3. Red Sea Safari: sharks, pirates and the odd bruise!

Wednesday 30/8

Back on a dive boat, bare foot with shoes handed in for the week and back into the routine … sleep, dive, eat, nap, and so on. Our itinerary took us far off the coast (100km into the Red Sea) to small pinnacles of land which emerge above the surface and descend hundreds of metres to the sea bed. Today, we’ve been at the site called ‘Brothers’. We were told that there would be whooshing current and mega drift diving to ride … instead, on one dive the current, fortunately, wasn’t whooshing as it was going the opposite direction to the one expected so we had a diving of kicking against it. I thoroughly earned my 3 course dinner after that one!

One dive this morning had almost no current under the sea but what I would describe as a ‘mega whooshing’ one on the surface. This meant that we had to surface in the shelter of the reef and hold on to the mooring line - a line anchored on the reef from the boat. As soon as we left the shelter of the reef, the surface current was extreme. You had to pull hand over hand along the mooring line back towards thee boat then once you got about half way, there was another rope (called the surface current line) tied on that which you had to swap to and then pull yourself back towards the dive platform at the back of the boat. Once about 10m from the boat, the boat boys throw a big bouy out to you - it always avoiding hitting you in the head. The bouy is attached to another rope that you cling on to for dear life as two of crew heave you back against the current and to the ladder and finally onto the boat. Since this is very much a one at a time event, everyone else just has to wait hanging onto the current line on the surface. At this point, the mega current is barraging you along with a little bit of a swell so you keep your regulator in your mouth and your head down and hang on with your legs steaming out behind you, fully horizontal, a bit like a flag in gale! There is always another boat boy sitting about 50m down current watching this from a rib speed boat; his job is to keep an eye on everyone and make sure no one let’s go as there’d be no getting back to the rope - you would absolutely fly with the current. The rib is there to at least charge after you and keep an eye until he can scoop you back out and rescue you. So far, no one has come off the rope… but the currents are mean!

For our final dive today, we were given the choice of the same, fairly easy but not overly amazing dive or a more challenging dive to see a ship wreck. I decided to be brave and have a go at the wreck dive…. The plan was to get dropped off the rib into quite strong current, do a negative entry (which means you roll backwards off the boat with no air in your jacket so immediately start sinking) then turn and kick down hard to the wreck, where there would be some shelter from the current. Fortunately, that bit went to plan but once we got to the wreck, the current was not behaving predictably so we got whooshed around a bit, clonked into each other and pressed up against the wreck. We had to abandon the plan, change direction entirely and drift with the current. Mostly this meant we got whizzed along the reef wall although at one point, there was quite a strong down current pushing you deeper (I knew this because I could feel it in my ears and when I kicked up to ascend a bit and breathed out, my bubbles stayed with me instead of heading to the surface!) we did some hard kicking up for a minute or two to successfully fight the down current and get back to the one that was carrying us much more obligingly along the reef … however, we ended up on the opposite side of ‘Big Brother’ island that we should have been on and to where the boat was parked but fortunately, the excellent rib boys were to the rescue and came and hauled us into the little boats and brought us back to the big one. Our dive guide acknowledged the dive hadn’t quite gone to plan but he said we’d all managed really well and that we’d dived like pirates and he felt proud. I’m not sure how pirates dive; we didn’t plunder any treasures or walk any planks but I’m pretty sure that was a compliment and I was proud of myself for opting to try to challenging dive and managing to do it and not even feeling outside of my ability! I did struggle to haul myself back up onto the rib at the end of the dive so end up in a less than dignified flop over the ladder - I blame this on my vertical challenged-ness … tall people have the leg swing to get their leg up and over the top of the ladder into the boat without catching their tank behind them. Short people don’t; I do have an excellent bruise to show for it too. Proper pirate!

There is a great mix of nationalities and cultures on our boat; in addition to Egyptians there are: Brits, Americans, Swiss, Argentinians, German and Spanish, Swedish and Portuguese. We all converse in English of course! There is also one Chinese girl. Her name may be either Bo or Becca. She generally doesn’t answer to either but when asked for clarification, has given both of these as her name. She usually has to be collected for the dive briefing - because a ringing bell that everyone else gathers for isn’t signal enough, she has almost certainly been dishonest about her level of diving ability / confidence (apparently a common occurrence with Chinese nationals!) and dives in a way that means she ends up either having to hold the guide’s hand in order to ensure her safety throughout most of the dives or with the guide holding onto her jacket to try and keep her in one place and at a constant depth (a much safer approach for the body than a dive profile that continuously goes deep, shallow, deep etc). There is also an Italian girl who when she got annoyed by a boat boy’s innocent mistake and felt the dive guide wasn’t able to correct it (because he was babysitting Bo/Becca), became really cross and passionately gesticulated and shouted at everyone to show her irritation. We’re all fairly stereotypical …. I continue to drink a lot of tea and lecture people on how while adding ice and sugar to horrid Lipton ‘tea’ or drinking hot peppermint brews might be result in delicious (for them) beverages. THEY ARE NOT PROPER TEA!

*****

Thursday 31/8

After another long sail overnight of 12 hours, we arrived to our next dive site - Daedalus. It’s a hug circular reef around a mile in diameter that sits just at the surface of the water at low tide and the British built a lighthouse on many years ago. Shame really; I like a good ship wreck to dive! This site is about hunting for hammer head sharks, something I never seem to have much luck with. Three dives today cruising in the blue just off the reef - no hammer heads, of course, but some big napoleon wrasse, pretty snapper and then a manta ray came by and danced and barrel rolled a little for us. So cool!

*****

Friday 1/9

I SAW TWO HAMMERHEAD SHARKS! I thought I’d be scared but actually I was quite awe struck and they were really amazing. They came below us and circled around a few times underneath us, totally non-aggressively and just having a look, about 10m away then went on their way.

We also visited anemone city and saw the entirety of Nemo’s family! While I was floating looking at them a tiny cleaning wrasse came and pecked at the back of my head - literally cleaned behind my ears, obviously doesn’t feel like I’ve been doing it well enough myself!

*****

Saturday 2/9

We sailed back from the outer ocean to a site slightly closer than land over night. The sea was quite choppy and the swell significant. I know because I went off to bed when we set sail and I got woken up each time we bounced over the swell and I got launched in to the air and bumped back down onto my bed. You get quite narrow beds in the cabins on board - so when the boat rocked the other way, I was a bit worried I was going to get rolled from up against the wall when we rocked one way to straight out of bed and onto the floor when we lurched back the other way! I need a rest and naps between dives today!

For our second dive today, we went to try and spot oceanic white tip sharks up close. We saw a couple of the surface above us on the first dive but not up close. This time, the plan was to hang ‘in the blue’ just off the reef in the hope of attracting the sharks. They say they are a curious breed of sharks who will come very close. I’m relatively sure this curiosity is linked to wondering whether we can be eaten and the closeness may be linked to having a nibble to see! By the time we’d had the dive brief on how to behave around them, how to detect aggression and what to do, I had decided I would not do the dive as it’s everything I’m most fearful of about the sea and it’s depths. However, everyone was really kind to me and saw I was stressed - slightly embarrassingly - and all offered to dive with me! The dive community at its absolute best and why I love it. I braved up and made it on to the dive and was kept in the middle of the group (like the baby elephant that needs protecting, as the Italian girl told me … I wonder if something was lost in translation!). We swam together like a pod of dolphins (AKA shark prey!) and hung vertically (to appear large and less like shark food up close!) while we waited. Unfortunately for everyone else (fortunately for me), the sharks didn’t come. I know it would have been a buzz to see them (had I survived) but I’m equally unsure that I wouldn’t have died of fright or accidentally behaved like a panicked / injured seal and been eaten by the giant toothy monsters so it’s good really that that wasn’t actually my last ever dive!

This evening’s dinner was a BBQ out in the deck, which was deliciously meat heavy - and was a nice respite from the riddles we keep being given to puzzle over ‘for fun’ in the evenings!

Sunday 3/9

Our final dive day. We were in a little shallow bay that is supposed to be beautiful. We didn’t get the benefit as the visibility was so bad with stirred up sand caused by the tide and bad luck so we mostly saw murky water - it was fine for getting up close and personal with the rocks to find critters but was significantly less good for views and wide angle! I collected a couple more bruises heaving myself and my gear back onto the boat in choppy water so my dive collection is complete! After our final dive, the great wash and dry commenced with dive gear hosed down, drained, emptied and dried in the sun. A final evening dinner on the boat of traditional Egyptian food, the name of which literally translates to ‘mixture’ where you pile fried rice, 2 types of pasta shape, fried onions, garlic sauce, chick peas, lentils, tomatoes sauce and option super spicy sauce, mix it all up and eat. Totally vegetarian but otherwise utterly, unexpectedly, delicious! And it was ok because we had beef pie for lunch! A few drinks back on land than the final night on the boat.

All in all, a great week! Now I need a rest.