Feb 25th, 26th, and 27th – Diving the Red Sea

The feeling I got from the main drag in Dahab was much like the backpacker geared streets I’ve seen in Asia lined with shops selling the local junk and restaurants serving mixed local and western food at prices that are above what you should be paying in X country, but low enough that it still seems cheap for most travelers. Dahab and the Sinai peninsula in general is a bit quiet these days as many countries have it listed as a high risk area. In fact, I would find out that the bridge just 50meters from my hostel had been the location of a bombing 2 years earlier that killed several people.

The first morning I was intent on figuring out my dive plan. I had looked at prices and had heard that I would need my advanced dive cert in order to dive the most famous sites in the area. The price for advanced was reasonable on world standards and included 5 dives, I was also paying less than 2 USD a night for a bed which helped defray costs. As I wandered through the dive shop(at my hostel) in the morning, before I had a chance to talk about the cert, one of the foreign employees asked me if I wanted to head out that afternoon to go on a free dive. I couldn't turn that down, so I sat at a cafe and had a sheesha and coffee while I waited.

I was excited to get wet in the Red Sea and the first dive was a nice warm up. The main difference for me for the diving there was that all the dives in Dahab are shore dives. Once we were in though, it was great. The water had about 60ft of visibility and warm enough, though we didn't see anything spectacular (most interesting being a puffer fish 5x larger than any I’ve ever seen), it was an all around nice dive.

When we got back to the shop, we talked about the advanced course. The dive master who was with me on the afternoon dive invited me to join a guy who had started his course the day before and do a night dive with them that night. I agreed and I spent the afternoon lounging.

I met the other guy, who I'd end up diving and hanging out with the next few days. An Aussie about my age, who turned out to be a cool guy. The two of us and 3 others prepared to head out on the night dive just out front of the shop together.

I have been on a good handful of night dives, but this one was interesting because of the buoyancy control needed for the shallow water beach entry and exit. When we were getting in they told us to keep off the grass once we submerged and when we got down I knew why. There were dozens of lion fish....everywhere. I've seen plenty of lion fish and they aren't aggressive nor dangerous, but I wouldn't want to smack my belly on or kick one. I made sure to stay in a comfortable position above them. That was the highlight in addition to my favorite activity at night of playing with phosphorescent plankton and swimming around with no flashlight. We also had to do some night navigation skills for our course.

After the dive, I had dinner with my new dive buddy and chilled out a bit before getting to sleep as the next day we'd be doing both of the famous sites in the area.

The next morning we got ready to dive at the reasonable hour of 9am and headed by car out to the first dive site. It was called canyon, because in fact there was a canyon that bottomed out at about 30meters. This was in theory my deep dive for the advanced course, but I have spent lots of time at that depth. We spent the majority of our bottom time doing the obligatory skills then had a brief poke around the canyon before heading for shallow water. It was a nice formation, but it wasn't mind blowing.

The following dive was just a short drive further along the coast and is the crown jewel of the area. It is one of several famous dive sites in the world dubbed the “Blue Hole.” It is an amazingly odd formation, a nearly perfectly circular coral pit more than 130 meters deep just feet off the beach. We had to wait, however, for a couple hours before jumping in due to the depth of our previous dive. When it was time to go, the dive didn't disappoint. The entry was down the beach a couple hundred meters from the hole and it turned out that the hole wasn’t the highlight at all. The entry was a near vertical swim-through that popped out at 25 meters or so over what I would call a world class wall. It was about 600 meters deep below us and the vertical wall was teeming with life. Nothing particularly note worthy, but this is my favorite type of dive and I enjoyed exploring the corals and ridges up close. after spending 20 mins or so swimming along the wall we arrived at the hole and swam up over the edge and in. It is a very cool formation, but the wall on the inside does not support as much life as the outside wall. We had our safety stop in the center, simulating blue water diving before heading to shore.

It was enough diving for the day and I looked forward to getting back to the hostel to just relax. I spent the afternoon chilling out and eventually crashed out pretty early.

My dive partner left the next morning for his next destination and all the diving I had left was the navigation dive for my course and then one afternoon fun dive. The nav course went surprisingly well. I never thought of myself as handy with the compass, but I got through all of the drills with relative ease and within the normal margin of error with air to spare. The afternoon dive was nothing special, but it was relaxing and we saw a couple of nice eels.

I wanted to go that evening to Mt. Sinai and climb it for sunrise, but because of its relatively high elevation, it is a decompression risk to climb it within 18 hours of diving. So I was forced to put it off for the next morning and do the day trip.