The Bunnie Blog
Living and Diving in Sharm el Sheikh
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When you live in a tourist resort, you often find that you do not take advantage of what there is to offer. I was guilty of this when I lived in London (don’t think I ever went to Buckingham Palace, or the Houses of Parliament, and very rarely did the whole museum thing) and now living in Sharm I don’t really take advantage of the nights out that can be had. Last night was a change to our routine, we decided to go out to a restaurant in Old Sharm: Fernando’s followed by crossing over the road to their beach where Janey was singing. What a great night. Good food, good company and good music. And the atmosphere on the beach was great, it was our first time there, and the layout was great. We had little platformed areas with couches and coffee tables (rather like someone’s lounge) raised off the sand all around the beach. Janey’s singing was great, she had quite a rocky voice but sang jazzy bluesy stuff, so that was cool too. Of course there were a couple of obligatory Michael Jackson tracks in between songs as a nod of a tribute to the man. Over the last few days I have seen so many of his videos re-shown again and again, reminding me what an incredible talent he really was. What a sad shame. |
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So at last I am back in the warm and the water… and on line!
It was a bit of an unexpected break back to the UK, but a good chance to catch up with friends and family again. As usual, lots of driving involved, zig-zagging the country in order to see everyone. Thankfully, the British weather actually treated us kindly, despite heavy purple clouds threatening torrents each day, we only got rained on once, and that was in the car, so not bad for a couple of weeks. Now I am back home and everything has heated up again woo hoo! Summer really is here. I might even brave the shortie today! My first day back was a four pack discover scuba session, and I got the lucky group. My students were all totally cool, weren’t fased at all by the fact that it was actually quite choppy (we were bouncing around whilst kneeling for the first section) and we all had a great dive. An eagle ray even came along to top the dive off nicely. Welcome back.
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So… what do you do in Sharm if you don’t dive?? Actually if you are here on holiday, there is quite a lot… you can go quad biking in the desert, climb Mount Sinai and watch the sunrise, visit St Catherine’s Monastery and see the burning bush (or one like it!) and of course you can have dinner in the desert under the stars with your very own astronomist to guide you through the wonders of the heavens. However if you live here and have done all that (or not, as the case may be), then the best bet is to find somewhere cool to chill out. Especially this week as the temperature shot up to 42ºC. So we had a few days off, during which we watched tons of videos in our nice cool, comfy apartment (we are lucky we have both aircon and a great view), and visited a few nice restaurants and bars where we could keep cool and share a chilly beer. Today for me, was time to go back to work, so I was on the beach doing Discover Scuba Diving. Unfortunately two of our students didn’t even make it to the water… we cannot stress enough the importance of drinking enough water.. dehydration tends to kick in a day in arrears, so if you spend one day drinking mostly beer and about half a litre of water, the next day you are going to seriously suffer. Ooops. Unfortunately not everyone realises this when they arrive, and of course being on holiday you want to have a drink or two (check my own comments in the previous paragraph). It is just vital that that beer is counterbalanced with heaps of water. Anwyay back to the diving… we had our little group of divers briefed up and kitted up, and I took my two off to go through their initial paces. Just a couple of skills before heading out for a little dive. Sadly despite many attempts, the guy just couldn’t take to it. Having never snorkelled before it was all a novelty, and for him it was not a nice novelty. So despite being very brave and attempting to breathe with his face in the water several times, he opted to head back to shore. Maybe another time… The other student, flew through her skills and went on to do the open water dive. We had a great time, an eagle ray, plenty of puffer fish, parrot fish and clown fish. Then right at the end we saw a giant titan triggerfish and a big napoleon wrasse. Not bad for her first dive eh? I did find it quite amusing that the trigger fish was getting a bit aggressive with the snorklers feeding it (fish feeding is illegal here and so disruptive to the fish). He didn’t do any harm, but again confirms another reason why we don’t feed fish here… they can start to associate swimmers with food… not always the best idea. Anyway, a good day was had by all.. and after a 50 minute dive we headed back to the dive centre to log the dive, look at photos and chat about our sightings. |
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Well, after a week of guiding on local boats I was finally let lose in Tiran today.. Wooo Hooo! How exciting… the last time I dived here was at the beginning of the month during the “Freak Week” of clouds and a few spats of rain (yes sometimes even we don’t get to dive these sites every week). Anyway, off we went, with Jilly and myself guiding the guests, with Mark and his son fun diving. It didn’t take us more than a few minutes into the journey to realise that the back of Jackson (the famous hammer head dive) was to be out of the question this morning, as a stiff northerly breeze blast its way into our faces. Thankfully the sun was out in force and kept the breeze from feeling cold. Woodhouse reef was our first stop. Yesterday both a white tipped reef shark and a whale shark had been spotted here so we were hopeful that it would be our turn today. But… no… even the resident titan trigger fish, who is always good for a bit of sport (he’s a real fin biter) was nowhere to be seen. Last time I met him, I thought a guest was tugging my fin, so I turned around expecting an “I’m doing a safety stop” signal, only to find a massive beast attached to the end of my fin hehe. It certainly spiced up my dive a bit… But… sadly not today. Yes, even being well n truly triggered would have taken my mind off the fact that not only was I frozen but that I had managed to spot pretty much nothing of note during the bulk of the dive! I had foolishly thought summer was on its way, so jumped in in a wetsuit… biiiig mistake! Despite the dive being very pretty, there was a lot of plankton, so the viz was a bit low, so even when we headed out a little into the blue, there wasn’t a huge amount to be seen. Needless to say, the dry suit came out of its bag for the next two dives! Jackson Reef was glorious as always, and as an added bonus, we pretty much had it to ourselves! A rare treat. We were moored almost on the garden itself (not always an ideal location as the currents can be a touch hairy here) which today happened to work beautifully. There was a very mild current and barely any on the shallow part of the garden itself, so we were able to spend the majority of our dive bimbling around the pretty corals looking for stone fish, scorpion fish and just enjoying the beauty of it all (it really is stunning) The final dive today was on Ras Nasrani. Now this was the one that had really got us all excited. Everyone has been seeing everything here! Whale sharks, reef sharks and mantas. And even if none of these turned up, it is still a very pretty dive. Well.. guess what… none of these turned up!! Sigh! OK yes, it was a very pretty dive, and we had some interesting currents, so that was quite fun, but no big stuff. One of my guests happened to spot a black tip reef shark, but he was back a bit from the group so wasn’t able to pass the message forward (I had briefed to point and scream like a girl.. but I guess he was just not in touch with his feminine side.. hehe). The irony was that another guide in the water had asked if I had seen the big shark patrolling up and down the drop off!!! No!! I hadn’t!! So.. out I swam.. again.. in search of something bigger than a tuna. Then I got a “sixty bar” sign from one of my guests.. so back to the reef we went so they could start their safety stop. Ah well. The diving was still very pretty, and once I was warm and dry, very enjoyable. I guess when there is too much on promise, expectations rise a little too high. The frustrating bit was when I got a message telling me that another of our guides had seen an 8m whale shark on Fiddle Garden (one of our local sites, often used for day one check out dives and training!). Looks like local is the place to be at the moment maybe. |
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So it has been a bit of an odd week so far. Monday I started with a mixed boat of divers on local sites, and seem to have alternated between guiding and doing boat discover scuba dives (one extreme to the other!) I seem to have a constant rotation of new guests each day, while I stay on the same boat, funny. But pretty cool. We have seen some good stuff this week (and all of it local) with eagle rays, manta rays big napoleon wrasse. Tonight I am off on a night dive, so am just waiting for the sun to go down.. it’s summer so it is certainly taking its time! Hey ho, it gives me more time for another cup of tea. Let’s see what turns up on the dive… |
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After their little dive off the beach two of my students decided they liked it enough to go out off the boat and do another couple of dives, so I had two days teaching one to one out on the boat. Actually it is not really teaching, as with experience dives they are just getting that, a little more experience. First day was a guy who is actually in the middle of doing his BSAC course back in the UK but wanted to get a couple of dives in here… so I was in for a very easy day!! Hehe.. his buoyancy was great, so it was like diving with a qualified diver… I just spent the day giving him a couple of extra tips and spotting fish! On our last dive I found a tiny frog fish sheltering in an empty crisp packet.. very cute. The next day, I had one of the other students, and we had a very very chilled day on the boat. We spent the whole day in the Gardens area, so had loads of time to relax between dives. Saw some cool stuff on the dive, but the best bit of all was actually afterwards… there was a small manta at the surface at Far Garden. It was oblivious to all the attention it was getting.. just happily mooching around gathering plankton and completely surrounded by snorklers from the nearby hotel. It could have easily dived to escape the crowd, but didn’t seem bothered at all! |
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Today we had discover scubas. I had four students and all four seemed to have a good time and enjoy it! Often we find one person might drop out, but today all were keen and raring to go. Once the skills were over and everyone had had a little practice with their swimming, it was time for us to go back down and head off for the fish. We had a nice little dive, and even got to see a blue spotted ray and a torpedo ray. For some bizarre reason I didn’t see a single puffer fish all dive!! Strange for the beach. But… the best news of all was that the temperature has risen yet another degree to 26ºC!!! Very nice indeed! Maybe I’ll even be able to jump back into a shortie soon! I think as long as I’m teaching, the dry suit can stay in its bag (in all honesty it was no longer that dry, as the wrist seals have seen better days!) |
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Well despite the fact that I was working on my birthday, I had a great day yesterday. I only had one student, who seems to have taken to diving like a fish, and we had the final two dives of the course to do… a very stress free day (yes we do still get stressful days here despite the sunshine). We even saw a turtle on Middle Garden on our last dive which was great. We sat and watched him munching on his lunch for a good five minutes or so… very cool. Ice cream was the order of the day once we were back on land, and once the staff meeting was over (typical… on my birthday of all days!) we all went for a little drink next door to celebrate. I even got the bumps!! I can’t remember the last time that happened!! (yes it was an abbreviated version!!) |
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