Trip report: Hurghada Egypt, September 2005
by Amy
Posted on Tuesday, October 18th, 2005 at 8:58 pm CET
Friday 23 September
The first dive on this day was at Fanadir North. We were on the Queen Samira again but this time with a new DM, Waldek. We went down with five other divers plus the DM. Visibility was not what we had gotten used to in the previous days � we could only see 10-15 meters and sometimes lost track of Waldek. We saw one Giant Moray and a Broom-Tail Wrasse. Arthur spotted a Moses Sole when another diver in front of him blew up sand with one of his fins. The Moses Sole was exposed for one second and then buried itself in the sand again. By the boat at the end of the dive we found ourselves in the middle of a huge school of millions of small, silvery fish. The fish were riding the waves and the large groups were undulating as if one.
Fanadir North dive siteOther divers on the boat were dropped off at a different place than we were. They were using torpedoes (propulsion devices). There were some dolphins in the water around them. When we tied onto the buoy at our dive spot, there were two other boats already there, and two snorkelers in the water. There were also some dolphins here, and at one point the people on the boats were trying very hard to get the attention of the snorkelers, because a dolphin was following them! It was neat to see and we hoped we would see dolphins when we were in the water. This was at Fanous East. It was a pleasant dive, first over a coral garden and then back to the boat via the reef wall. We saw a Banded Snake Eel, and a pair of Burrfish (possibly Spotfin Burrfish) in the distance. Again our DM was Waldek, and we swam along with the same group of 5 other divers from the first dive. We kept looking up for dolphins, but we never saw any.
For dinner we walked to Pizza Hut in “New Hurghada”. Afterwards we had some ice cream from the adjoining Baskin Robbins. During the walk back home we bumped into a nice British couple who were just starting their vacation. They asked us how far it was to the Hard Rock Caf� and when we told them it was about an hour walking, they turned around and headed back to their hotel, so they walked with us part of the way. They were going to join a liveaboard the next morning, after having completed their PADI Open Water and Advanced Open Water the year before in Gozo (Malta). They wanted to hear about all we had seen diving in Hurghada. The woman was relieved to hear that we had not seen any sharks.
Friday 23 September
The first dive on this day was at Fanadir North. We were on the Queen Samira again but this time with a new DM, Waldek. We went down with five other divers plus the DM. Visibility was not what we had gotten used to in the previous days � we could only see 10-15 meters and sometimes lost track of Waldek. We saw one Giant Moray and a Broom-Tail Wrasse. Arthur spotted a Moses Sole when another diver in front of him blew up sand with one of his fins. The Moses Sole was exposed for one second and then buried itself in the sand again. By the boat at the end of the dive we found ourselves in the middle of a huge school of millions of small, silvery fish. The fish were riding the waves and the large groups were undulating as if one.
Fanadir North dive site
Other divers on the boat were dropped off at a different place than we were. They were using torpedoes (propulsion devices). There were some dolphins in the water around them. When we tied onto the buoy at our dive spot, there were two other boats already there, and two snorkelers in the water. There were also some dolphins here, and at one point the people on the boats were trying very hard to get the attention of the snorkelers, because a dolphin was following them! It was neat to see and we hoped we would see dolphins when we were in the water. This was at Fanous East. It was a pleasant dive, first over a coral garden and then back to the boat via the reef wall. We saw a Banded Snake Eel, and a pair of Burrfish (possibly Spotfin Burrfish) in the distance. Again our DM was Waldek, and we swam along with the same group of 5 other divers from the first dive. We kept looking up for dolphins, but we never saw any.
For dinner we walked to Pizza Hut in “New Hurghada”. Afterwards we had some ice cream from the adjoining Baskin Robbins. During the walk back home we bumped into a nice British couple who were just starting their vacation. They asked us how far it was to the Hard Rock Caf� and when we told them it was about an hour walking, they turned around and headed back to their hotel, so they walked with us part of the way. They were going to join a liveaboard the next morning, after having completed their PADI Open Water and Advanced Open Water the year before in Gozo (Malta). They wanted to hear about all we had seen diving in Hurghada. The woman was relieved to hear that we had not seen any sharks.
[...] Today we had a practice dive in the Oostvoornse Meer, here in the Netherlands. We hadn’t dived since Hurghada in September 2005, except for Nemo 33 in Brussels two weeks ago. The visibility was 3 to 5 meters, which was better than when we did our PADI Open Water dives in this same water in July last year. [...]
[...] Last week we had our second excellent experience with Colona Divers, this time in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. Colona is a Scandinavian dive operator with shops in Hurghada (where we first dived with them in 2005) and El Gouna in addition to Sharm. We did dives 22-30 with Colona from October 10-15. We should have started our diving on the 8th but I was feeling ill (heat exhaustion) on the evening of the 7th so we decided to join Colona as snorkelers for our first day. Unfortunately there was some miscommunication between the dive shop and the dive masters on our boat. We enjoyed our first snorkeling stop but the next two stops were for drift dives (we were the only snorkelers on the boat) and we were not informed of this - in fact the dive briefing indicated the boat would remain stationary. At the second stop, after swimming around a bit, we noticed the boat had moved quite far away - to the other side of the reef! Alarmed, we quickly aborted our snorkeling and swam quickly to the boat. The divers had a third dive but we stayed on the boat. In retrospect we could have also probably cleared up the confusion at the time but we were spooked and actually not too happy with Colona after that day. [...]