Hurghada
 The already qualified divers (Rory, Barney, Jamie and
myself) headed off to the pier each morning to board the
boat, lather on the sun cream and try to get used to the
idea of clear blue skies, clear blue waters and not much to
do except dive, sunbathe, eat and chill — not the normal
Academy week then.
Our first dive on an isolated reef an hour offshore from
Hurghada set the scene for the week ahead. Two dolphins
were spotted on the surface. This is far from usual, and
we were all keen to get in the water to see if we could
dive with them. Our luck was in: a single dolphin appeared
five times, keeping its distance but clearly not put off by
our presence. I spent much of the rest of the day trying
to convince the boys that diving with dolphins is a pretty
rare occurrence for this part of the Red Sea. I suspected and anything less would disappoint them.
But the Red Sea
underwater life did its best to show off with moray eels,
puffer fish, parrot fish, crocodile fish, blue-spotted rays
and the myriad of other species of colourful fish and corals
all milling around in warm, clear, blue water.
We arrived back onshore late each afternoon to hear
the tales from the trainees — the usual problems with earclearing
for a few, the struggle to remember all the theory
for the tests, and the anticipation of the first sea dive to
be completed on Day 3. Unfortunately Rory’s diving came
to a halt on the morning of Day 3 as he perforated his
eardrum, possibly a result of only just getting over a bad
cold, although it was strange that he had managed four
dives with no problems. He spent the rest of the week
on the boat developing by far the best suntan of all of
us.
Meeting up with the trainees that afternoon gave me
another one of those Priceless Moments. Most of them
had completed their first sea dive that afternoon and the
buzz in the bus as we were taken back to the hotel was electric. The whole dictionary of the latest teenage words
to express something good came into play. ‘Immense’
seemed to best sum it up. If any justification were needed
for the time and effort needed to run such a trip, this was
it. Twelve new converts to the sport of diving.
The Hurghada nightlife scene has changed over the
last few years with the small restaurants in the old town
closing as the ‘all-inclusive’ deals in hotels take over their
business. The souk in the old town provided plenty of good
shopping opportunities but we found the best restaurants
were the ones close to our hotel in the newer part of
town. Unfortunately, it does not have the same Arabic
character and is becoming increasingly targeted towards
Russian tourists and their curious tastes in clothing and
souvenirs. However, Lachlan, Brodie and Josh would like to
recommend strongly the restaurant they visited in the old
town. The freshly-made lemon juice was delicious and the
chicken dishes were superb and well worth the 24 hours heard ‘but it was really good’ claims in between visits to
the loo did not convince the rest of us to sample their
restaurant’s delights.
With pool training complete and all theory tests
passed, the whole group converged on one boat for the
final three days. We headed south for an hour to dive off
a headland called Ras Disha. I had dived here three years
previously and remember it being an isolated headland
with no sign of life onshore but plenty underwater. The
five massive new hotels now filling the shoreline are a sign
of how rapidly the Egyptian Red Sea Riviera is developing.
Each year I return, more and more dive and snorkel boats are evident around the reefs and, worryingly, the Marine
Reserve around the Giftun Islands has been abandoned
and there are plans for hotels to be built on the islands.
Whilst most divers follow the divers’ code of not touching
anything underwater to avoid damage to reef ecosystems,
not all are so careful, and we saw numerous snorkellers
walking on the reef top, which kills the coral. I fear for the
preservation of the amazing reefs around Hurghada and
we may well move further south down the Red Sea coast
on future trips — although I am well aware that we will be
encouraging the development to spread further afield.
On our second day together as a whole group, Priceless Moment Number Three pops up. Pottering around some isolated reef outcrops, with my buddy Barney doing his utmost to conserve air and get his first one-hour dive bagged, we came upon a huge moray eel sheltering under a large table coral. This would have been the highlight of the dive had we not turned around to see four dolphins swimming a few metres away from us. One of them peeled off from the group and slowly encircled the two of us, within touching distance, looking at us eye-to-eye, showing as much curiosity in us as we had in it. |
Epic
 There was a moment of fear as it approached — it was a large dolphin completely at home in its environment and I am always well aware of how out of place we are underwater. But it was calm and slow as it circled us until it slid off effortlessly to join the others and disappeared into the big blue. Then
all hell let loose as Barney and I did all sorts of ‘Wasn’t
that epic?’ signals with eyes popping out of our masks. We
managed to squeeze the hour out of Barney’s tank with
nothing else underwater being of much interest after our
close encounter with the dolphin. On the surface we went
through the verbal ‘Wasn’t that epic?’ routine. Others had
also seen the dolphins but not as close. Dr Mitchell would
however like it to be noted that although he didn’t see the
dolphins, he did see a very large sea slug.
Still on a dolphin high, three of us headed off on a boat
that evening to do a night dive. It’s not quite as mad as it
sounds. Certainly being underwater in the dark is a very
different experience compared to the clear, blue comfort
of the daytime, but different fish are active at night and
you notice much more as all you can see is what is lit up
by your torch beam. The highlight was a Spanish dancer
which is a bright red, 10cm-long frilly sea slug that is freeswimming
at night. The lion fish are also active nocturnal
hunters and they often go for fish that you shine your light
on. As the boys’ tanks emptied a bit quicker than usual,
we reached the surface before the rest of the group. We
had a short swim to the boat with very eerie light patterns
playing underwater from the other divers’ torches — at such moments you don’t want to have too vivid an imagination
and start wondering what else is below you in the water.
The final day’s diving always comes around too quickly.
You’ve settled comfortably into the routine, the tan is
starting to make an appearance, memories of weather in
Scotland in October have receded, you’ve forgotten what
clouds look like and hour-long dives have become the
norm, with a large lunch being the only thing that stops you
being in the water all day. The boys were paired up into
buddy groups and with only distant supervision from the
instructors, they planned and managed their own dives.
They all did brilliantly — a testament to Emperor Divers’
excellent instruction and the boys’ own hard work.
Emperor Divers put on a beach barbeque that evening,
the boys received their qualifications, Cat arranged a few
rounds of killer pool and a great night was had by all. Cat
and Simon had nothing but praise for the boys — they
worked hard, listened well, were polite and respectful at
all times and were a great pleasure for the instructors to
work with. A real credit to the Academy.
Since we cannot dive on the day before flying, we
headed off into the desert on quad bikes. An extremely
hot and dusty two hours later, after Zander made good
friends with a camel and with Lachlan a bit the worse for
wear after failing to hold on to the bike tightly enough, we
retired to the pool after packing our bags in preparation
for leaving.
My poolside club sandwich had arrived and I
had just let the thought flash through my head that the
trip had gone well, when I got the phone call from Mark,
our Regal dive rep, that our flight had been delayed,
possibly by as much as ten hours. This turned into twentyfour.
We moved hotel that evening and messages were
relayed home about the delay — Dr Mitchell’s contract
mobile phone came in rather handy as mine rapidly ran
out of credit. Everything arranged for us in Egypt was
brilliant and we had a very enjoyable extra day by another
hotel pool. The difficulty was that the responsibility of
the airline and travel company was only to get us back
to Gatwick. Getting back to Edinburgh from there was up
to us, and we had missed our Gatwick hotel booking and
domestic flight. All flights were full for the next three days
due to a combination of English half-term and the Rugby
World Cup Final in Paris.
Getting a group of sixteen home
was going to be interesting, and this is where MasterCard
came into play. We managed to rope in help from home to
make another Gatwick hotel booking and David Standley
saved the day by booking us train tickets from London.
Considering the dilemma, the return journey went
remarkably smoothly — due in no small part to the
goodwill of others and the good humour of the group. Mark
managed to get just about all of us upgraded to premium
class on the flight home — his thanks for us being such an
amenable group! We found our Gatwick hotel for the night
and navigating across London the next morning on public
transport to King’s Cross went smoothly, although it was the call of duty and allowed us onto the Edinburgh train
early so we could get seats together. Of course there were
engineering works, so the journey took twice as long as
normal, but we all got home in one piece, late on Sunday
afternoon, and ready for the start of the second half of
term the next day.
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