pughio83
Contributor
This is a brief account of my first trip to Egypt, where i stayed and dived in and around marsa alam. Trip ran Sept 29th-Oct 6th.
1) Plan:
I decided on Marsa Alam initially after researching various areas. Sharm was an option but i hate crowds when it comes to diving, and hearing reports of 400 dive boats leaving sharm area daily didnt sound that appealing, plus i had heard about a lot of coral damage there?? Anyways, cutting a long story short, i wanted to do a liveaboard far south,but not an option for my gf who is only OWD. so we decided on marsa alam, which was something new for her who has already been to sharm a few times. My gf works for one of the airlines so we did a package trip (which i normally hate) because it cost us next to nothing and could spend more on the diving!!
2)Flights/transfer:
Getting their was no problem, no delays and no issues with the airline thompsons. Flight out was 5hr 10mins. As marsa alam is a less popular destination, the planes used are a bit dated so no mini tv's in seats etc...but nice leg space. Cabin crew very attentive but helpful when the mrs is cabin crew also and her mates are working our flight lol!! Transfer to hotel from speedy airport exit was 15-20mins only.
3)Hotel:
We stayed at the Iberotel Coraya, part of a larger resort around a bay which includes the iberotel lamaya and somaya. Welcome drinks on arrival, hot towels, and bags taken to our room. Hotel was excellent generally. The rooms (standard that is)were spacious, with tv and minibar, balcony, etc..what you would expect from a 4* really. 3 pools always looking clean and fresh, nice designs with bridges and waterfalls, swim up bar. various cafes, al cart restaurant, main buffet restaurant etc..Food excellent too, almost too much choice with roast lamb and mint sauce to duck and hoisin, grilled fish to roast turkey etc....staff friendly and even though we were half board we still got most of our drinks for free, and the lunch packs you can order we also free!! My gf has been to egypt 6 times and with her job been to many hotels and she said this hotel had the best food by a mile!!
Staff were very attentive with cleanliness, no bugs, occasional smell of sewage swang by but other than that i had no complaints. The beach was ok i guess for egypt, its not white talcom powder like in other places but it was ok. water temp in the bay was 31C, coraya bay has a nice house reef with some nice corals, decent viz early morning and chance of seeing turtles there. You can walk around the bay from one hotel to another in 15minutes. A jetty does go out to the deeper portion for easy access for divers/snorkellers.
4) The dive centre - CORAYA DIVERS
Hotels in Marsa alam are isolated but luckily we had access to coraya divers which is a large operation, and only 10mins from port ghalib where other dive centres exist like emporer divers. I chose to dive with Coraya for convenience of location, and initally seemed very professional. Coraya Divers centre was nice, good layout, nice facilities and can cater for a large number of divers. Equipment was good quality, lots of info and quite self controlled in terms of the diving 'you' wanted to do. I made a friend there who went to emporer divers, who im sure are good, and he had said they only dive a site if there is enough people and the choice of site was very limited, and also they were not polite at all??
Anyways, problems arose and i can say that coraya divers is one of the worst dive centres i have dived with, and every other english person i met there said the same thing. why was this? well everything is german orientated there. Every book, sign etc is in german, 80% of divers were german, most of their staff appeared german and those staff were only friendly to germans. I have no issues with germans, but i myself, my friend and another coupled were treated like crap. If i asked a question i got a snotty answer, when aksed if we could join late on a trip they said no its full but when i later checked it 4 extra people had been added - all german surprise surprise. If you are english, i advise dont dive here, German you will have no problems! Might as well be called Coraya divers for Germans. I wouldnt mind if the staff were actually friendly to us.
Now about the DM's there. The worst i have ever seen. I am a DM and trained to a standard. None of the 15 odd dm's there showed me anything under water, all they did was bang their rattle to tell you you are too far from your buddy or too deep. One couple repeatedly got abused for being 2-3m away from eachother taking photos (a couple thats dived together for 30yrs plus and logged 1000+ dives) - it was a joke. You had to clean your equipment daily ie rented gear, carry it everywhere sometimes over long distances and store it yourself in a locked box, setup yourself but let them turn on the tanks, and at the end of the dive the dm's would disappear - rarely a debrief or talk about the dive, let alone get log books signed. One DM supposedly turned on my friends tank but actually left it half closed causing problems on our unguided dive. In the end the last 5 dives i did unguided because the dm's were so damn annoying. The only decent dm there was guy called 'momo'. The rest had no interest in you at all, worst service i have ever seen.
5)The diving itself:
It appears to me that hard corals are amazing in the red sea, or at least marsa alam. Visibility on dives was usually 30-40m, temp at 31C meant shorts and a rash guard for me, and at the time calm seas. However the diveristy of marinelife was not good, much lower than Asia, lower than even carribean in my opinion, and was a bit boring. After you have done a couple of pretty reef dives you have seen what you will commonly see, and though there is some macro like ghost pipefish/seahorses they are very uncommon and in fact the dm's didnt know what a ghost pipefish was, nor most of the other stuff i asked. I was told by dm's that the leopard ray we saw was an eagle ray and that the stonefish was a scorpionfish!!poor!!
However red sea is also the place where big fishies can play and this is what makes the diving good.....if you see them. During the week some lucky people were seeing dolphins on dives, dugongs (a few ppl only), one dive there was a 7m whaleshark and an elphinstone there were oceanic white tips. However, for me and most others, i saw none of these and had generally v boring dives that followed:
a) check dive on house reef - mandatory boring waste of time dive that you must pay for, do some skills as well and see sod all in way of marine life. NB im a dm and my last dive was in May so paying for this was pointless.
b) Murburak - Nice bay, nice corals, 2 stonefish, not much else.
c) Abu Dabab - advertised as the famous dugong site but there havent been dugongs there for 2 yrs as dumbass divers touched them too much. Pretty reef dive, but was the sea grass dive that gave me any form of excitement on the trip with large green turtles with ramoras, guitar sharks, trunkfish, a single great barracuda and a leopard ray.
d) Elphinstone - the famous site, all hopes and promises built up with a big let down. There were no fish!!! Absolutely nothing, no jacks/mackeral/trevailly no nothing, let alone any sharks. One small napolean wrasse near boat at end. Two dives saw nothing, nice wall itslef and good viz but a letdown. Saying that the previous trip had divers getting bumped by oceanic white tips so i guess i was unlucky? Well some divers on my boat have dived elphinstone many times and they say its a lifeless site with rare excitement.?? who knows.
e)Koraffi - local vacinity dive, small hawksbill turtle, normal reef otherwise.
f)Shurra - sea grass and reef, looking for dugongs, found leopard ray, octopus thats it.
g) sha'ab marsa alam, a substitute dolphin house for samadai which was closed. No dolphins though app people have seen them there! some giant morays and small wreck, small WTReef shark.
Apprently best place to see dugongs there was not shurra and muburak which i was initially told (hence dived there) but actually a site called sheihk malek. I did see dolphoins twice on the boat but wasnt allowed to get into the water.
Overall the diving was pretty, after a few dives pretty boring. Unless something big swims past then i feel red sea lacks in comparison to asia, where if big stuff doesnt swim past there is lots to keep you amused. Plus at a cost of nearly £40 per dive as an average was a joke. For half the dive sites i had to pay a 'special' site surcharge fo 10-15euros, plus antoehr 10euros for bus use, then 2 euros for reef tax, more for tips, more for equipment use, then the actual diving fee. Coraya divers ARE NOT cheap and for the level of service i would NOT dive with them again.
Will i do more land based diving in egypt? probably not but the weather is fab- 38C all week!! Would i recommend coraya hotel, very much so. Would i recommend marsa alam itself- not unless you want to stay in your hotel only, but it is quiet vs sharm if you want to do this. And the diving....well if you are lucky to dive with whalesharks or dolphins, dugoungs or other big sharks then it will be worth it, but if you dont then i hope you like hard corals and butterfly fish. I like healthy reefs but without good macro or pelagics it doesnt hold my interest for long.
For me i will try a liveaboard next time, divers i met on the flight home said they had just done 'simply the best' liveabaord and saw hammerheads, threshers, oceanic white tips etc..etc and loved it.
My trip though was enjoyable, and i do apologise for some of the harshness and rants but as an experienced diver, someone who has been a dm in a resort through internship, been to great dive sites around the world, i felt ripped off and disatisfied from my diving side of the holiday.
But i will look forward to a liveaboard in red sea, poss to brothers/daedalus?? Anyone have any experience please let me know. Thanks
1) Plan:
I decided on Marsa Alam initially after researching various areas. Sharm was an option but i hate crowds when it comes to diving, and hearing reports of 400 dive boats leaving sharm area daily didnt sound that appealing, plus i had heard about a lot of coral damage there?? Anyways, cutting a long story short, i wanted to do a liveaboard far south,but not an option for my gf who is only OWD. so we decided on marsa alam, which was something new for her who has already been to sharm a few times. My gf works for one of the airlines so we did a package trip (which i normally hate) because it cost us next to nothing and could spend more on the diving!!
2)Flights/transfer:
Getting their was no problem, no delays and no issues with the airline thompsons. Flight out was 5hr 10mins. As marsa alam is a less popular destination, the planes used are a bit dated so no mini tv's in seats etc...but nice leg space. Cabin crew very attentive but helpful when the mrs is cabin crew also and her mates are working our flight lol!! Transfer to hotel from speedy airport exit was 15-20mins only.
3)Hotel:
We stayed at the Iberotel Coraya, part of a larger resort around a bay which includes the iberotel lamaya and somaya. Welcome drinks on arrival, hot towels, and bags taken to our room. Hotel was excellent generally. The rooms (standard that is)were spacious, with tv and minibar, balcony, etc..what you would expect from a 4* really. 3 pools always looking clean and fresh, nice designs with bridges and waterfalls, swim up bar. various cafes, al cart restaurant, main buffet restaurant etc..Food excellent too, almost too much choice with roast lamb and mint sauce to duck and hoisin, grilled fish to roast turkey etc....staff friendly and even though we were half board we still got most of our drinks for free, and the lunch packs you can order we also free!! My gf has been to egypt 6 times and with her job been to many hotels and she said this hotel had the best food by a mile!!
Staff were very attentive with cleanliness, no bugs, occasional smell of sewage swang by but other than that i had no complaints. The beach was ok i guess for egypt, its not white talcom powder like in other places but it was ok. water temp in the bay was 31C, coraya bay has a nice house reef with some nice corals, decent viz early morning and chance of seeing turtles there. You can walk around the bay from one hotel to another in 15minutes. A jetty does go out to the deeper portion for easy access for divers/snorkellers.
4) The dive centre - CORAYA DIVERS
Hotels in Marsa alam are isolated but luckily we had access to coraya divers which is a large operation, and only 10mins from port ghalib where other dive centres exist like emporer divers. I chose to dive with Coraya for convenience of location, and initally seemed very professional. Coraya Divers centre was nice, good layout, nice facilities and can cater for a large number of divers. Equipment was good quality, lots of info and quite self controlled in terms of the diving 'you' wanted to do. I made a friend there who went to emporer divers, who im sure are good, and he had said they only dive a site if there is enough people and the choice of site was very limited, and also they were not polite at all??
Anyways, problems arose and i can say that coraya divers is one of the worst dive centres i have dived with, and every other english person i met there said the same thing. why was this? well everything is german orientated there. Every book, sign etc is in german, 80% of divers were german, most of their staff appeared german and those staff were only friendly to germans. I have no issues with germans, but i myself, my friend and another coupled were treated like crap. If i asked a question i got a snotty answer, when aksed if we could join late on a trip they said no its full but when i later checked it 4 extra people had been added - all german surprise surprise. If you are english, i advise dont dive here, German you will have no problems! Might as well be called Coraya divers for Germans. I wouldnt mind if the staff were actually friendly to us.
Now about the DM's there. The worst i have ever seen. I am a DM and trained to a standard. None of the 15 odd dm's there showed me anything under water, all they did was bang their rattle to tell you you are too far from your buddy or too deep. One couple repeatedly got abused for being 2-3m away from eachother taking photos (a couple thats dived together for 30yrs plus and logged 1000+ dives) - it was a joke. You had to clean your equipment daily ie rented gear, carry it everywhere sometimes over long distances and store it yourself in a locked box, setup yourself but let them turn on the tanks, and at the end of the dive the dm's would disappear - rarely a debrief or talk about the dive, let alone get log books signed. One DM supposedly turned on my friends tank but actually left it half closed causing problems on our unguided dive. In the end the last 5 dives i did unguided because the dm's were so damn annoying. The only decent dm there was guy called 'momo'. The rest had no interest in you at all, worst service i have ever seen.
5)The diving itself:
It appears to me that hard corals are amazing in the red sea, or at least marsa alam. Visibility on dives was usually 30-40m, temp at 31C meant shorts and a rash guard for me, and at the time calm seas. However the diveristy of marinelife was not good, much lower than Asia, lower than even carribean in my opinion, and was a bit boring. After you have done a couple of pretty reef dives you have seen what you will commonly see, and though there is some macro like ghost pipefish/seahorses they are very uncommon and in fact the dm's didnt know what a ghost pipefish was, nor most of the other stuff i asked. I was told by dm's that the leopard ray we saw was an eagle ray and that the stonefish was a scorpionfish!!poor!!
However red sea is also the place where big fishies can play and this is what makes the diving good.....if you see them. During the week some lucky people were seeing dolphins on dives, dugongs (a few ppl only), one dive there was a 7m whaleshark and an elphinstone there were oceanic white tips. However, for me and most others, i saw none of these and had generally v boring dives that followed:
a) check dive on house reef - mandatory boring waste of time dive that you must pay for, do some skills as well and see sod all in way of marine life. NB im a dm and my last dive was in May so paying for this was pointless.
b) Murburak - Nice bay, nice corals, 2 stonefish, not much else.
c) Abu Dabab - advertised as the famous dugong site but there havent been dugongs there for 2 yrs as dumbass divers touched them too much. Pretty reef dive, but was the sea grass dive that gave me any form of excitement on the trip with large green turtles with ramoras, guitar sharks, trunkfish, a single great barracuda and a leopard ray.
d) Elphinstone - the famous site, all hopes and promises built up with a big let down. There were no fish!!! Absolutely nothing, no jacks/mackeral/trevailly no nothing, let alone any sharks. One small napolean wrasse near boat at end. Two dives saw nothing, nice wall itslef and good viz but a letdown. Saying that the previous trip had divers getting bumped by oceanic white tips so i guess i was unlucky? Well some divers on my boat have dived elphinstone many times and they say its a lifeless site with rare excitement.?? who knows.
e)Koraffi - local vacinity dive, small hawksbill turtle, normal reef otherwise.
f)Shurra - sea grass and reef, looking for dugongs, found leopard ray, octopus thats it.
g) sha'ab marsa alam, a substitute dolphin house for samadai which was closed. No dolphins though app people have seen them there! some giant morays and small wreck, small WTReef shark.
Apprently best place to see dugongs there was not shurra and muburak which i was initially told (hence dived there) but actually a site called sheihk malek. I did see dolphoins twice on the boat but wasnt allowed to get into the water.
Overall the diving was pretty, after a few dives pretty boring. Unless something big swims past then i feel red sea lacks in comparison to asia, where if big stuff doesnt swim past there is lots to keep you amused. Plus at a cost of nearly £40 per dive as an average was a joke. For half the dive sites i had to pay a 'special' site surcharge fo 10-15euros, plus antoehr 10euros for bus use, then 2 euros for reef tax, more for tips, more for equipment use, then the actual diving fee. Coraya divers ARE NOT cheap and for the level of service i would NOT dive with them again.
Will i do more land based diving in egypt? probably not but the weather is fab- 38C all week!! Would i recommend coraya hotel, very much so. Would i recommend marsa alam itself- not unless you want to stay in your hotel only, but it is quiet vs sharm if you want to do this. And the diving....well if you are lucky to dive with whalesharks or dolphins, dugoungs or other big sharks then it will be worth it, but if you dont then i hope you like hard corals and butterfly fish. I like healthy reefs but without good macro or pelagics it doesnt hold my interest for long.
For me i will try a liveaboard next time, divers i met on the flight home said they had just done 'simply the best' liveabaord and saw hammerheads, threshers, oceanic white tips etc..etc and loved it.
My trip though was enjoyable, and i do apologise for some of the harshness and rants but as an experienced diver, someone who has been a dm in a resort through internship, been to great dive sites around the world, i felt ripped off and disatisfied from my diving side of the holiday.
But i will look forward to a liveaboard in red sea, poss to brothers/daedalus?? Anyone have any experience please let me know. Thanks
)
