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Published: November 15th 2009
After an early start where we tried to sleep in as Long as possible before making a mad dash for breakfast and somehow getting your belongings organized we were shoved into the bus and driven from Africa to Asia (under the suez canal, through alot of desert and through some beautiful mountains) to the coastal town of Dahab, located an hour or so south of the border to Israel (and the crossing to Jordan) on the Red Sea. After enduring the crazy heat along the Nile it was great to see the coast again.
After checking into dahab paradise resort I met my new room mate (An Australian by the name of Matt was my old one) who was English chap who served in Iraq named Rob. Both great guys. After a bit of free time at the resort (pool action of course) we hit the town for some orientation by our new tour guide (Yessir). We were given the basic run down of where shops are, what to expect from the locals and how to get good deals at restaurants. The entire foreshore of the town had restaurants and hotels with restaurants (with the odd dive shop) crammed along
it, which sounds bad but it was actually quite beautiful. As a group (of about 30) we walked along the foreshore from restaurant to restaurant hearing their sales pitches and seeing the fresh seafood each offered. Typical of what they offered was free desert, free entree, 20% discount and after haggling we may have recieved free non-alcoholic beverages. It was a great deal. After hearing the best deal and being told which restaurants have adequate cleanliness, etc one as selected and we enjoyed a meal over looking the red sea at dusk. You could easily make out a Saudi Arabian town across the sea that was surrounded by large mountains and back behind the town, up and down the coast we had our own large mountains as a back drop, simply stunning.
The following day we were picked up by the big blue dive centre from our resort (which was 10mins by taxi from town) and taken to the dive centre for a debriefing of what we could do for diving and snorkelling. As all but 3 of us had never dove before, the majority went for an introductory dive with 1 instructor taking care of two students. Although
The Ute
On the way into townmost had fun, one of the group freaked out in the water, no danger really but she was quite worked up, and a few others weren't happy with one of the instructors. Whilst all this was going on, the 3 of us who had dived before had to do a refresher course/dive as it had been longer than 6months since our last dives. It was very slow and painful, but the actual refresher dive was great fun. We dove at the 'lighthouse' right in town and after practising some of the basics in the shallows we went out and we saw some incredible reef, fish, big red octopi, yellow mouthed moray eels, etc. The coolest thing we saw was a big red octopus being harassed by fish. It fled the seen and jumped onto this rock (spreading out it's arms and sucking onto it) and in a split second it's entire colour changes for camoflage. It fools the fish for a few seconds but they catch on and start to harass the octopus again. This time the octopus had had enough and literally started throwing punches at the fish. Hilarious! By the time we finished our dive we were late
for our afternoon appointment at the world renowned blue hole which was only 2km north of our resort. The 3 of us divers arrived late for the snorkelling session but we caught up to the rest of the group pretty quickly and enjoyed some remarkable underwater scenery. The blue hole instantly drops down to 120 or so metres deep. It has claimed many divers' lives as is shown by the memorial plaques on a rock nearby. But the scenery would definately be worth the risk. After completing several 'drift snorkels' we all had had enough of the sun and the 28 degree water (for atleast a couple of hours anyhow) and returned to the resort for dinner, drinks an a bonfire. As I was to get up early for some more diving I was off to bed relatively early (boring).
After getting up way way way to early for my liking (around 8) myself and Ryan (kiwi bloke) were picked up again for another dive. -----see Ryan and I had had a long discussion and a long think about what we wanted to do in terms of diving. The meccah dive would have been the SS Thistlegorm wreck (a world
war 2 supply ship) but it was going to be expensive (wasn't really the issue though), we were going to need to complete two more 'courses' or adventure dives (deep diver and drift diver, again this wasn't the issue as I wanted to do them anyhows), and if we were to complete the adventure dives and then do the thistlegorm we would not be able to climb Mt Sinai (not enough time/if we dove during the day we are not allowed to climb that day). I put a solid few hours into the desicion, and eventually came to the conclusion that there will be other wrecks out there (but as good as this one?!?!?) to explore but there is only one Mt Sinai. Kinda heartbreaking. So the consolation was we would do two adventure dives anyways (deep diver and night diver) and climb Mt Sinai.-----Soooo, we were picked up early and taken to a site called the canyon for our deep water dive. After entering the water of some rocks into the shallows we descended down to around 18m and cruised along parallel to the shore looking amazing coral, fish, etc. The diving region around dahab is quite remarkable, there
is a reef shelf that at low tide may be above the water and at low tide may be a metre under the water. Then there is another section out deeper where there may be a short section of 3 m deep water with coral and fish and then beyond this it drops of into a deep blue abyss with reef continuing down to around 20 m. This varies from spot to spot but each place drops off into the abyss. There is an eerie feeling when swimming above this. As we were swimming just above the part where it begins to drop off, we were mainly cruising above a sand floor with coral reef back towards the shore. Suddenly a massive crevice or canyon appeared in front of us stretching perpendicular to the coastline. The gap ranging from nothing to mostly a few of metres with the odd section opening to maybe 5 or 6 metres, and it was deep. Particularly if you followed it away from the shore, it dropped off as quickly as the rest of the sea floor. Creepy. We descended down into the canyon to just over 30m and swam back along the canyon towards
the shore passing through some narrowish gaps and eventually made contact with he canyon floor, we continued along the canyon to the end of it where we went into a little cave and saw some cool things. We hung there for a little then ascended out of the canyan to immediately above the cave and experienced the air that we had left in the cave filter through the rocks and float up to the surface. It was like rain but it was tiny bubbles going upwards. Breathtakingly beautiful. After getting some underwater pics we ended the dive. And that was that, bam! Now qualified to dive to the limits of recreational diving.
After returning to the resort a group was going snorkelling just off shore from the resort, I couldn't resist, I really belong in water! After a relaxed arvo it was time for my second (technically 3rd) adventure dive, the night dive. I didn't really know what to expect from it or from me as it's a pretty strange and unnatural thing for us to do. But I was excited. We unfortunately had to do the dive at the lighthouse again, being a kinda training course. I buddied
up again with Ryan and the instructor buddied up with a German chick. We entered the water at dusk, we could still see underwater but not very far and only just. Within 10 mins it was almost pitch black underwater. We descended down to around 18 and swam around the reefs. It was incredible. It's hard to describe but the underwater world at night was/is so so so different from the day time. Certain species disappear, other species really come out. Coral fish such as the parrot fish can be seen sleeping in amongst coral (resting on), oblivious to the world you could actually touch them. Crustaceans everywhere, same as lion fish, and Spanish dancers (like big red slugs that can swim in a beautiful way "dancing". Even the soft coral comes out, the coral bed itself changes completely at night with the soft coral spreading it's limbs like ferns in a rainforest. If you shine your torch on them they begin to curl up and retreat back into the hard coral. Another incredibly cool thing we saw was when we all turned off our torches so it was pitch black and thrashed our hands around in the water, somehow
On the way up
Time for a break! these tiny flourescent green lights started shooting about like sparks from a sparkler. They were apparently some sort of plankton. But the coolest thing I guess is not knowing what's away from your torch light, everytime you move your light there could be something cool or scary waiting there to be seen, it's kinda exciting.
10 minutes into the dive I heard a massive bang, sounded like some sort of explosion. I turned to see Ryan kinda in shock with air bellowing out of his kit. We quickly tended to him. The instructor gave Ryan his alternate Air source and shut off ryans air tank and we continued the dive with Ryan clutching onto the instructor. Amazingly everyone remained calm. At the end of the dive we discovered that his high pressure hose linking his tank to his pressure gauge had exploded. It had smashed him in the chest but he thought someone had either kicked him or a fish had ran into him, haha. On returning to the resort we were off to get ready to join the other guys in their drinking games and eventual partying at a nightclub in town!
It was Wednesday afternoon when I
woke up after the previous nights partying, and I had no intentions of doing much at all before our trip to mt Sinai that night. At 10pm or so half of us boarded a mini bus and headed for st catherine. We arrived at around 2 am and slowly began our ascent along an incredibly rocky path with a Sherpa leading the way. I was one of two people dumb enough to not have a torch so I was strategically moving between people with the best torches. The night was warm and silent until we started the singalongs. We took our time on the hike, stopping frequently for the less fit of the group, and for me who had an upset stomach.....great timing. By 5 ish we had reached the summit and we got into strategic points along the ridge for the best view of the sunrise. After dozing off shortly it was tome for the sunrise and shortly after that amazing spectacle it was time for the descent. As the paths were crowded we got the sherpa to show us some shortcuts and we ended up almost running down the entire mountain. It took us around 40 minutes to
descend after an approximate 3 hour ascent. It was kinda stupid running down with the rocky, slippery terrain (how no-one sprained an ankle or hit the deck is beyond me). It was also stupid because at the bottom we had to wait till 9am anyways to enter the st Catherine monastery to see the burning bush. By then everyone was incredibly tired and ready to get back to the resort for sleep so we checker it out quickly and smokebombed it.
As we woke late on the thursday, most people had realized that that night was the last night that the group would be together. So to commemorate the occasion we had a massive party, that started out with drinking games, followed by nightclubbing, followed by wee-hour-of-the-morning pool party and finally finished with a few of us falling asleep by the side of the pool. It's fair to say that we finished with a bang. On the final day I slept most of the day and only rose to go snorkelling one last time and to sort out some arrangements for the following days travel into israel and the nights accomodation in town. Come 9 or 10 pm it
was time to say goodbye to everyone on the tour. It was by far the saddest moment I have had on my trip to date. I had made some incredibly good friends on the tour and it was tough to say goodbye.
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