Sharm El Sheik (Camel Dive Club & Hotel) ……November 2001

By Lesley & Graham Skeats

We booked this dive holiday at the NEC dive show – 14 October 2001 through Mosaic Holidays and we have to say it was an excellent deal, (£369 – which included 5 days diving, B&B accommodation, flights & transfers).

It was our first ever trip to the Red Sea, our first ever taste of a diving holiday and of diving in warm waters, (tropical Stoney, Portland and Lyme have been our only other diving locations).

We stayed at the excellent Camel Dive Club and Hotel, it is well situated in the heart of Sharm El Sheik’s Na’ama Bay. It is a small basic hotel (38 rooms) with a very friendly atmosphere. Its central location is both convenient for the restaurants, shops and the jetty.

If you like Indian food we can recommend a curry in the Camel. The Camel Hotel has its own Tandoori restaurant, the food is excellent and reasonably priced. To round of the evening we also suggest a visit to the Camel bar, this has to be the most popular hangout in Na’ama Bay…. it does get pretty lively at times.

The weather was very good, daytime air temperatures averaged 28C and the water temperatures averaged 26C, (minimum 5mm shortie weather). You did need a sweater in the evenings as it did get quite chilly. It also got dark just after 5pm every evening.

Enough about the hotel…now to the diving. Camel Dive Club is located in Sharm El Sheik at the Southern tip of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. It offers access to over forty dive sites including Ras Mohammed National Park and the Straits of Tiran, it is also famous for wreck diving on the SS Thistlegorm (which we didn’t do this year, but is a definite must do on our next visit).

The first days diving arrived and we were a little apprehensive, not really knowing what to expect, the Camel team made us feel at ease. Boxes for kit were allocated and these were yours for the 5 days and would remain on the boats. The kit was trucked down to the jetty which is only 5 minutes walk from Camel. Camel Dive Club have 6 boats in total which go out each day to different dive sites, so you can basically choose which dive sites you want to visit each day. We went with the same boat for the whole week, which meant we had the same guide and same group of people every day. By the end of the week we got to know the people in this group very well, who just happened to be all British!.

We all seemed to be of a similar standard which did help, we were the only ones who had experienced UK diving, (surprise, surprise!!). At the end of the week we all swapped E- mail addresses and promised to meet up next year for the Camel live aboard (which seemed like a good idea at the time). Full marks to the Camel team and especially the Camel Dive guides, they were excellent, very professional and safety conscious and were committed to ensuring we enjoyed each days diving. They gave excellent and full dive briefs before each dive and every dive was very relaxed. We would have no hesitation in recommending them to anyone.

All our dives were boat based leaving the jetty about 9 ish every morning, (believe the trip to the SS Thistlegorm was a much earlier start… 4am). We did not encounter many of the larger species of fish, apparently the water is getting too cold for them now, although we did encounter our very first ever shark…a white tip reef shark (about 2m) and a honeycomb ray (again about 2m). The corals and fish population were very impressive on all the dives that we did. The drop offs and walled dives were amazing, so much to see. We even have a video to prove this.

Some of the sites we visited:

Ras Umm Sid :

Spectacular Gorgonian forests along a dramatic drop off.

Ras Mohammad National Park :

Jackfish Alley (Here we saw the white tip reef shark)

Shark Reef – Yolanda (Here we saw the honeycomb ray).

Most popular dive site, definitely a must see dive. Fantastic drift dive with deep drop offs. Yolanda has the remains of a shipwreck spread across its sandy plateau. Not much remains of the wreck, just the cargo of bathtubs and toilets and part of a BMW.

Straits of Tiran:

Thomas and Jackson Reef

These are two of four coral reefs situated in the middle of the Straits named after two 19th century British cartographers. Amazing walls sprout soft corals and gorgonians. Abundance of orange anthias swim around you whilst you do your safety stop.

Ras Bob

Named after a Sharm based divemaster and underwater cameraman – Bob Johnston. It is an easy dive with the most appealing part of the reef in less than 10 m. The reef is the one featured in the Cheltenham and Gloucester Building Society TV advert, (the one where a boy dives off a boat and swims down to pick up a pearl). It is also famous as being the one featured in Blind date. The winning couple were taken on a date to this reef for a try dive by our dive guide (Aussie Geoff), who tells us the girl was more interested in him rather than her date. (Perhaps wishful thinking on his part!!).

We had an absolutely fabulous time and would thoroughly recommend a trip to the Camel Dive Club and Hotel….suggest a visit to their web site: http://www.cameldive.com

Finally we would both like to thank Mark Horton and Mike Scott for their excellent open water training.

A special thank you from Lesley to Mark Horton, Mike Scott, Sue Meakin and not forgetting John Walker (Miss Pattie) who have helped me tremendously through my difficult times!!!…. I am so pleased that I had the commitment to carry on…it was all worth it in the end. I will never forget the words…"everyone has a bad day's diving"…

Thanks again to everyone at Seahorse Dive Club.

Since this write-up the Club has been to Camel again!.... Sharm in February 2002

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