Now you have to understand that I am not a very strong diver so having people around who are ready to look after me is very welcome. AJ is better, my personal DM internee, but at only fortyish dives each we were relative new-comers to the sport.

Anyhow. The trip out was uneventful and as boring as five hours on a big Boeing cattle truck usually is. The visa had gone up to 12 quid and every baggage trolly had a smiling face with a hand out so Hurdgarda had not changed much. The boat has its transport people at the airport to collect you so it is easy anyhow. Yes the baggage handlers want a pound (English) to load your bag on the top of the bus but in that heat I'll pay. Off we went to the dock.

The boat was a good size for diving a long way from port and provides for up to 24 people. Tanks and weights are provided and you get a through briefing on the boat and goverment rules. We waited while some of the party trooped off to the tourist duty free shop to stock up on drink for the duration.

Saterday.
We had dived with Amro Shehata, our guide, before and I regretted not photographing more of his exquisite hand drawn site maps so this time I had the digital camera ready. Click on the maps for more details of the dives we did there and any of my pictures that came out good enough for me to admit to them.
Naturally we started with a check-out dive so Amro knew what he has let himself in for this trip and to get our weights sorted. This was a small reef called Ras Disha. We saw stingray, flat fish, scorpion fish, clown fish, stone fish and an eel farm so it was a lot more than a skill review and practice session.

The second and third dives were at a site called Tobia Arba, otherwize the Seven Pinicles or Ergs. Again we had huge visibility by UK standards, and the place was teaming with life.
This site gave us our first night dive. Now night diving in the UK is not really much fun but in the Red Sea when the day shift turns in the night shift comes on duty. We saw the hunted and the hunters and AJ spotted a sea snake for us. By now we were begining to get to know who was who on the boat.

Sunday
We moved on to Panorama Reef which has a nice big shelf with various species. Most noticable was a moray eel who posed for the camera. At this point I suffered my first problem when the camera line broke and the camera became detached. "Oh look there's a camera drifting past and it looks just like...... mine?" Thankfully I caught it.
While we were diving and then having breakfast the weather improved a bit and the plan was changed to run at once to the Brothers Islands to make the most of it. This was a five and a half hour run in quite heavy seas and seasickness was permitted. I was thankful and quite supprised that I did not suffer as much as I usualy do. (Qwells!)

The Brothers are two adjacent islands. They look like limestone over pillow lava so they must be the fumerols of a long dead undersea volcano. Big Brother has a light house and is hence occupied while Small Brother is aparantly deserted.
We arrived in time for a dive that day but Big Brother gave me a problem. On the ascent after quite a good dive and doing the usual safety stop I got seasick in the surge zone and was sick on the surface. The swell was about one and a half meters and was still surging at 8 meters down. The trip down had finally caught up with me. Amro the guide and AJ went into 'Rescue Mode' which was complicated by the fact that I needed to sit up occasionally to eject what remained of my lunch rather than lie back, like a good casualty, and be ministered too. They did a classic 'dekit the casualty' but my weight belt was trapped by the tank and escaped.
Monday
We stayed at Big Brother for the next day getting in three dives and starting to see sharks. Admitedly, by the end of the trip, we were getting a bit blase about sharks but here they were still exciting. "Wow! A Hammerhead!" I think our first Manta Ray put in an apperance here but I missed it. I missed a lot of big things but staring out into blue water hopefully while ignoring the reef next to me does not come naturally. Frankly give me a reef and I'm like a kiddy with a rock pool.

Tuesday
Small Brother like its bigger sibling has sheer drop-offs to 600-900 meters. It probably has its quota of wrecks too but they are not precariously clinging to its slopes - they have long since slipped into the undivable oblivion of the deep channel. I only did one dive of the three on offer here as I was getting my tummy back on team for the long drag down to Deadalus overnight and enjoying the way the Captain has carefully placed us in the lee of the island.

Wednesday
Daedalus reef is a place for big pelegics but not quite so much at this time of year. We dropped to 40m and waited about hoping for something exciting and got a few sharks and then shallowed off to save air and came back gently down the reef towards the boat. I did two gentle dives and generally got my act back together. The trouble with watching for big stuff out off the wall is that you end up with a selection of blue on blue photographs, occasionally with a diver pointing excitedly into the blue.

Thursday
Rocky Island was another example of what the Red Sea could be like in the north if the coral had been better served. The visibility was low, about 10 meters, but there was lots of little life. I was in take it easy mode not really feeling much back in the swing of things but at least my lunch was staying on board.

Friday
The journey to St. Johns was very stormy so the Captain and the guide pulled us up at a place called Sir Knacker (I'm not kidding) to do a dive that afternoon and another night dive as the weather might make St. Johns undivable. This was a large reef with a 20m bottom and life like a tropical fish tank. The coral was nice and the usual stupid numbers of gold fish swarmed about.
We had a night dive here dropping of the back of the boat and just mooching about the local reef we were mored too. Fun and not demanding.

Saterday
When we arrived at St. John's Reef you could see why the captain was edgy. Look at Amro's picture on the right. This is a purpose designed ship killer. It is vertical sided and a meter or two under the water with sides that go down forever. We crept up on the GPS with the crew hanging off the bow trying to spot it. Finally the water colour changed a bit. The Captain breathed a serious sigh of relief and we tied off to the top of it and let the wind hold us off. This is our most southerly point at 800Km from Hurdgarda and was, naturally, a wall dive populated by morays,some big wrass and a selection of small sharks skulking around the reef. We didn't hang around and motored back towards the coast, leaving the deep channel behind.

Sunday
Shab Mahsur was a RIB trip round to the far side of the reef and then a drift back taking in a plateau covered in ergs with some rather interesting caverns in them. Straight back into the boat and off at once to the next dive site as we have a lot of distance to cover and the weather is running against us. Shalkamy Explorer I makes about ten knots so we need time to get places and the sea can get rough.

Abu Galawa offered us a place to snorkel as it was sheltered and some people got to play with the Scubapro scooter. There were dolphins about but I don't think any of our swimmers saw any. The dive was quite a nice wreck although its origins are unknown. The guide book points out that it was clearly not a 'dashed on the rocks' wreck but a tug that got stuck and slowly holed and sank. It is nice to see the whole wreck for a change. The coral growth indicates it is probably a just post war sinking. Some people had a look inside but this was as an excercise in seeing who had moved in rather than nautical archeology.

Our night dive was Amata (or maybe Hamata). A coral grarden with lots of life that was more inquisitive of us that we were of it. There was a moray on the prowl weaving his way through the coral heads with a snake like motion rather than skulking in a hole like normal. There was also a selection of squid both within the coral and in the open water giving the dive a rather etherial feel.

Monday
AJ and I resolved to be out on the first RIB at Shab Sharm as the story was always that the first group out saw more things. Perhaps when a boat load of bubbling tourists arrive the big preditors think 'Oh grief' and coast off into more distant waters and leave us to it but it was not to be. Nothing large glided past but the reef was its usual excelent self. I never did see a manta but AJ did.

Shab Samadai was a shallow restfull dive. There was a nice swim through on an erg to play with and the anemone - clown fish team were out in force. We amused ourselves by doing a triangular dive on compasses and when we decided we were back to our start point, now where is the boat? It was over our heads.

Shab Marsha Alem was a nice dive at dusk with a shark and stingrays. We tried to be smart and compass navigate it but the lights on the boat were a bit of a give-away. As we are getting more north now the crown of thorns startfish were begining to appear. Amro warned us that there is nothing you can do about them. Being starfish they are virtually indestructable and if attacked lay eggs so the rule is hate them from a distance.

Tuesday
Another nasty navigation exercise for the captain but not because you couldn't see it but because there was a serious sea running. Amro could not make time to draw his usual beautiful map so we were breifed from his notebook. AJ was tired out so I dived with one of the others and followed Amro who found us a couple of big sharks. When we ended we made a slow ascent and moved along the reef at 5ish meters then moved out clear of the reef to wait for the RIB.
Today there was a problem. We were not quite where they were looking and there were problems elsewhere so we had to sit and bob about for quite a while before we were collected. Only later did we discover that a large shark had been intimidating some of our party and even later that a shark that had been previously fed here has attacked another boat's RIB. Perhaps this was something we were better off not knowing at the time.

Wednesday
A complex day as it was my daughters 21st birthday. However we were now back on the tourist track so the mobile phone worked and we could plug in the laptop and eMail and post to newsgroups again. I know I'm sad but an adict must have his fix.
The Sheher Safargar Reef was a bit the worse for wear with the crown of thorns star-fish eating the coral. It would be good but we were a bit spoiled by now after the pristine waters to the south.

This was the other end of the same reef and we did a dive before lunch and a night dive. It was noticable that the number of takers for a night dive was begining to drop. We trundled about and photographed some sea urchins and tried to pretend we were navigating by compass but again the lights on the boat made it a bit pointless.

Thursday
We made out last two dives at Shab Shear so we could have 24 hours to gas off before the flight home. Amro went out in one of the RIBs with his snorkel and had to improvise the achoring arangements. This was heroic diving to watch. There was quite a sea running and I think the ropes were missing from the approved mooring points and as we were a big boat we needed to be secure.
We were dropped on the seaward side of the reef and came back round over the plateau and back down the leeward wall. A good site to end on but I wasted a lot of time trying to photograph some magnificent fan worms under an overhang who were camera shy, or more likely shy of things that blow noisy bubbles.

Well next year Amro hopes to have his own boat and, as it is often said the instructor is more important the agency, here the guide is more important than the operator. I would dive with Amro anywhere, off anything. I cannot realistically offer more praise than that. Two fantastic weeks.

In case you are wondering... I have no comercial connection with Shalkamy. I have done much of my training with Newhaven Scuba but I am not on the pay-roll, not even as a web hacker. I paid full wack for our holiday and am pleased to say I would do so again. This is my way of saying thank you.