Another Toyota minibus returns me to Hurghada with the crew and dive staff. Most of Easy Divers' staff live in Hurghada and are bussed to where they are needed on the day.Another Toyota minibus returns me to Hurghada with the crew and dive staff. Most of Easy Divers' staff live in Hurghada and are bussed to where they are needed on the day.
With that in mind, I would be staying at Three Corners Village for the next few days while diving first from Hurghada and then from Safaga. A pleasant surprise is that my friend Suzy who helped with the recent instructor interviews will be my dive guide.
They have a neat trick for a 3 dive day and un-crowded dive sites. There are a couple of wrecks just 10 minutes from the dock. A prompt start is followed by an inshore wreck dive while most of the day boats are chugging out to the islands.
We then get a surface interval while heading out to the islands, arriving just as everyone else is finishing and again get the site to ourselves. Now just out of phase with the other boats we only cross a few divers returning to thgeir boats on our afternoon dive, then get back to shore with the trailing edge of returning boat traffic.
It sounds like a wishful theory, but it worked flawlessly two days running. Just goes to show how some original thinking can do wonders for the diving at potentially crowded sites.
The inshore wrecks are Excaliber and El Mina. Excaliber was a large steel hulled motor yacht which sank in a fire. One allegation is that it was torched at its mooring to prevent it going to the owner's wife in an impending divorce settlement.
The previously luxurious interior is now crumbled mush, leaving plenty of room to swim through the shell as long as I am careful not to stir up debris. Such wrecks are a haven for shoals of glass fish and the interior of the Excaliber is teeming with them. Lionfish lurk outside keeping an eye on their larder.
El Mina is just Arabic for "The Harbour" and not anything to do with the name of this minesweeper sunk by Israeli aircraft in the 1969 war. The wreck rests on its port side with a good collection of anti-aircraft guns bristling from the deck. The minesweeping role is evidenced by the large winch and cable guides at the stern and a minesweeping equipment secured to the deck.
It has been a long time since I last dived at Hurghada. The walls at Small Giftun and Abu Ramada are just as magnificent as I remember them. Huge forests of gorgonians and soft corals, with black corals making an appearance on the deeper bits. Maybe it is being steep walls that has protected them, there is just nothing level for careless divers to stand on.
On the other hand, I also dived at Gota Abu Ramada, a popular training and checkout site with shallow reef and flat seabed sprouting coral heads. This has got to be the most heavily dived site in Hurghada yet the coral is doing really well and I saw more fish here than on all the other Hurghada dives added together. What's more, they are used to divers and provide some of the easiest fish photography ever. If I had time to repeat one of the dives I made in Hurghada, this supposedly over-dived checkout site is the one I would have chosen.
Staying in the old town rather than amongst the resorts that sprawl south of Hurghada makes it easy to get out in the evening. Just round the corner a firm favourite for beer and steak is Papa's. Two doors further on is Mafia, an Italian restaurant where I join Nigel and Catherine for dinner. Amongst other things I haven't forgotten the chance to seek out the skeletons in Louise's closet. Trouble is, there isn't any juicy gossip that she hadn't already publicly confessed to. The best I could get was a story about the male trainees who learned little in lectures while distracted by her cleavage.
My last dive at Hurghada is just before dusk on the house reef at Three Corners Village. Divers had been spotting sea horses and naturally I wanted to get pictures. 70 minutes later I have seen several kinds of leaf fish and pipe fish and all sorts of other unusual stuff, but no sea horses. Maybe they just went to bed early.