Wow! What else can I say?

After so long waiting for the departure date to come around, Carole (Mrs.B) and I decided to leave nothing to chance and booked into a hotel close to Gatwick the night before, we meet up with Adam, Steff and Lucy for a pre-flight meal. After an early start, we arrive at Gatwick in good time to meet up with the rest of the party, Colin, Ally, Adam G, John B & John R.

 The glide path into the new airport at Marsa Alam afforded us some spectacular views of the desert. Arrival formalities completed, we were met in the huge, but empty car park by our hosts who took our kit, I think we all thought it would be the last time we saw our gear, as ten sets of dive gear & ten sets of luggage were loaded onto the roof of a small aging minibus. Darkness descends quickly and by 6 pm, we were able see the moon and stars through the crystal clear sky. After about an hour we pull off the main road and into the dive centre. The centre is a mixture of palm frond roofed buildings and shaded area - leading to the edge of the Red Sea shore 40 metres away. We checked-in and had our passports & dive certifications checked before jumping back into the bus for the 2 minute ride to the Bedouin Valley ‘huts’ which were to be our homes for the next week. The ‘huts’ were not as basic as we were expecting, each with shower, flushing loo and a clean bedroom leading to a small veranda overlooking the desert and facing the sea. No air-con, but electric from 6.00 pm to about midnight to charge batteries. No TV’s, Radios or, ‘phones – total chill-out! After a quick un-pack to find our torches, we made our way to the bar and dining area a short walk away from the huts and past the site for a new decompression chamber. Both the bar and dining areas were traditional carpeted affairs with low tables and cushions on the floor for seating, palm roofed and open side to view the stars. Ice cold Stella, Cola and bottled water were welcomed by all, as the temperature had cooled to around 30 Celsius – the coolest it would be in or, out of the water for the duration of our visit!! After eating, we retired to our huts ready for an early-ish start the next day.

 Day 1 of the holiday proper, Breakfast in sunshine at 7.30 followed by the kit being picked up from the huts and taken to the dive centre by donkey and cart for boarding our dive boat ‘Orion’. The 40m vessel with 6 crew helping us get sorted out for a short trip up the coast where we were asked by the guide to do some quick exercises to establish our competence. As Carole, Lucy and myself had never dived outside the UK before, we were stunned by the clarity of the water. Visibility apparently limitless, 30 degree water temperature and amazing marine life easily won us over. The first of 2 dives scheduled per day was over quickly and we couldn’t wait for the second so, we all took the opportunity to go snorkelling. The second dive took us to a different part of the reef. The coral and fish variety was incredible each turn offering us something different. The second dive over, we were helped aboard for the trip back to base. The expressions of our faces said it all. After a quick lunch and snooze we met at the bar to view the first day’s photos and video footage. The 3 shots to the right show a short nosed unicorn fish changing colour and was defiantly one of the best moments caught on film. This set the pattern for the next few days with starting times varying between 5.30am and 8.30am depending on where we were going. Watching the sunrise over the water was a sight only out done by it setting again at the end of the day over the desert, especially from the boat.
 

Day 2, going to Abu Dabbab a shore dive with 2 dives looking for the Dugong (alas, we didn’t see one) and grazing sea turtles. These were quite large but, passive and we were able to get respectfully close without disturbing them and we were rewarded by them surfacing and then returning to their grazing areas again amongst us.

Day 3, an early start for a bus trip further down the coast towards the Sudanese boarder where we picked up a boat at Hamata. After a three hour trip between numerous reef’s we arrived at Hamata Nature reserve, where we dived through the coral reef’s passages and labyrinth of tunnels to appear in an inner reef area clearly not frequented by divers regularly. This clearly showed the differences between the well-visited outer reef and the virtually pristine inner. During this trip some of us picked up a bug. Sadly the symptoms were pretty bad and by the following morning half the party was suffering.

Day 4, having reduced the ‘active’ diver list, we stayed close to base for most of the day and we satisfied ourselves with shore dives on the house reef, as the sun went down, the light vanished and the reef took on a different appearance, more sinister for me as a novice, but as our dive lights lit the reef it revealed more incredible sights such a saw tooth feather stars.

Day 5, was an early start again hoping to dive with dolphins @ Dolphin House Sumadai National Park.  We did not see any during the dive, but did get a fleeting snorkel with Dolphins over lunch time.

Day 6, the last days diving was by far the most memorable for me; with a trip to ‘Elphinstone’ something I will never forget. An early start and a 4-hour cruise on ‘Orion’ found Lucy spotting the singular Oceanic White we had been told about on the previous evening. This incredible creature majestically swam past the boat whilst we tied up. At some point between the ‘lets get kitted up and get in’ Lucy decided to observe from the boat whilst pointing out this was No. 4 on the list of top shark predator…. now up to this point I was a little nervous, but relatively cool. With everyone else in the water waiting for me, I did my checks, attempting unsuccessfully get my heart rate under 200bpm, looking out over their heads, I saw dark shadows in the water as I proceeded to giant stride into the water. Surfacing to show the “all okay” to the boat I realised that I had almost landed on a shark………  I wonder who was more surprised. Dropping down to10 metre, the view looking back up towards the surface was incredible; there were at least 4 sharks, some with attendant pilot fish. Deciding to take a photo seemed to be a good idea, you know to prove ‘I was there etc’ so composing myself, I saw a 3.5m individual swimming towards us from far off, not trusting myself I gradually backed from full zoom toward wide angle, cursing to myself that the camera field of vision was wrong….  I took the shot, lowered the camera and found myself eye balling what now appeared to be the shark straight out of ‘Jaws’ the movie. As the shark turned slowly away across me and I realised how long the Oceanics’ petrel fins are. These were my first encounters with any sharks of any size. The second dive was memorable for other reasons and I thank John R for his buddying. On the way back to base we had a few boat issues, but it did let us watch the sun go down over the desert and a few hours silently looking up at the milky-way. Sadly, that brought us to the end of the expedition. The photographs we took don’t do justice to what we saw; the DVD filmed and produced by Adam Grumett is fantastic and worthy of the Discovery Channel. It also proved to the blokes in work the “BOF” (Boring–old-fart) still had a few surprises left up his sleeve. Thanks to MDD for organising the trip, to all our dive companions, we certainly enjoyed their company and look forward to the next trip, it will have to be pretty special to beat this one!!

For me one word summed it up ‘Awesome….’

Andy Bowman.