Diving in the Red Sea

Diving in the Red Sea

At the start of 2021, it was decided to sort through the mountains of boxes we have stored in out garage. Quite a few of these boxes are slides. Both my wife - Marie - and I are keen photographers and before the age of digital photography, we used to take slides. Many of the overseas trip photos are on slides. So now, the question is, what do you do with hundreds and hundreds of slides? They take up space - even when you remove them from the magazines and pack them into boxes. Now you have boxes of slides which are very difficult to look at. Quite some time ago, I bought a slide scanner and started to scan the slides into a digital format. This was a mission all of it its own. It would have taken the best part of 100 years to get all of the slides scanned! It was very, very slow and every spect of dust on the slide was also scanned in. There is now an App which you can get for the iPhone called -"Slidescan". The App is set up to make use of the backlighting from a laptop. I have tried that and was not very happy with the results. I have a very old slide viewer - which is basically just a light box. I have found that this works pretty well. Yes - some of the slides do not scan nicely and the colour seems to change, but at least you can get a reasonable digital copy of the slide and you can see the slides which have been scanned without having to unpack the slide projector. I can also use these in my blog!

Clean water in the Red Sea and lots of fish

So what has this to do with a diving trip to the Red Sea? While sorting through the slides, I came across the photos from our trip to Egypt in 2003. There were quite a few photos taken on the dives. So let's start at the very beginning - a very good place to start (in the words of Julie Andrews)! There was a conference in Cairo (The World Veterinary Poultry Association congress) and I was attending and presenting at this conference and Marie when along. After a most enjoyable stay in Cairo and visiting the main sites, it was time to move off to Hurgarda where we had booked a 7 day stay in a hotel which included 10 dives in the Red Sea.

 

Our first surprise on this trip was the hotel. We paid quite a bit for a very crummy hotel in Cairo and the hotel we were staying at in Hurgarda, which included the dive package – was quite a bit cheaper – so we were expecting the worse. It was a great hotel – I think it was called “Dolphin Inn” or something similar. Excellent rooms – very clear and neat and great food. 

 

The diving – which was the main reason we were there – after all, was fantastic.  The diver masters – a Russian couple – were very nice and after the first few dives, they established that we were quite experienced divers – and we could do our own thing. Crystal clear water and teeming with fish. Really great diving.

 

Russian dive master

Marie does not use air! When my bottle is done – she still has about half her tank left. On one of the dives – my bottle was empty and we made our way back to the ladder of our boat. Marie proceeded to sit on the floor of the Red sea and refused to do out. Here is the proof! 

Marie sitting on the floor of the Red sea waiting for her air to finish!

 

The best of all was when she was attacked by a clown fish! This was around the time that the movie “Finding Nemo” was showing and everybody just loved the little clown fish (anemone fish). We found one close to him anemone. Marie delighted in playing with him with her finger. After she had teasing the fish for a while – he attacked her! This tiny little fish was biting her on her forehead. So vicious was the attack, that Marie ending up flat on her back with this tiny fish attacking her – so funny. I did not get a photo of the actual attack – as I was laughing too much – and laughing under water with a regulator in your mouth is not for the faint hearted! 

Teasing the "killer" clown fish

Poor little guy

 

We did 10 amazing dives – each one better than the next.  There was one really scary dive. This was a wall dive and we had to get into the water off the moving boat. The wall was on the left hand side and we had to meet at the wall. Once in the water – I could see nothing! In was like jumping into a washing machine – not that I really know what that is like as I have never done that! It is amazing how quickly you can suck a tank of air dry when you are hyperventilating from panic! I managed to calm myself and got to the required depth and moved to the left to find the wall. You will not know the wonderful feeling when the coral filled wall came into view! With my frantic panic attack, I was quite far ahead of the rest of the divers – but all’s well that ends well. Turned out to be another great dive.

Spot the jelly fish

 

Diving in the Red Sea is a must do experience for any scuba diver. There are still some good dive sites to visit and hopefully – while we can still move – we will be able to do another diving trip to the Red Sea.