Blogs from Red Sea, Egypt, Africa

What does everyone want in their Christmas stocking?! An early morning wake up and the chance to spend the day with chain-smoking half naked Russians! If your answer is yes, then you’re in the right place! Santa’s exceptional navigational abilities enabled him to find us here and his delivery partially offset the offence caused by the early start. Breakfast, pick up, some grumpy Russians and before too long we were on the boat with more. Luckily they had endless ciggies to suck down. But all was not too bad as we headed seawards into the waves towards Samadai reef, or dolphin house, hoping they had not been in touch with their lazier cousins of yesterday. A bit of rocking and rolling, some ciggies and more than our fair share of man boob and we were there. ... read more

Finding Nemo in Hurghada - Piprey on wheels Hurghada is an Egyptian Red sea coastal town, famous for snorkeling, scuba diving and a beach holiday. If I took a flight, I had to change at Cairo. The best option was to take a train from Aswan to Luxor and then bus from Luxor to Hurghada. Train and bus journey from Aswan to Hurghada To catch the early morning train, I arranged a private ferry to the jetty closest to the railway station. I pulled my suitcase for the last leg of 300ms to Aswan railway station. No tea but grabbed a nice lebanah baguette. As soon as the train pulled off, I was staring at my clock. Was it not supposed to reach Luxor at 7.49am? I even stood at the train compartment door with my ... read more

Well its day 3 in Hurghada and we should be off to the ship later on today but before I go into this - have you ever felt a real plonka well,I feel a first class plonka. So I hear there are mosquitos so I come prepared as normally Mike is like a dart board for mosquitos, they love him and not only try to get a 180 they try to get every tile on the board. Anyway, I digress so I buy mosquito repellant and whilst picking this up from boots I see a bite relief click it gadget - thinking never seen this before. So last night I got bitten by one of those little bugger mosquitos on my leg - so think ohhh now I can try that gadget I got. So get ... read more

So get to the airport early as we saw the chaos at Manchester airport on the news - well that was a mistake as like us well nearly a full plane of people did the same and we had to wait until the Tel-Aviv passengers had checked in. So there were hundreds of passengers waiting for the Hurghada flight check in. Well Easy Jet check in is non existent of check in people as you have to do it yourself. i.e. you have to print your own baggage labels attach them to your bag and then put your bag on the conveyor and send the bag down. I did this but put the identifying luggage slip on the bar code of Mike’s boarding card - well after steam had left his head and he shouted at ... read more

Eine Tauchsafari in Ägypten: Das steht bei vielen begeisterten Tauchern auf der Prioritätenliste weit oben. Das lang gestreckte Rote Meer zwischen dem Golf von Suez und dem Golf von Aden gilt als Tauchmekka für Profis und Einsteiger. Es zeichnet sich durch eine überraschende Vielfalt an Fischen und eine Fülle an interessanten Tauchplätzen aus. Klares Wasser mit sehr guten Sichtweiten erlaubt, die Tier- und Pflanzenwelt unter Wasser ausgiebig zu bewundern. Nicht zuletzt lockt das Rote Meer mit einem besonderen Erlebnis: Hier gibt es Stellen, an denen sich verschiedene Haiarten beobachten lassen. Schwimmen mit Haien: Was ist zu beachten? Grundsätzlich gilt: Haie sind Wildtiere, deren Angriff ein Mensch kaum etwas entgegenzusetzen hat. Entscheidend beim Schwimmen mit Haien ist, eine Angriffsreaktion nicht auszulösen. Die Aggressivität ist bei den Haiarten sehr unterschie... read more