happy2dive
Guest
Hello Everyone,
I would like to share my experience from my last trip there. The report has become a bit lengthy. Please bear with me. Note for singlediver.com members, this is a duplicate of the report I posted earlier.
End of last April, I spent two weeks in Hurghada, halfway down the Egyptian Red Sea coast. I stayed at the Grand Azur Horizon, a four-star all-inclusive on the beach. Comfortable as it was, that was not the main reason I booked that hotel. My main motive was to dive with Easy Divers, a Dutch club with bases in Hurghada and El Gouna. They have two dive centers in Hurghada and their diving boat departs from the pier of the Grand Azur.
The reason I choose Easy Divers was due to their most friendly manner on the telephone. Because Im an asthmatic diver with a wobbly knee (severed anterior cruciate ligament courtesy of a biking accident) and because I would be traveling alone, I called several Hurghada dive clubs to see how they would accommodate me. The staff at EasyDivers were the only ones who made me feel truly welcome. They didnt start off about extra charges for requiring someone to help with the tanks/fins on entries and exits. The other clubs all started to quote charges ranging from 11 EUR extra per dive day, to 10 EUR extra per dive. In contrast, Easy Divers even mentioned that they would try to hook me up with a DM since they didnt want to take any risks with my asthma. All this they offered for no extra charge. They told me not to worry and come over, that they would think of a solution.
So I arrived, checked myself into this gorgeous hotel with lashings of marble and sumptuous space, unfortunately void of local ambience except for the waterpipe bar. (I could have been in a resort in Spain, Mexico, or the Dominican Republic but this is what you get with luxery resorts.) The next day, I walked over to the dive center located on one end of the resorts private beach. While signing up and handling formalities, the Dutch manager Ruud introduced me to a young Scottish DM, Ramsay, who was to be my private DM and buddy for the rest of my trip. First I was hesitant about claiming all of Ramsays time since it would mean that hed be stuck on the boat with me for days on end. And then if I go night diving, hell have to cancel any plans he had as well. Well the way it turned out, he didnt mind at all. He really was available for every and any dive trip I felt like. He enjoyed diving just as much as I did, so in total we did 25 dives in two weeks. At the end of the week, I was approached by some English divers on the boat who wanted to know if I was so posh that I could afford traveling with a personal dive master. We had a good laugh over that. Im not Oprah. I cant afford a personal cook, trainer, maid etc etc.
On the first day, we did a check dive on the house reef just off the beach of the resort. Although sections of the reef were sadly damaged from all the construction work in the area, there were pockets of thriving coral with two resident giant moray eels, a black lionfish and a spotted ray as well as shoals of other colorful reef fish and the occasional larger predator fish (tuna?) hunting in the distance by the drop-off. Ramsay did a brief check of all my skills and that was reassuring since Ive had a two-year hiatus since my previous diving trip.
Then for ten days, I went on two-tank boat trips each day, departing at eight and returning at around four in the afternoon. According to the DMs there are about 40 dive sites within reach. And only on one day did I visit a site for a second time. The selection of sites was dependent largely on the wind direction and weather conditions. Each day was surprise.
The coral is incredible and teaming with life at most of the sites, except for small damaged dead sections where the boats moor. I cant write down all that Ive seen here, but here are some highlights: there were plenty of large octopuses, one pair caught in the act of mating, squid ( huge one at night), a long line of dark red squid in perfect formation suspended in the deep blue, free-swimming huge morays and those nestled in the niches, blue spotted rays lurking under the table coral, alligator fish and scorpion fish pretending to be bits of rock and coral, crevasses in the coral pinnacles filled with clusters of lion fish, monster puffer fish, parrotfish nibbling the algae off the coral, midnight blue Arabian angelfish, unicorn fish, napoleon fish, shoals of colorful fish that would rain over and around us, a Spanish dancer slowly making its way across the sandy bottom, a group of white tip sharks hunting in the distance, a pair of dolphins who swam over to check us out really close at 10 m deep.
On most of the boat dives, the head DM was Mustafa, an amazing local diver with more than 5000 dives in the area. He would give us the most incredible lively and passionate briefings, drawing detailed maps of the coral at each site from memory. He would even add pointers as to where we would most likely see the morays, sea turtles and octopus since hes been long acquainted with the habits of most of the reef residents. And a lot of the time, yes, the creatures would be there. Just wonderful! I hope hes still there at EasyDivers when I go back later this year.
So far, this was the positive part. If you dont want to loose the euphoric feeling dont read any further about the trials of a woman traveling alone in Egypt but skip through to the last paragraph of part two. The system complained that I was over the maximum of 10000 characters so I'm splitting my report up into two sections.
I would like to share my experience from my last trip there. The report has become a bit lengthy. Please bear with me. Note for singlediver.com members, this is a duplicate of the report I posted earlier.
End of last April, I spent two weeks in Hurghada, halfway down the Egyptian Red Sea coast. I stayed at the Grand Azur Horizon, a four-star all-inclusive on the beach. Comfortable as it was, that was not the main reason I booked that hotel. My main motive was to dive with Easy Divers, a Dutch club with bases in Hurghada and El Gouna. They have two dive centers in Hurghada and their diving boat departs from the pier of the Grand Azur.
The reason I choose Easy Divers was due to their most friendly manner on the telephone. Because Im an asthmatic diver with a wobbly knee (severed anterior cruciate ligament courtesy of a biking accident) and because I would be traveling alone, I called several Hurghada dive clubs to see how they would accommodate me. The staff at EasyDivers were the only ones who made me feel truly welcome. They didnt start off about extra charges for requiring someone to help with the tanks/fins on entries and exits. The other clubs all started to quote charges ranging from 11 EUR extra per dive day, to 10 EUR extra per dive. In contrast, Easy Divers even mentioned that they would try to hook me up with a DM since they didnt want to take any risks with my asthma. All this they offered for no extra charge. They told me not to worry and come over, that they would think of a solution.
So I arrived, checked myself into this gorgeous hotel with lashings of marble and sumptuous space, unfortunately void of local ambience except for the waterpipe bar. (I could have been in a resort in Spain, Mexico, or the Dominican Republic but this is what you get with luxery resorts.) The next day, I walked over to the dive center located on one end of the resorts private beach. While signing up and handling formalities, the Dutch manager Ruud introduced me to a young Scottish DM, Ramsay, who was to be my private DM and buddy for the rest of my trip. First I was hesitant about claiming all of Ramsays time since it would mean that hed be stuck on the boat with me for days on end. And then if I go night diving, hell have to cancel any plans he had as well. Well the way it turned out, he didnt mind at all. He really was available for every and any dive trip I felt like. He enjoyed diving just as much as I did, so in total we did 25 dives in two weeks. At the end of the week, I was approached by some English divers on the boat who wanted to know if I was so posh that I could afford traveling with a personal dive master. We had a good laugh over that. Im not Oprah. I cant afford a personal cook, trainer, maid etc etc.
On the first day, we did a check dive on the house reef just off the beach of the resort. Although sections of the reef were sadly damaged from all the construction work in the area, there were pockets of thriving coral with two resident giant moray eels, a black lionfish and a spotted ray as well as shoals of other colorful reef fish and the occasional larger predator fish (tuna?) hunting in the distance by the drop-off. Ramsay did a brief check of all my skills and that was reassuring since Ive had a two-year hiatus since my previous diving trip.
Then for ten days, I went on two-tank boat trips each day, departing at eight and returning at around four in the afternoon. According to the DMs there are about 40 dive sites within reach. And only on one day did I visit a site for a second time. The selection of sites was dependent largely on the wind direction and weather conditions. Each day was surprise.
The coral is incredible and teaming with life at most of the sites, except for small damaged dead sections where the boats moor. I cant write down all that Ive seen here, but here are some highlights: there were plenty of large octopuses, one pair caught in the act of mating, squid ( huge one at night), a long line of dark red squid in perfect formation suspended in the deep blue, free-swimming huge morays and those nestled in the niches, blue spotted rays lurking under the table coral, alligator fish and scorpion fish pretending to be bits of rock and coral, crevasses in the coral pinnacles filled with clusters of lion fish, monster puffer fish, parrotfish nibbling the algae off the coral, midnight blue Arabian angelfish, unicorn fish, napoleon fish, shoals of colorful fish that would rain over and around us, a Spanish dancer slowly making its way across the sandy bottom, a group of white tip sharks hunting in the distance, a pair of dolphins who swam over to check us out really close at 10 m deep.
On most of the boat dives, the head DM was Mustafa, an amazing local diver with more than 5000 dives in the area. He would give us the most incredible lively and passionate briefings, drawing detailed maps of the coral at each site from memory. He would even add pointers as to where we would most likely see the morays, sea turtles and octopus since hes been long acquainted with the habits of most of the reef residents. And a lot of the time, yes, the creatures would be there. Just wonderful! I hope hes still there at EasyDivers when I go back later this year.
So far, this was the positive part. If you dont want to loose the euphoric feeling dont read any further about the trials of a woman traveling alone in Egypt but skip through to the last paragraph of part two. The system complained that I was over the maximum of 10000 characters so I'm splitting my report up into two sections.
