ESAC trip to Sharm El Sheik
After much anticipation, and struggling to pack dive gear and clothes into our allocated weight allowance, we finally met at Eastwood swimming baths at silly o’clock on the morning of departure. There, we merry 19, were met by our coach, organised by Pat “stride entry extraordinaire” Ryan, and we set off to Manchester airport, finally arriving in Sharm in the late evening. Not too late though to sample the wonders of Oonas dive club’s bar.
The next day at breakfast we met our dive guides, Nick and Johan, then after getting our kit together headed to the harbour for a couple of nice easy local dives, just to get into the way of warm water diving again. Starting in the morning with a nice dive in Middle garden’ where we saw a Ramora, normally attached to sharks, and the usual suspects in the way of Blue Spotted rays, and millions of Antheas.
Second day we headed to the straits of Tiran to look for Hammerheads. Sadly after about 20 minutes hanging around in the blue waiting for them to appear we accepted defeat, and headed back to ‘Jackson reef. In the afternoon we dived Thomas Reef for a wee peek into the very inviting looking canyon. Both dives were truly spectacular with the corals, and massive amount of reef life. After getting back on the boat in the afternoon we spotted a turtle on the surface, which was nice!
That night, in an effort to stay out of the bar for a while, we got back on the boat and headed for the Ras Mohamed National Park, to Dive ‘Temple Reef, so named on account of the towers of coral that have formed there. It’s only fair to say that this was a truly awesome dive. There were loads of lionfish out, and parrotfish resting on the reef. Those with keener eyes (like me) saw scorpion fish, and a Hooded Cuttle fish, which was cool, and provided a wonderful photo opportunity just before it disappeared into a hole in the coral, never to be seen again.
Day four and the best diving of the trip, after a stupidly early start and a fairly pleasant four-hour journey into the Gulf of Suez, we arrived at the site of the wonderful SS Thistlegorm. After another hour and a half of shouting and screaming at the boat crew, our guide Nick finally managed to get us tied onto the wreck.
The sea conditions were once again atrocious, up to around force 5, but there was nothing stopping me diving this wreck for the first time. On the first dive we were led from the midships to the bow, and had a good look around inside the holds to see the Bedfords, motorbikes, and not paying attention to anything resembling sea-life. However on exiting the holds, looking just off the port side there was a rather sizable shoal of barracuda hanging in the current. It should be highlighted at this point that my mum, the now famous diving granny’ of ScotSAC, dived on the Thistlegorm with her own personal guide, called Eddie, who commented on how happy she looked on the wreck, regardless of her initial fears. Mum decided as the re-boarding of the boat was something of an Olympian feat she would sit out the second dive, content with having done it once. It was perhaps a good decision as it turned out to be quite eventful.
After descending the shot we were waiting at the bottom of it for everyone else to descend, and got mightily annoyed when they didn’t. So after waiting for five minutes Nick (the guide) surfaced to find out where they were, and then returned without them and motioned for us to go. Unsure of what had happened, we headed in the direction of the stern.
We bimbled along nicely till we got to a huge pile of shells some of which were simply massive. I was then thrilled to see the two universal carriers (something of a fetish I have) and took plenty of pictures of them, then as we carried on through the captain’s quarters, past his bathroom (complete with bath and sink) I spotted a beautiful scorpion fish, which sat quite happily till 1 took a nice photo of it.
After struggling back onto the boat we found out that the delay at the start of the dive was due to the appearance of another boat just when some of the divers were on the surface, about to descend down the shot-line. The boat appeared from nowhere and pinned them onto our boat, nearly strangling one of our divers with a rope that it was trailing.
The next day we were back in Ras Mohamed National Park, diving at ‘Ras Za-atar’ where I saw my only shark of the week, a smallish grey reef shark swimming about 20 or so meters below us before it disappeared into the blue. Again this was another stunning dive with masses of life, the occasional moray, some lionfish, and indescribably beautiful corals of all different types.
The afternoon dive saw us back in ‘Shark reef though this time we headed round to the site of the Yolanda wreck, which after falling of the side of the reef lies, I believe, at about 700m. Though it left behind its cargo of toilets and baths, and the remains of what is supposed to be the captain’s BMW. Again there were the massive shoals of barracuda and unicorn fish, and was so spectacular that we stayed for another dive during which we saw two crocodile fish together, providing yet again, a brilliant photo opportunity.
The last day people went off and did their own thing. There were a lot of couples on the trip, some of whom went to the beach, others lounged by the pool, and some went shopping. I spent my last day trying to have a conversation with a guy known to us as ’shmoking dude’ who works in the Bedouin bar outside Oonas, and who every night took a measly 10 Egyptian pounds off me, for a shishi with a healthy supply of apple tobacco. So I spent the day lazing in the 40-degree plus heat, drinking beer and smoking a pipe. Then out of the blue ‘the dude’ leapt up and started battering the ground with the magazine he was reading, then he calmly sat back down with a huge grin on his face and announced to me that it was a white scorpion. Well, it was now a dead white scorpion!
And then it was over; back on the plane, over the Alps, and home into Manchester, which apparently was warm. Huh, what do they know! And for next year - who knows? There is talk of Cuba, or Mexico, or Scapa, We’ll see! Which only leaves me to thank Audrey for organising a wonderful trip, and to all the others for making it a holiday I’ll not forget in a hurry, for one reason or another.