This was our first trip to the Red Sea and we decided to join a group of divers from Swindon (none of whom we knew!) and do our advanced open water [AOW] course in Dahab, which is about 80 kilometres north of Sharm El Sheik (around 1.5 hours by road.) Dahab is a Bedouin village that has grown to cater for divers, backpackers and holiday-makers looking for a laid-back time. We stayed at the Bedouin Moon Hotel, which was a friendly but pretty basic accommodation, ideally situated for the best dive sites in Dahab. If you are used to a better standard of accommodation there are other hotels, for example the Dahab Hilton, which is also close to the good dive sites. The Bedouin Moon is a few kilometres out of the small town, meaning taxis (better described as pick up trucks where you barter for the price before jumping on – which the 11 of us filled!) had to be ordered to get into town for evening dining. This was fun in a large group – although may have worked less well in smaller numbers. The hotel supplied a very basic breakfast each morning, and we ate a good lunch every day at the hotel. Additional costs for a week in Dahab came to around £150 per person, including lunches, dinners, alcohol and a full day boat trip.

October was a good time to visit Sinai as the weather was sunny and clear but not unbearably hot for kitting up on the shore, and not too windy.

Diving

We travelled with Seascape Diving Club from Swindon and took 2 Instructors, Pete Loder and Dave Watts with us, along with a Dive Master, Dan who is Pete’s partner in the business. The rest of us were of varied levels of experience and ability, 4 relative novices to do the AOW course (ourselves, Jo and Chaz) and the others ranging from AOW to Rescue Diver level.

On the first day we set off with Pete, Dave, Jo, Chaz to start the course and the others started guided diving with instructors from the Reef 2000 dive club located at the Bedouin Moon Hotel. Pete instructed us, and Dave took on Jo and Chaz. We completed the course at the end of the second day with a night dive – which all 11 of us did. From day 3 we dived as a group of 11, with 5 of us keeping together, Dave Watts leading with Bev, Lindsay and us following. We all explored the same sites each day with the other 6 forming the leading group.

The diveclub at the Hotel, Reef2000 had 4 instructors / guides and organised dives as required for those staying there. They ran all courses, at least up to dive master, and were busy teaching throughout the week. Transport to and from dive sites was in the form of cramped jeeps over rough terrain [sometimes we had to get out and walk for a few metres!] but only lasted 30 minutes at most.

The coral that we observed was particularly impressive. Most of the diving was from the shore and so we did not encounter the larger species, such as shark, rays etc, that we have seen previously. However the fish population was impressive and diving was relaxed and enjoyable with varied sites. We saw many interesting things including the following: Lionfish (most dives), scorpionfish, moray eels, sand eels, squid, clownfish, glassfish, milkfish, Spanish dancers, pufferfish, stonefish, crocodile fish, shrimp and [sadly only] one turtle.

Some of the sites we visited were:

Bells to Blue Hole – a small vertical entrance down to 30 metres of blue, then a reef wall leading to the large Blue Hole at the end of the dive [a few weeks earlier a baby hammerhead had got trapped in the blue hole leading to some rather excited divers – fortunately it had escaped and returned to its more familiar surroundings!]

The Canyon: A steep drop to 30 metres [this is where we did our deep dive as part of the Advanced OW course] with a narrow tunnel leading up to the “goldfish bowl” which was full of glassfish.

The Islands: Islands of Coral – which tested your buoyancy skills but were very pretty. Many lionfish were seen here.

Overall we had a good time, the diving was relaxed and interesting and made up for the simple accommodation and transport. We achieved our objective of gaining the Advanced OW certificate and also made some new friends.

Our next booked holiday is back to the Maldives next March – where we are excited about completing our rescue diver qualification [if we haven’t slotted it in before then!] (I'm working on this ! The best place to do Rescue Training is the UK ! Mike Scott)

Meanwhile we can all dream...here's a website to look at: - http://www.reef2000.org.

It gives further details on Reef2000 dive club, dive sites at Dahab and the Bedouin Moon Hotel.

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