EL Gouna 2000
The first series of four pictures were taken in the Red Sea during a land-based trip from El Gouna in April 2000.
El Gouna is a small, new resort, a few miles from Hurghada. Major development was occurring around the resort during our visit, however, this did not detract from our enjoyment, further more the development that is taking place is both sympathetic and inoffensive. The Egyptians are making a reasonable fist of turning El Gouna in to an up market resort. The small town suited our needs, there were just enough restaurants and bars to keep us amused for a week and refreshingly, almost a complete lack of hawkers.
We stayed in the Three Corners Rihana Hotel which is a modest, modern 3* establishment. It was new, clean with adequate facilities. We would not hesitate to stay there again.
At the time of our visit there were two main dive stores in El Gouna, Dive Tribe and TGI. We booked a weeks diving with TGI who are based in the Hilton Hotel complex. They have one fast new day boat, a PRO 48 that takes less than 1.5 hours to reach the Thistlegorm, and the usual supply of locally chartered Red Sea Day boats. Local crew and European staff were all helpful and friendly.
Tenerife 2000
The second series are from our trip to Tenerife in September 2000 when we were based
in Las Galletas. What can we say about Las Galletas, it's hot, cheap and just far enough away from Playa de las Americas! The object of this trip was an inexpensive dive trip, and as such it really hit the mark. There are dozens of dive stores in and around Las Galletas most providing RIB diving from the harbour. We booked a weeks diving with Tenesubmarine, a Belgian run organisation, who proved efficient, friendly and close to the harbour! The diving, as you would expect, is not awe inspiringly spectacular. However we enjoyed it, especially "The Rays", where three of the four photos were taken, and we would recommend the trip to anyone seeking an economical relaxing getaway. One word of advice though, stay off the Pampero!!
Hurghada 2000
Our third series are from our December 2000 trip, another land based holiday to the Red Sea. This time we stayed in Hurghada at the Three Corners Empire Hotel. The Three Corners was OK, situated about 15 minutes bus ride away from the harbour in a more densely populated part of town making eating out less of a chore. We booked five days diving with Easy Divers who are based at the Three Corners Village who provided a fantastic local guide and a courtesy bus from our hotel to the harbour. Unfortunately the weather, while not bad, prohibited us from venturing north and we were restricted to "local" dive sites, but these still provided the sort of spectacle that takes us back to the Red Sea.
Sharm El Sheikh 2001
The following set of pictures are from our Red Sea trip in May 2001. We decided we would give Sharm a go having never been. We have mixed feelings about Sharm, we have been reluctant to go as it is now considered a mainstream tourist resort and sure enough it has all the trappings. McDonalds, The Hard Rock Cafe etc, in fact one local described the Na'ama Bay area as Disneyland! Compensation is by way of a good selection of restaurants and we have never eaten better in Egypt.
We booked our accommodation at The Sonesta Beach Hotel that was very pleasant indeed. It is not the most modern of hotels in Na'ama Bay but has fared very well. The hotel has a "Moorish" theme extending to the air-conditioned rooms that are not quite up to the quoted 5 star rating. Our diving was booked with TGI following our good experience in El Gouna. The dive centre is not as extensive as the facility at El Gouna (a new centre is due to open in June) and we were the only guests for the duration of our six days diving. This meant that we shared a boat with another dive centre that were also low on guests. This was to our advantage as we had our own personal guide for each and every dive enabling diving at our pace. Both the guys we met from TGI were excellent hosts and dive guides. The diving did not disappoint, Ras Mohamed was great but our favourite without any doubt was Tiran. We completed five dives on the various reefs at Tiran from where two of the pictures come.
Shalkamy Explorer 1, 2001
These pictures are from our October 2001 liveaboard trip to the Red Sea.
We finally took the plunge and decided that we would book our first liveaboard, The Shalkamy Explorer 1 from Hurghada. The trip was arranged by our pals at Aquatica Diving through Scubaway. The Shalkamy 1 far exceeded our expectations of liveaboards, we had pre conceived ideas of cramped conditions and had prepared ourselves to put up with basic conditions in exchange for some quality diving. Once on board the 36 metre boat, with 13 staff to cater for 17 guests, we were pleased to find that our cabin possessed all the trappings of a modern hotel room, air conditioning, fridge and en suite facilities. Our expectations were again surpassed by the meals we were served, no Michelin stars but breakfast, lunch and evening meal were all of a very acceptable standard and variety.
We decided upon a liveaboard for the diving and were not disappointed, with three or four dives every day. Again we had thought that there we would have a lot of time on our hands throughout the day for reading and sun worship, this was not the case. By the time four dives had been completed including kiting up, de-kiting and briefing, three meals taken and an hour or two in the evening for lager, there was very little time for anything else. Our boat took in a northern agenda diving many of the wrecks in the area including three of the four sites at Sha'ab Abu Nuhas as well as the Dunraven, the Thistlegorm and the Rosalie Moller. Highlight of the week for us were probably the night dives, the experience of being engulfed by a bait ball while on the line at five meters returning from the Thistlegorm is difficult to describe, although the memory remains clear. Unfortunately I did not have the camera on that dive.
Lastly thanks to Colin for the squid picture.
Maldives 2001
These four pictures are from our December 2001 trip to the Maldives.
Not the Red Sea??!! Well it had to happen sooner or later, and we didn't want any disappointments so we thought we would try the Maldives and with the onset of the Northeast Monsoon season we had hoped to catch a glimpse of the Manta Rays.
We chose Villamendhoo (or rather it was the only acceptable resort left at the travel agent), which is on the South-eastern corner of the Ari Atoll. Villamendhoo is considered a large island at 900 meters in length, but despite rumour of all the 130 bungalows being occupied the island did not seem crowded. The accommodation and meals were of good quality and the island was typically Maldivian - white sand beaches, palm trees and turquoise waters.
Our dive pack was booked from the UK with Werner Lau, a German run organisation, which gave us the option of diving the house reef whenever we wanted or taking the boat (Dhoni) trips, of which there were between 3 and 5 daily. We dived the house reef on two occasions when we didn't want to take the boat, but due to coral bleaching in the area this was pretty unexciting. In fact several of the boat tips we went on took us to reefs that had also suffered very badly, and as a result there was a lot of dead coral. It was not all bad news though, several other sites that we arrived at by Dhoni were very good indeed and provided a good variety of corals and aquatic life, spotting a frog fish was a particular highlight. We had established that we were at the wrong side of the atoll to have the opportunity to see Manta's, however a full day excursion was available to the Southwest corner of the atoll that offered the opportunity to spot Manta's, so we signed up. MANTAFEST, difficult to find words to describe just how good these two dives were. We had been down for around 10 minutes when our first Manta pulled into the cleaning station. Throughout the day we must have seen 15 plus Manta's, some just fleeting glimpses, others that stayed with us for up to 15 minutes and passed within a meter or two of where we were gripping the rock to stay still in the current. Just fantastic.
The current was a feature of most of our dives with the advent of the full moon not helping matters. Unfortunately this meant that fewer photos were taken as we were busy concentrating on other things. In addition to that flash photography was not allowed at Manta Point, so the few images that were captured are fairly poor. We did meet another couple who have shot some great video footage of the Manta Point dive and hopefully extracts of that footage will be available here soon.
Sharm El Sheikh 2002 I
Despite the fact that we had barely recovered from the Maldives trip, the deal to the Red Sea was to good to pass buy, or so we thought.......
The offer was sent to us by Explorers who own and run the Ocean College diving operation at Ocean Sands Hotel in Na'ama Bay which they also own. We were to be based at their NEW hotel, the Ocean Club, which we accepted was out of town, half way between Na'ama Bay and the old town of Sharm.
Unfortunately the hotel was appalling. We were prepared for a basic hotel but not for an unfinished one. We actually had a better deal than the friends we travelled with, but I have still walked out in disgust from better hotels in the UK. Plumbing, electrics and general service were the main problems. Plumbing fittings were not secured, up to and including the toilet in our friend's room where the shower drain was also blocked with rubble causing a flood on the first night! Bare live wires protruding from the wall at almost every light fitting and mains socket provided further hazard. Lastly the service was atrocious to the point where we would not bother ordering food from the bar after three instances of waiting over an hour for fast food! To compound matters the management were unsympathetic to complaints giving pathetic inexcusable defence for a hotel that was clearly not ready for guests.
OK, enough moaning, and on to the diving. In stark contrast to the hotel the diving was very well organised, we would have no problems recommending Ocean College as a good dive store. Despite the group being quite large, up to twenty divers per day on our boat and two slightly smaller boats, facilities and diving were great. We dived many of the sites that we visited last year including obvious favourites like Tiran and Ras Mohamed as well as a trip to the Thistlegorm.
Curacao 2002
Where? A lot of people we have spoken to are not familiar with Curacao. Curacao is part of the Dutch Antilles and lies about 30 miles of the coast of Venezuela in the Caribbean sea.
We chose this destination as we had 10 days available which meant that we had to find somewhere which had daily flights in and out. Getting there proved to be a bit of a pain but it was worth it.
We booked a flight on the web at KLM, one of two international airlines to fly in daily, this meant flying to Amsterdam first and then on to Aruba for a quick stop then on to Curacao, around 14 hours in total. We took in as much info as we could about the island and decided to split our break between the West and East sides of the island. In the West we booked our accommodation at Habitat and in the more commercial East at the Marriott
We started of at Habitat where the rooms are modern and comfortable, our room (as do most) faced the sea where we were treated to Pelicans fishing each morning. Habitat is a dedicated dive resort and there is not a great deal to do within walking distance of the hotel other than dive.
Diving is run on a diving freedom basis meaning that for a fixed fee we got two boat dives and unlimited shore dives each day. Boat dives were from fast day boats with sites up to one hour away. We were really impressed with the quality of the dive sites, lots of hard and soft coral and more sponges than we have ever seen. There is a lot of very small aquatic life here which made a nice change. The dive guides were great and to top it all one of the best dives is the house reef, easily available from the shore. We were also able to hire a macro lens for our MX10.
From Habitat we headed East to the Marriott which is not far from the capitol Willemstad. While the Marriott was very nice indeed and the dive store associated with it was friendly and well run, we did not find the diving anything like as fulfilling as in the West.
Sharm El Sheikh 2002 II
OK so we can't keep away! We figure we are getting to know the place now so we carefully selected our hotel and dive operator for our second trip of the year to Sharm.
We booked with Explorers again, but this time stayed at the Naama Bay Hotel and dived with Ocean College which is now based on the Naama Bay Hotels private beach just a short walk from the main jetty.
We also took a flight "upgrade" from the regular charter to an Egypt Air flight from Heathrow, this effectively gave us one less day as the return flight left Sharm at 09:00 as opposed to 22:00, but it got us back to the UK at lunchtime as opposed to 03:00, useful as we both had to work the following day. The legroom didn't look that much better although we were fortunate enough to get emergency exit seats in and outbound, but the service was a great improvement.
What a contrast the Naama Bay Hotel was compared to our last visit to Sharm, not only is it centrally located in Naama Bay it was also everything you would expect from a modern 5 star hotel in Egypt! Spacious, well furnished bedroom and bathroom and all the facilities associated with a 5 star hotel. The buffet breakfast was always really well stocked from 06:30 (early to Tiran) to 10:00 (on the last day following a late night!) and the staff were only to happy to make up breakfast boxes for people leaving for the Thistlegorm etc before breakfast started. There were several restaurants on the complex which looked nice although we didn't use them.
Diving with Ocean College was up to the same well organised standards as we experienced before, diving sites that we are starting to become familiar with still provides a thrill especially Tiran where we again encountered Sharks, Turtles and Octopus to name but a few.
Click here 
for a map of the Red Sea region.
All pictures were taken with a Sea & Sea MX 10 and YS40 Strobe.
Follow the links to the full size images that are stored as JPGs and are mostly no larger than 65KB.
Our next trip is likely to be back to the Madives in the New Year for a serious dose of HAMMERHEAD!
