Diving - Sharm El Sheik, Egypt

I'm an avid scuba diver and have been since 2003 after trying out in a pool. Truth be told at the time I was actually trying to impress a girl - how many times have you done stupid things to impress women? Trying to impress got me into scuba and skydiving, so it's not all bad I guess. Anyway, I'm digressing.


First week of June I spent another week diving out of Sharm El Sheik in Egypt - probably my 20th or so trip now specifically for diving. I thought I'd write up the experience.

Firstly, to get you in the mood, have a look at the pictures: My Gallery

Feel free to have a browse through.

So, onto the trip. The trip was booked with a company called Explorers - they specialise in dive specific trips. I was introduced to them via another diving group called DiscoverScuba.

I am digressing slightly, but Discover Scuba is run by a guy called Chris Scott - if you're looking for somebody to train you in diving I couldn't recommend him enough. So much so when my friends have asked to go diving I've directed them via Chris, rather than dealing with them myself. He's a fantastic instructor with great patience and ability to train. Highly recommended.

Anyways, Explorers arrange dive specific trips to numerous areas however in this instance I'll focus on our trip to Sharm. The whole trip, flights & bed & breakfast hotel was about £400 - this is including a single supplement for me - it's cheaper if you share a room obviously, however I'm fussy and like to have the option of not having to worry about other people in the room.

Flights
We flew out of Gatwick around 10:45am on the Sunday. I was a bit disappointed to find we were flying with Thomson - in my snobbery I'd assumed Thomson were like the Chav airline of the holiday world.... but I was pleasantly surprised. The planes were very modern 767s and were very comfortable. Maybe not as comfortable as the previous carrier Astraeus, but they were good enough. One think I will add is that you must pre-book your meals if you actually want to eat on the plane - we didn't, and we found ourselves with no food. Chavtastic.

Flight out was about 5 hours and was an easy experience.

Sharm El Sheik Airport
You've not experienced an airport like it, I'll tell you that much. Sharm's Airport is a military airport about 20 minutes out of Naama Bay (the centre of Sharm). It's ok, but a little hectic. If you want to head out of central Sharm (into Ras Mohammad for example) you'll need a visa - this is GBP8 of 15US$. An important note is that you do not have to joing the big queue that everyone else joins - go to the far desks and just ask for a visa. Saves queing. If you're staying in Sharm you don't need the visa.

Transport to the Hotel
You get a free bus transport from the airport to the hotel obviously - however still being a fussy little fecker I much prefer to get a taxi. I don't like the busses as they can't take ages to round up people and generally farting about before taking you to your hotel.

Taxis from the hotel to downtown Naama are typically around 10GBP but you have to barter hard to get them down - they rely on the fact that the tourists don't know how much the taxis are. On this trip I simply couldn't be bothered so didn't really barter meaning we paid about 20GBP for the journey.... Shockingly lazy I think.

The Hotel
We normally book into the Ocean Club this is a 2/3* hotel located about 10 minutes (or 2.50GBP) out of the centre of Naama bay in a suicide taxi. It's rooms are adequate, it's food is ok, and it has a couple of good pools - one deep for dive training/swimming and play and one shallower one where bizarrely they used to do the dive training. It was quite comical watching people train to dive with their heads sticking out of the water.

It's not a bad hotel - I've used it many a time. It's a pretty good place to stay if you're travelling by yourself as you'll find a fair number of other single travellers there, typically diving with Ocean College - this means typically you'll see the same people around the bar/pool when you're not diving.

It's also cheaper to book a whole week here even if you're staying on a boat for a few days like we typically do - it gives you somewhere to dump your kit that you wouldn't normally want to take on a liveaboard.

The Diving
On to the important bit - the diving. We used the Ocean College dive school that's located within the hotel complex - it used to be next door. I've dived with them numerous times now and they're a good outfit. They try and keep the same group of people together on the day boats so you end up with a more friendly group - I've made some good friends from this setup and am on good terms with some of the DMs/Instructors from there, always useful.

There was a good group on this trip - some I knew from other trips, some personal friends and some people fresh to the trip. The group seemed to work and was probably one of the most socially-succesful groups I've had on the trip. Probably the reason why we seemed to get drunk so readily (and go swimming at 4:30am - go figure. That was Kim's fault that was). Anyway.

Over the week we did loads of diving including the local sites such as Ras Nasrani (Ras means 'head' or 'headland'.), the Gardens (Near, Middle, Fiddle & Far), Ras Bob, Ras Ghazlani amongst others. Personally the reefs for me start to blur into each other as my particular interest are wrecks and the more technical side of diving, rather than reef recreational. Saying that I do love the diving anyway and the reefs here are probably the most spectacular in the world... Certainly my favourite anyway and I've dived a lot of places, including the little reefs off of Australia.

We also did some drift diving in the beatiful Ras Mohammad nature reserve, and an early day out into the straights of Tiran to do the outside of Jackson (and for some, both sides of Thomas all on the same dive... but that's a whole different story).

You generally had a choice of 2 or 3 dives a day and the options of using Nitrox - one thing to be clear on here though is that these boats are only recreational diving, I.e. no-stop diving in PADI speak, or non-decompression dives in everybody-else speak. They run tech boats I understand although personally I've never used their tech services having normally arranged my own boats & techie mates.

The first day is usually easy local sites typically to ensure people are good in the water - remember some people won't have been in the water for a while. This didn't really apply to my immediate group anyway as we're all relatively experienced divers with a lot of dives under our belts.

Our guides were George Wilders (who's married to Clare, another one of the instructors from OC) and Marc. Both were very good guides giving good briefings and were also able to recognise capable divers and leave them to go off and do their thing. This is a very important point - I've had massive fall outs with dive organisations that insist you pootle around after a dive guide on a site that you probably know better than them anyway. Anyway, my point being the dive guide service was excellent. Mind you, I probably would say that cos I'm pretty sure George (via Clare) knows where I live and I'm not that silly.

Obviously OC hire out kit - I've no experience of it personally however I didn't hear of any complaints.

The boats are comfortable, the crew very helpful (as is generally the case in the Red Sea) and the food fantastic.

If I had any negative comment about Ocean College, and I'm struggling to come up with any, it's their costs. They seem to have gone up significantly in the last year. Also, they quote in Euros but bill in Egyptian Pounds (LE) which with the shift in the Euro lately means you get hit twice by the conversion rates. Not good - they should sort this out and bit entirely in Euros, or better still (well for me anyway) in US dollars.

Anyway, moving on to the diving. There was a bit of a plankton boom this year resulting in a large number of sitings of Manta Rays, Whale Sharks, Hammerheads etc. I've never seen so many sharks, mantas or Whale Sharks out of Sharm before, it truly was fantastic. To see the Hammerheads and the Mantas you often have to swim out in to the blue rather than along the reefs - this can lead to a curious dive. 45 minutes of boredom and sensory deprivation followed by 5-10 minutes of sheer excitement as a Manta Ray makes another pass at you (so to speak). You always had the choice of course of following the reefs - as we did on a few occasions.

We also did some night diving - a fantastic option out of sharm and not to be missed, assuming you're OK with diving in the dark. Fortunately I remembered to bring my proper torches this time. Having a decent torch is pretty important - I use the Kowalski diving lamps, fantastic gear distributed by LightHouse Diving. You get to see some different things at night - mating Octopus (Octopi?), hunting Lion fish etc. The Lion fish are pretty funny, they see the lights and use them to hunt by - shine your torch in a direction and off they trot. As I had a pretty powerful torch with me I ended up with a whole troop of the little fellas.

Have a look at the pictures to get an idea of what was seen on this trip! The diving really was spectacular.

Dive Gear
I was diving with a 5/3mm split semi-dry (I.e. 5mm core, 3mm limbs) that's seen better days so all the seals are gone - but even so I was warm enough. Water was around 25 degrees. I'm normally a bit of a wimp with water temperature - 22 degrees or below is dry-suit weather as far as I'm concerned.

Pretty much everyone on the boat was using std. recreational setups with single 12l tanks with octopus setups - didn't see any long-hose, pony or wing setups. Bizarrely I think Vicky had the most 'technical' set up as she'd borrowed some of my gear.

Nitrox was available if you prebooked.

Non-Diving Entertainment
There's numeros places to eat in central Sharm (Naama Bay) as well as round the markets in Old Sharm. Some people find Old Sharm a little intimidating however there's nothing to worry about and it does give you a better impression of the area compared to the touristy Naama bay.

Food is generally cheap compared to the UK (Except for Little Buddha - see later) - you'll pay around 7GBP a head including a beer or two typically, rising depending on how much you drink. Food around Old Sharm is typically cheaper.

Some food recommends:

China/Thai house in Naama Bay. Tony Blair usually eats here - but don't let that put you off I don't think it'll turn you into a war mongering lieing grinning idiot just by attending. Food is good here. There's two restaurants - Thai & Chinese. What's unique is that you can order from both menus if you ask.
Camel Club Indian Curry House. Yes, Indian in Egypt. Located in the Camel Bar complex the food is fantastic - you'll need to book to get into though.
Fishermans in Old Sharm. Or the Cat Restaurant as Vicky so elegantly puts it. Fantastic food, quite cheap although they have put their prices up.

Some food don'ts:
Little Buddha. UK prices, poor service, and boring food. Nightclub bit after is a bit boring, didn't even get to use my glow-sticks.

There's good shopping for tat too in central Sharm and in Old Sharm, don't forget to barter as it's part of the fun. Unless you're like me - I think life's too short to argue about 50p. Graham however seemed to love it and would barter for ages only to pay what was agreed at the beginning anyway.

Taxis
Taxis around Sharm are pretty easy to get and cheap however never ever accept their price they offer. Always barter them down. Rememebr, there's a lot of taxis in Sharm, it's easy enough to walk away and get another one. Within Sharm a typical taxi fare is 2-3GBP (20-30LE).

They've all had new cabs by the way - gone are the crappy old Peugots they've all got sparkly new ones! They still drive like lunatics however, although they don't seem to take offence at being asked to slow down - even if you scream it.

Weather
Scorchio. All the time. Averaged around 38-42 for our whole week - when you come off the boat and you get hit by the on-land wind it's a bit of an eye opener. I always avoid the sun as I burn so easily - I tend to wear factor 50 for the whole week and still get burned.

Sharm Belly
A lot of people complain of dodgy stomachs when they come to Sharm and they typically blame the food. In 9 out of 10 cases it simply isn't the food - it's hydration. Dehydrytion can give you similar effects to mild food poisioning - weak, spending time on the loo etc. Us brits just don't drink enough water and when placed in an environment with such hot dry heat we still don't. You should really aim to drink about a litre an hour - more if you're diving. It sounds a lot, but I'd rather be going for a widdle a lot that being sat on the loo (you know what I mean, can't think of a polite way to put it). If you do get the symptoms grab something like dyralite from your hotel reception and drink as much water as you can.

Also, it's worth putting more salt on your food than you would at home.

Summary
Anyway, this was supposed to be a quick summary of our trip but it's ended up being a semi-review on Sharm and advice on how to holiday. So I'm going to shut up.

I love the place, and I will be going back soon. Hopefully this time to do some Heliox training.