Hurghada

We arrived at the hotel in Hurghada to find ‘refurbishments’ taking place – these seemed to involve knocking it down and starting again. Nevertheless we settled into two of the villas in the more peaceful part of the hotel and sorted our kit for the next day. After completing all the paperwork and meeting our dive guides on the first morning, we boarded our boat and enjoyed our first journey over deep blue water and under clear blue skies to reach a small area of reefs.

The first look down through clear blue water to the bottom fifteen metres below is always a thrill, especially if you are used to murky, cold Scottish waters. We descended slowly in our group with everyone in sight (making life so much easier for guides and instructors) and everyone’s eyes wide open at the amazing underwater scenery. Hugo, Jamie and George had to complete their Ocean Diver training and so basic skills were practised towards the end of the dive and they all passed with flying colours.

After plenty of post-dive stories and the usual excellent lunch prepared by the crew, a few minutes of calm descended on the boat until the boys realised that boats are good for jumping off and warm Red Sea water is rather good to jump into. Jumps progressed into dives and a competition developed based largely on the size of the splash and the pain involved rather than style. Then we moved a short distance to another part of the reef and enjoyed the second dive of the day in equally stunning surroundings.

Diving

And so the days progressed. As one pupil commented on a previous trip, ‘Like Groundhog Day, but the good version.’ This was true for us all, except Tim. On the first dive on day two, he perforated his eardrum on ascent. Whilst not a serious injury, it required a doctor’s diagnosis and then the bad news that Tim would not dive again for the rest of the trip. Yet he stayed amazingly positive, made the most of his time by snorkelling (with an ear-plug to keep his ear dry and free of infection), and still managed to see the turtle as it swam upwards from our diving group below.

We dived small reefs, vertical reef-walls which dropped off into the big blue, drift dives where we slowly flowed with the current, and a small wreck which we could swim in and out of. The sharks kept their distance just out of view but plenty of moray eels, lion-fish, rays, angel-fish and Nemo’s cousins kept us company.

Andrew and John completed their Sports Diver training with a rather public demonstration of rescue skills just off the hotel’s beach which went well until John realised he had lost his mask. The ensuing palaver of four of us trying to find a colourless mask in murky sandy water would have no doubt entertained the sunbathers for a while.

On day five, we played up to the camera both above and below water as a video of our group was made. The underwater line-up was particularly impressive and we were all pleased with the final version, which will be an amusing memory of the trip.

On Land

The pupils sampled the Egyptian delights of Hurghada in the evening whilst the instructors drank unhealthy quantities of Arabic coffee and got hooked on backgammon, which is the usual entertainment in the pavement cafés each evening. Some unusual Egyptian gifts were bought, and a selection of particularly tacky ones handed out as prizes to the pupils on the last evening.

Final Day

The final day has to be free of diving to allow full decompression before flying so with the option of lazing by the pool or beach cast aside, we wrapped our heads in scarves Arabic-style, slapped on lashings of sun-cream, revved up the engines and headed off into the desert on quad bikes. What a hoot. Racing was not allowed which was probably a good thing since the staff would have no doubt cast all caution and restraint aside in order to be the fastest, but it was great fun. We returned to base covered in dust, and parched-dry but well and truly converted to the delights of loud, fast and seriously environmentally unfriendly machines.