Egypt Day 17: Lionfish, Rays and Eels, Oh My!

We awoke early to grab a quick breakfast before the bus ride to the marina. At 8:30 we met Giuseppe, our divemaster for the morning and Dave, the divemaster teaching the advanced open water course to one of our fellow divers, Tom. Dave is the quintessential British hippie expat, regaling us with tales of his travels throughout southeast Asia and opining on everything from the quality of beer in various countries to the drug cultures of the countries in the region. Great guy, loads of fun.

Dave leads us out to the dock, where enormous dive boats are crammed cheek to jowl waiting for the morning tourist crowd. There were easily fifty or more boats moored at the dock, the vast majority ninety feet long or more. Our vessel was the Azure, a mere seventy-five feet long but more than suitable for our small crowd. Once we were all on board, we set off to our destination, Ras Burg.

A bit of background here: Ras Mohammed is Egypt's first and only national park. The diving here is supposed to be second to none, so needless to say we're very excited to be here. Dave informs us that we're trying someplace new today, someplace that was only recently added to the list of known dive sites. None of the guides had been there, so we were guinea pigs of a sort. Given the number of dive boats out there, we weren't opposed to a site where we might be the only divers in the water!

After a brief but pleasant sail, we assembled our gear and splashed at the dive site. If you've never been diving before, it's difficult to describe the sensation of breathing underwater. On the one hand, there's a very technical, mechanical aspect to it. As a diver, one is constantly aware of the hiss of air, the action of one's regulator and the mass equipment on one's back. However, all of this soon fades into the background as the magic of the experience begins to take over. Imagine floating, weightless, in middle of the world's best aquarium. Hovering over (or in this case, alongside) a coral reef is better than any glass-bottom boat, better than any fish tank - you can reach out your hand and watch swarms of fish go from acting independently to collectively as they perceive a threat. We saw blue spotted rays, innumerable reef fish and coral that defied description. The higlights were a small grouper nestled back among the coral (only four feet long) and a moray eel that was at least as large being cleaned by several smaller fish. The eel was the best - he was quite calmly floating about six feet from our masks! As we waited to board the boat, we also saw a good sized eagle ray (spotted like a leopard) gliding along below us.

Upon surfacing, we were informed by the dive crew that this site 'wasn't very good' and they would be 'tearing that page out' of the guide book! I wish we'd had time to go to one of the 'good' sites! At any rate, we decided then and there that we wanted to trek out to Dahab to dive two of the best sites in the area, the Blue Hole and the Canyons. We signed up for the day trip (taking place the day after tomorrow) on the boat ride back. Once back at the hotel, we had a lovely lunch at the poolside cafe. We spent the afternoon in the room relaxing and writing blog entries (see? we love you people), then grabbed a brief nap before heading off to dinner.

We decided to try the Asian restaurant at the hotel, named Blue Ginger. The food was lovely, though a bit overpriced (even by western standards). Once we'd finished dinner, we retired to the suite (I love saying that) for the evening. Check out Mel's blog for the next installment, Chillin' Like a Euro-Villian.