Oonas Divers have connected me up with their usual tranfer south in an air conditioned Mercedes minibus. The coastal highway is long, mostly straight and mostly flat. Sometimes a little way inland, often running tantalisingly close to the sea. Oonas Divers have connected me up with their usual tranfer south in an air conditioned Mercedes minibus. The coastal highway is long, mostly straight and mostly flat. Sometimes a little way inland, often running tantalisingly close to the sea.
The journey takes 4 or 5 hours. Occasional towns provide a welcome break to the routine. My fellow passengers are four teachers working at the international school in Cairo. Two had flown in to Hurghada that morning and we pick up the others on the way at El Quseir. Having endured wailing Egyptian music including an unforgettable version of the Maccarena, one of my fellow passengers shows mercy and hands the tape from his walkman to the driver
We arrive at Wadi Lahami in time for a late lunch and an eagerly anticipated afternoon dive. This is the southernmost camp for land based diving and the only way to dive further south is by liveaboard.
Diving is from Egyptian built 8-metre RIBs. They are good seaworthy boats and ideally suited to the complex conditions of the Fury Shoals, a system of reefs off the northern side of Ras Banas.
Red Sea Diving Safari's camp is more sophisticated that I had anticipated. A shaded communal area is partially surrounded by brick huts for kitchen, bar and office. A clean and well fitted toilet and shower block is supplied with fresh water by road tanker. Accommodation is in spacious white cotton tents on concrete bases; Bedouin mats, cane furniture and beds inside. I go to bed early and sleep like a log.
Next morning is a 6.30 start. I emerge from my tent and make my way to breakfast, exchanging morning greetings with other divers in a variety of languages. I conclude that the Italian "bonjourno" is the most inherently cheerful of the greetings offered.
An early start enables a 2-dive morning trip to be back on the beach before mid-day. Lunch is followed by siesta time and a mid afternoon dive. We are consequently ashore and in the shade when the sun is hottest and strongest. There is a night dive after dinner for those so inclined. I just chill out on the terrace with a cold beer.
Ross and Tamara, camp hosts and dive guides, explain a few words of Arabic that seem to crop up time and again in the names of dive sites. A shaab is a reef which breaks the surface. A habili is a reef which does not break the surface. The literal translation is "unborn", and is also used to refer to an unborn child. Um is mother, Abu is father, El is the, and Ras is head.
Dives are planned to end on a high. At the south end of Shaab Lahami a winding route past a series of large habilis ends in the stairway to heaven and the road to hell. A spectacular valley of hard corals guarded by shoaling banner fish which is followed by an enormous archway filled with soft corals.
At Shaab Abu Galana the dive winds a drunkards walk though a forest of large coral heads, ending at Habili Tamara, a dazzling circular reef which comes just short of the surface.
From a photographer's point of view I find this type of dive more productive than the deep walls found on the outside of many reefs in the area. There is less chance of a big critter encounter, but coral heads separated by sand act as a wonderful focus for fish, pulling them in close about the coral and allowing plenty of room to manoeuvre for the right camera angle.
For a second dive we follow the reef to the nice little wreck of a tug boat, a favourite I recognise from a liveaboard trip a few years ago. I rush ahead to get the wreck to myself, then retire to a cave in the shallows and out-wait everyone else and get the wreck to myself again.
I am just getting to settle in and it is time to move on again. This is only my second stop and already I can feel a pattern emerging. I suspect I will find it hard to move on at every stage of the trip.