Archive for the ‘Day to day stuff’ Category
Saturday, June 21st, 2008
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So what does one do on a day off in Sharm??
In truth, if you are not diving, there is a little bit of a limit to what you can do here. There are no cinemas (well one, but it’s miles away and not quite your ten screen multiplex), no theatres, there is a Sharm Museum but that is basically a souvenir shop in disguise. So what to do?
If you have a car, you do have a little more freedom. Nabq National Park boasts some beautiful beaches and a shrimp farm where you can buy the freshest seafood, and Ras Mohammed National Park again sports some stunning mountains and awesome beaches (some totally deserted) with great snorkelling to be had. Of course you can get yourself on a boat and go fun diving, very popular at this time of year, with everything blooming in the water. But what if you don’t fancy that? What else can you do?
Of course there is quad biking, wakeboarding, banana boat riding, parascending available, or you can just chill out. There are many bars open for most of the day if you fancy an icy beer, or slightly livelier beaches if you fancy a little bit of a sea breeze to cool you down (the drink or the real thing). Our favourite is Terrazzina. OK the music can get a bit loud as the day wears on, especially on a Friday, but their seafood tajin is second to none! Hmmm a delicious stew of seafood and tomatoes cooked in an earthenware pot, served with a squirt of lime juice on a bed of rice, very very tasty. So this was our day today, we had a chat with fellow locals in T2 over a cool beer, followed by lunch at Terrazzina, and topped off with a quick swim to cool down. Not bad really eh?
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Thursday, June 12th, 2008
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Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
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So… after my amazing day with the big stuff… it is back down to earth with a few days on dry land. And just to time things well, I get a cold!! Just when I could be doing all the fun diving I like, fate intervenes. Malesh… as they would say out here (it kind of means a combination of “Ah well”, and “whatever”).
So, to pass the time, I thought I would update some of the DiveBunnie site and see what I could improve. And I have created an Amazon shop!!! It is really cool, I’ve been able to add categories and choose my products, so the books and dvds are all diving related, and I have created a whole collection of pink stuff hehe. Just for fun. And if there is something you know that Amazon are likely to stock, but I haven’t actually listed, simply click on the Amazon logo, and you get taken directly to their main store.
I have had a goodies shop for some while and I have edited that too, so that it is now soooo easy to order your DiveBunnie branded mugs, mousemats, tee shirts etc. Pop along to our Megastore to get a load of those.
So… it’s been a busy day all around really. As I’m not diving today and have finally dragged myself out of bed, I guess I shall go and hunt down some more pink stuff for my shopping page! Hehe… I had no idea that there were so many pink cameras available to buy!!
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Monday, June 2nd, 2008
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So this last week has been a bit of a teaching fest with an advanced course, straight on to an Open Water referral which led on to another advanced course!
But throughout all this we had some great dives, with a day in Ras Mo and one in Tiran during the advanced courses. We had some great stuff too, with the highlight being an enormous manta ray on one of our rarely dived local sites! Pinky’s Wall. This site was named after the lush covering of soft pink corals that used to adorn the wall of this dive, however sadly due to over diving, snorkelling and probably most damaging of all, hotel construction, the wall itself is now pretty barren. In fact it is a site I had never dived, simply because it was not worth it, so none of the boats ever went there. Well, this site has had a sudden replenishing of its popularity due to the arrival of a group of manta rays! They have been here for a few weeks now, so every afternoon, you will see three or four dive boats hanging around waiting to collect divers on a quest to see mantas. And when we dived it, we were not disappointed. We were graced by the presence of an enormous manta gliding below us. It was a good 4m across and barely moved, yet was flying so fast we couldn’t keep up. Amazing!
Sadly after a few weeks of daily whale shark reports, I haven’t heard of any for a couple of days.
On another note we are inches away from having our own range of funky DiveBunnie Tees available for retail! Those of you popping over to Sharm will be able to sport your own Sharm el Sheikh DB Tees, showing you don’t have to be dull to be a diver.
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Sunday, May 25th, 2008
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Oh wow!!! My fun diving day in Tiran turned out pretty fine in the end.
I will skip straight to the end of the day first though, because I had the most wonderful experience of swimming with a whale shark!!!! We were on our way back from two lovely dives (had a biiiig eagle ray on one and on the second, we had Jackson reef to ourselves, which is quite a rarity in itself). As we passed Ras Nasrani, we got the shout from Tariq our skipper that there was a big shark ahead!! So out we all leapt to the bow to see whether it was actually a whale shark, and yes it was. Well that was our cue, back we ran to the dive deck, rummaged through all our neatly packed boxes for masks and fins etc and threw ourselves into the blue with the grace of a herd of elephants (hmmm cue reference to my previous career there!).
And then our out-of-this-world experience began. Steve and I basically flanked this quite small (4M) whale shark and swam with it for around ten or fifteen minutes!! At one point I duck dived down beside it and it actually turned to face me, looked at me, and opened it’s mouth (was that a smile???). How beautiful it was. What a wonderful end to a wonderful day.
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Tuesday, May 20th, 2008
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So it’s that time again, time to sort out the old visa. We all love that day because it means a trip up to the lovely El Tor. In all honesty we don’t get to see the true town (which apparently is pretty nice… so they say), we only get to see the government building in which they house the passport office. And in true local style, it pretty much resembles a prison office. With bars at the windows and everything! Not a computer in sight, everything hand written in big log books, but some how, amazingly everything is on record and traceable!
We have an hour and a half trip up the coast where we marvel at the mountains and look out to see the little dive boats moored on Thistlegorm (funny how it takes sooo long to get there by sea), and after another hour and a half sat in the dingy offices, we are back on our way home. Thankfully there were a few of us, I do remember my first time there when I was totally alone, hadn’t even thought to bring a book, so sat tapping my feet for a couple of hours while my documents were passed back and forth behind the glass window.
Once we were back in Sharm, we headed straight for the Kitchen for a big English breakfast! Hehe, talk about embracing the local culture. Oops. But it cannot be denied that currently this is the best place to grab a very very good fried breakfast.
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Tuesday, May 20th, 2008
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So Jilly is about to join the big boys and is doing her cave diving course in Mexico… somewhere in the region of Cancun and Playa Del Carma to be precise. Renowned for it’s underwater cave systems and centoes, this is the Mecca of all cave divers. Basically the rock is kind of porus, think of a giant sponge, full of holes big enough for a person to swim through. Allow this giant sponge to gradually fill with water, and you have the cave systems of this area. Fantastic caves link up together accessible via inland pools known as cenotes. Here the land has dropped into the cave system and created a pool along the sides of which are entrances to the caves themselves. Because they were previously dry land, you even get trees under the water that have now been submerged. And in one of the caves you can see the remains of ancient civilisation, where residents way way back in prehistoric times have had campfires, the remains of which can still be seen during your dive.
Jilly is keeping a diary of her time in Mexico, in particular her cave diving course, so you can follow her progress here.
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Saturday, May 17th, 2008
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So, not only is the president in town, it appears that all the presidents of the world are descending on Sharm el Sheikh over the next few days. You wouldn’t expect it really being a problem, except that, for security purposes, they have decided to close all the dive sites within the remotest distance of any of the hotels bearing these very most important guests!
Ok I’m not going to be a bore, but it means that the only dive sites available to us are within the Ras Mohammed area. Try teaching Open Water in Ras Mo!!! I don’t think so. Well, anyway, as a compromise we have had to use the sites within the bay of Marsa Ghozlani, which in my opinion is actually not half as pretty as one of the normal local sites. Ah well, I guess we all have our cross to bear, and when the presidents come to discuss world peace, we need to give them their space. Why they choose Sharm as their location, I really don’t know, except for the high level of hotels and pools available!!! Heehee.
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Friday, May 9th, 2008
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I saw a whale shark!!!!!
Not a lot else to say really, except that I have lived and worked here for three years, having dived here on and off over the three years before that, and this was my first whale shark!!!
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Sunday, May 4th, 2008
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So the day after my return from a few days in the UK, I was back on a boat guiding a bunch of snorklers in Ras Mohammed. And, before you say anything, no we are not one of those centres that throw in a bunch of snorklers on Shark and Yolande reefs and watch them fend for themselves. We take them somewhere calm, which today happened to be The Alternatives. We had a great snorkel session, with enough current to bring all the fish out, but not so much that people were struggling. We had a few newbies, one of whom was totally gobsmacked when she put her face in the water and saw the aquarium below her. Always rewarding when that happens.
The next day was Tiran, however with the wind right up there, and white horses all over the place, this soon turned into Ras Katy and Temple (two of our most sheltered local dive sites). There was a stiff North Easterly wind, and with the president in town, we had to keep at least 3km away from the shore, which would have meant ploughing straight into the swell, after a good twenty minutes of driving across it, causing the boat to roll like a rocking horse, even while it was still in the shelter of the bay! Needless to say, five minutes of that, and a quick look up North made up our minds “let’s head for shelter”. And we still had a couple of lovely dives, without the seasick city that would have been Tiran.
Yesterday, we did manage to get a bit further afield. It was still swelly, but Ras Mohammed does have a few more options than Tiran when it’s coming from the North, so we had a great three dive day. The only disappointment being the behaviour of other divers on Yolande reef which you can read all about in our forum.
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