Friday is friendly and the food is good - although personally I’m not a big fan of American style cuisine, especially not in countries where local food is so much better. We have desert at Costa Coffee (the Egyptian equivalent of Starbucks or Coffee Bean) and drive to our private resort for a good night’s rest.
The next morning at 9.00 am I find myself at 31 meters depth staring at six or seven Scalloped Hammerhead Sharks circling 10-15 meters below me next to the crack of the North plateau of Elphinstone. The visibility is nice, the current moderate, the water temperature very pleasant (29 C°) and the Anthias, Groupers, Soldier Fish and other reef dwellers make for a very colourful end of dive. The second dive at 11.00 am on the South Plateau gives us a school of Barracuda’s, a juvenile Napoleon, a couple of Hawksbill Turtles, it’s a nice drift. But alas, no Longimanus in sight.
We disembark our private speed boat at the jetty of an abandoned dive center just south of Elphinstone. The Diving Ocean pick up transports our gear back to the dive center at the Sol Y Mar resort, at the southern end of Abu Dabbab Bay and we follow by car, covered in salt, hungry but satisfied. An hour later we are back on the road, a quick pit stop at Costa Coffee again for lunch and off we go, back to Hurghada, back to El Gouna, our home for the next few months until we find a new job for the winter season. Keep an eye out for the next blog, it could be from Komodo, it could be from the Maldives, it could be from Sipadan… Who knows where the sea will take us next?
PS. This blog was written to be published on a website for divers, hence the slightly less personal tone than usual… I don’t think it was published though!
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Je kunt nu ook Smileys gebruiken. Via de toolbar, toetsenbord of door eerst : te typen en dan een woord bijvoorbeeld :smiley
