Egyptian Times

MKSAC Newsletter Feb 1992

Well we're back safe and well after a fantastic few days in Sharm El Sheikh. Ten of us travelled out on a very wet January night, leaving Wavendon at 3 a.m. and arriving in Sharm about ten hours later via Gatwick. The first news to greet us sounded grim. The hotel was overbooked and the diving centre we had booked with no longer dealt with our travel company.

But the good news far outweighed the bad and we really landed on our feet. As the hotel was overbooked we had to stay at the Hilton Residences and the apartments there are excellent, with large bedrooms, lounge, balcony area and kitchen. Not that we did any cooking, although a little imbibing (ingredients from the fridge) took place on the balconies as I remember.

Moreover, the replacement Diving people were a group called "Aquamarine" and they were very good. We had a boat to ourselves every day and had no hassle at all organising extra dives at very reasonable prices.

The dive guide was Ehab Kortam and changed our week from good to outstanding. He was safe, extremely knowledgeable about the Reefs and the marine life, and courteous to us all. We really were very lucky to get someone as good as he is, and we were very grateful.

Keith was nominating bog seat awards for things not going right and there were at least three, including the club member who at midnight in Wavendon realised that he did not have his traveller's cheques, the one who the day before realised he had lost his log book 'some time ago' and one who decided to get in the water without wearing his DV and found it difficult to breathe. And I didn't once mention the growing hole in the bottom of the rather famous pair of wet suit long johns.

The diving. Well, it's difficult to describe. The visibility was 20 plus metres most of the time. The water was warm enough so that several only wore long johns or a wet suit. But it isn't that warm and Ehab was looking enviously at the dry suits that Graham and Keith had brought; and it's funny how quickly you get used to warmer water and start to notice thermals. But the most overwhelming thing about the diving is the show, it's spectacular!

From about fifteen metres to the surface, there's always something going on. Millions of fish of differing sizes, heads of coral of amazing delicacy and beauty, and the colours are just so intense. It's difficult to take it all in; and certainly impossible to do it justice in words or even pictures.

The things that stick in my mind are:-

	The Napoleon Wrasse the size of a kitchen table looking for titbits and deciding that the puff of talc from Chris' glove was reason to butt her in the ABLJ very affectionately. The woman in another group whose camera was similarly mistaken for food and the camera and arm up to elbow was disgorged quite quickly. They're harmless (sorry for the pun) but can be unnerving because of their size.
	The band of about twelve white-tipped and black-tail sharks swimming out of the blue around Shark Reef looking quite excited and me staying very still and being a bit scared.
	Being neutrally buoyant at ten metres by the side of a wall of coral about eighty metres high and just looking down beneath your feet into the blue and thinking about free fall.
	The small fish clustered in a group around a head of coral that were so vividly purple that the colour seemed to attack your visual system.
	The fan coral that grows goodness knows how into intricately designed fan semicircles of a radius of about a metre.
	The Spanish Dancer, a sort of jellyfish of many bright reds and pinks which has a skirt which flaps as its moving through the water
	The turtles and the cornet fish and the needle fish and the Morays, the Tiger fish, the field of eels, the blue spotted rays, the crocodile fish, the scorpion fish near Chris' left hand and I really could go on, but talk to some of the others who went and I'm sure they all have different colourful memories of an excellent holiday.

All our thanks must go to Chris who on behalf of the Club organised such a well planned and hitch free trip.

Can we go back next year, please?

George