The wind was still blowing this morning, and we were due to go to Ras Mohammad again. The usual dives were out though, so we went to a couple of reefs I’ve never dived before.
Lighthouse Reef is at the very tip of Ras Mohammad, and a haven for snorkellers. It also had a depressingly large quantity of rubbish on the reef. Chris and Strood Chris both picked up large plastic bags that were strangling fire coral.
The lower depths were quite desolate, but the upper levels were gorgeous coral gardens, thriving with life. Things we saw included a giant moray, a masked pufferfish getting cleaned, a jellyfish pretending to be an anemone, pipefish, and the most enormous one full metre filefish, specifically a scribbled leather jacket.

The second dive was the reef next door, Key Reef, and this was debatably the best dive of the holiday. There was still rubbish, but not nearly as much as Lighthouse. We were greeted by a youngish giant moray, and saw more giant morays of various sizes and ages throughout the dive. A titan triggerfish kept us company for a short while, clearly not nesting as it was very chilled out.

But the things that really made us happy dance were first an eagle ray that flew slowly by us, and then a big devil ray which was lying on the bottom, and took off after we’d watched it for a while.

The last dive of the holiday was at Ras Ghoslani, which was very picturesque and a lot of the small stuff, along with the morays, came out to say goodbye.

Checking out is always the saddest part of the holiday, especially checking out of the dive centre. But short work was made of that and we returned to the hotel for showers and food.

Now Thomas Cook very nearly caused us grief as we did not know the pick up time for the airport and could find no board for Thomas Cook in the myriad of boards for other companies. It was only when Chris spoke with a Thomsons rep who told us off for not attending the TC reps briefing on Monday (well, sorry, but we had plans that conflicted, so there), that it transpired that, despite having travelled out under TC, when it came to information, they were using the name Panorama. And of course there was a lovely big board for Panorama telling us everything we needed to know.
We mooched off for dinner at eight, preferring to stick to the Italian restaurant (you can have food from any restaurant and eat it in any) because of the lack of screaming kids. Or so I thought.

We turned up, and the MaitreD’, Captain Ahmed greeted us and took us to a specially laid table with lots of flowers, and tablecloth swan and an ice bucket with wine. An idea by Chris and carried out by the restaurant staff, it was a complete surprise to me, and brought a tear to my eye.
Is it really awful of me to say that I might just have got a real kick out of the jealous looks I got from other guests? I think one or two blokes might just have been in the doghouse…
We had a lovely evening, and eventually fell into bed.

Sunday we pack, check out and lie by the pool/beach until pick up. Moo. But the holiday isn’t over until its over.

Today started out surprisingly windy and we could see the white horses on the Tiran Strait. At the harbour for Tiran, much discussion was had between dive guides and boat captain.

The conclusion emerged that there may be a second dive at Tiran if the wind died down, but otherwise we would be diving the bays. The dives would probably have been lovely at Tiran with virtually no current. But picking us back up would have been extremely dangerous given the height of the waves.

The first dive was from and to Maka, moored in a bay while we explored Ras Bob. This was a lovely gentle dive, the highlight of which was a coral grouper having its teeth cleaned by a little cleaner wrasse.

The second was back as Ras Nasrani which is always beautiful, and this dive had, amongst other things, a giant spotted pufferfish hiding in a hole, a slate-pencil sea urchin hiding in another hole, and a yellow spotted burrfish out on the hunt.

We skipped the third dive, which was just as well given that the returning divers bemoaned the fact that there was nothing to see. Instead, we took a night dive off the Conrad house reef where we’d done our check dive on Monday.

It was spoiled a little bit by a spoilt sixteen year old with a crush on the dive guide. But overall it was a good dive. There was the obscenely long bouncy jetty to contend with on the way out, but as it was the third time I’d managed to walk up it without falling off, and the wind was gentle, I was now an expert and there were no problems.

The featherstars were out in force, displaying a vast range of colours, along with a couple of monochrome sea ferns. A little black and white starfish made its way across the sand, while a sea hare pretended it wasn’t there under some coral. A sea cucumber looked rather like a loaf of bread going for a walk, clearfin lionfish joined the party and a giant moray showed us its teeth.

The day fish were sleeping, so we saw a parrotfish in its protective bubble, and a dozy triggerfish sleeping in a hole that wasn’t quite big enough for it.

The biggest highlight which was so fantastic that I forgot to put it in this missive until Chris pointed out the omission was a vibrant Spanish dancer resting on some coral.

When we surfaced, the wind proved to us that it could go from gentle breeze to howling hurricane in 45 minutes. The mildly bouncing jetty was now writhing all over the place. Have you ever seen an eel squirming? Well, imagine the jetty doing the same thing. There was no way I could walk it normally, let alone with full kit.

After getting out of the water, we sat on a platform at the end of the jetty waiting for everyone to get out. Already quite anxious about this jetty, I was horrified to find that my legs wouldn’t work. I had full feeling, could wiggle my toes and bend my knees, but when I tried to stand up, admittedly always an effort in full kit, I couldn’t. I could not get my bum to lift off that platform.

Then a big burly Egyptian came and hoisted me to my feet, and it transpired that my cylinder had fallen, which meant that I had a much lower centre of gravity, and my knees were quite simply at the wrong angle to lift the changed configuration. Thankful that I wasn’t rapidly losing limbs, the jetty suddenly didn’t seem too bad. Until I stepped on it just as it lurched to the left.

I don’t often turn into a big girly wuss and can take most things thrown at me, but my sense of balance isn’t the best (I habitually fall down stairs without the aid of foreign objects, cats or alcohol), and I just yelled to anyone who would listen that I just. Couldn’t. Do. It.

Chris braved the jetty with the promise that he would go dump his kit and then come back and get me (my hero!).

The dive guide had other ideas though, and took most of the weight of the low riding cylinder, announced that he had got ahold of me and that I should just put one foot in front of the other, and he’d make sure I didn’t fall in.

I was going to object, but since he was already walking into my back, I really didn’t have any option, and I guess that was the idea. It seemed like forever, but we got to the end where Chris was waiting.

Bouncy jetties in a storm? Never. Again. Or at least not without some big burly manservant type to haul all my kit for me.

We returned, shattered back to the hotel, and while showering, the Immodium was reached for. But after a rather horrific episode of de-gassing (wind), it was put back without opening.

There was one very important event that I forgot to mention yesterday; I did my 200th dive! Hee!

Anyway, today they were only six minutes late in picking us up, which in dive time is very good. We went to Ras Mohammed again, and had another day’s excellent diving.

The group for the first dive wasn’t the best organised; no fault of the dive guide, it was a much bigger group than we’ve had so far and people were being undisciplined, especially with regards to maintaining contact with their buddy. A diplomatic style of telling off before the second dive, and the group was much more together. Again a very experienced group, which is just marvellous.

Barry and Vladimir were on board again, and we were joined by (another) Chris from Strood. There were also Kirsty and her boyfriend Roma who both work for Aquarius, but were actually on board on their day off as Kirsty is learning to dive. We had Sharif for our guide today, who is very good at spotting things.

We went to Shark and Yolanda again, but as we all had good air, made it a much longer dive by including Anemone City, which I think I’ve only done once before, maybe twice.

Making the trip across the deep blue from one reef to the other is a little scary. As you lose sight of Anemone City, you hope that you’re headed in the right direction for Shark Reef. Eventually, it looms as a big shadow, clarifying into a steep wall that we followed around to Yolanda Reef and wreck.

As one might imagine we saw many anemone fish in their anemones, a lot with babies hiding in the tentacles. Also present were dominoes with tiny babies that were a fuzzy grey because their colours haven’t come in yet.

The big napoleon was back to play with us, along with a turtle who was having dinner. Sharif looked very hard for hammerhead sharks but couldn’t find any for us.

Ras Ghoslani was next with an excellent little cave system at the beginning. There are plenty of varied and large corals here, although the most striking things were the periodic clouds of baby triggerfish.

Right at the end a colourful sea slug/squirt/cucumber was on a coral finding its way around with its black tentacles. It didn’t seem to realise that it was on the end of a sticky out bit that didn’t really have anywhere for it to go.

The third dive was nice and relaxed at Temple again, and there were only five of us diving. We took it slowly and saw a lot of little things; soft corals, shellfish and tiny fish that inhabit certain corals and caves. At the end of the dive, however, Chris had a bit of a mental breakdown and lost control of his buoyancy when a manta ray (yes, one of those really big ones) popped in and out of sight for a moment or two.

Vladimir and Barry were both totally gutted that they had opted out of this dive and very much wanted to throw us back overboard.

On the return we had a spot of tea before retiring to the room. Now, the cleaners have this wonderful tradition of making towel sculptures on the beds for guests. Yesterday’s swan had my sunglasses perched on its nose which was very cool.

Today, he had gone all out, making the swan with one towel, and using others to make a river scene, including a wavy towel for the choppy water.

We've just had dinner which was as lovely as usual. The Immodium remians untouched.

Today started off excellently with a seven am alarm with a nine minute snooze and we were still in reception by the 7.45 pickup schedule. However, no one had arrived by 8.15.

Now dive time usually means 15 to 20 minutes late. Half an hour is unusual. So we had reception ring the dive centre. After several calls to different numbers there, it was established that no one was answering the phones, and that another hotel had a guest that was still waiting.

Eventually, at 8.45 the bus turned up full of apologies; a VIP entourage had brought a couple of the streets to an enforced standstill for 45 minutes.

Not being reliant on tides, it didn’t matter too much, and we headed out from a new harbour that is much nearer Tiran than Sharm Old Harbour. Our boat was Ito, and our guide was Islaam. The other guide on the boat was Sharif, a friend of Jill’s from Dahab, and he took the baby divers.

Once again we were with the Swiss boys, Christian and Roman who we met yesterday, but didn’t really get a chance to talk to. And Vladimir, who loves fast currents and got his wish today. Plus we had a family from Dubai, who are mad keen divers.

So again we had a good experienced group, which made our first dive very enjoyable when it so easily could have been a disaster. It was to Jackson reef, the furthest reef that borders the Gulf of Aqaba. The briefing was that we would go against the current to the left, and ride it back to the boat. But when we got in, it was running too fast to go against, so we agreed to ride it as a drift to the right.

After having cleared the new plan with the boat, we went down, and watched the reef pass us by. The current started as quite pleasant and relaxing. We saw a turtle and some of us were able to lock on to a piece of rock to take pictures, while others… didn’t.

Then the current decided to speed up. Quite a lot. We were sitting in the water rather like hanging off a zip-wire as the reef went by faster and faster. Until we came to a very sudden stop. Throughout the ride there were napoleons and eagle rays, a big fat barracuda, a clearfin lionfish sleeping in a hole and a school of elephant nose fish followed us for a way.

The second dive was back to Woodhouse, although we went in the opposite direction to Monday. To my absolute joy we spotted a white pepper moray eel hiding behind some fire coral, there were huge groupers and clams, and a blue-spotted stingray flying across the sea bed.

Having sampled the hotel’s breakfast/lunch boxes, we opted for the boat food. Much better, and better value for money.

The third dive came after letting lunch settle and a spot of sunbathing when a cloud passed by. A cloud! An aberration! Shock, horror! Chris was ecstatic as on the descent he spotted a torpedo ray, which was very, very cute.

We saw everything on this dive; crocodile fish, stonefish, scorpionfish, a giant moray, napoleon and barracuda. There was a suspected octopus sighting, baby fusiliers and I failed to get a picture of a big eye.

Back at the hotel we stopped at the pool bar for a cup of tea and chatted with a couple from the midlands, before heading back for showers.

We decided to partake of the International Buffet this evening, which was divine. Am making note to put the Immodiam in the bathroom as I’m sure this can’t continue…

We’re still with the ridiculously early mornings, the alarm waking us up at 6.45 when we crawled out of bed, chucked swimwear on, grabbed bag and headed out for breakfast, picking up our packed food. We were ready and waiting at 7.25.

One of the pickups, Barry from London, failed to be at his hotel lobby at his designated time due to alarm failure. Impressively he went from snoring to being on the bus in less than ten minutes.

At Sharm harbour we found our boat for the day to be Maka who is rather large. Especially for just seven divers and two guides. But at the same time, pure luxury, as the boat boys dedicated much of their muscles to myself and Alison, an opera singer. A rarity, as usually the boys have to help lots of people at the same time.

Our guide for the day was Hamish/Mohammed/Hassan, his name depending entirely on the time of day and who he was talking to.

And the best bit about our little group? We were all experienced divers, and not just in name, but in practice also. So we had nice long dives, around an hour each, and covered depths from 27 metres upwards with no drama or crises. Plus, eight pairs of eyes watching out for stuff, so lots were seen.

The first dive was Shark and Yolanda, the reef and wreck that had the cargo of loos. The loos are still there. There was almost no current, and more wildlife came out to play, especially the common lionfish on full display, and the biggest, fattest crocodile fish I’ve ever seen. There were also a couple of stonefish lurking, confident that we couldn’t see them.

Jackfish Alley is my favourite dive of all those in Sharm, and this was an excellent second dive. A huge napoleon fish joined us at the beginning, just after the cave we went through, and stayed, coming very close at times and keeping a big eye on what we were doing. He was so intent on us that he failed to spot the titan triggerfish nest he passed over, as one of the titans zipped up and tried to munch his tail. But the napoleon came back around carefully avoiding the titan’s conical territory. I also had a blue triggerfish keep me company a part of the way.

While waiting for the others to go into a chimney (I was last as I had the camera), I spotted a tiny baby pyjama nudibranch which was very, very cute. And a broomtail wrasse chased a goatfish off; it seemed very cross.

The dive finished with a great solo barracuda. He didn’t want to come near us, unfortunately.

The third dive of the day was at Temple, a nice little safe and shallow dive. The first thing we saw was a porcupine fish free swimming and gorgeous. Below him, a clearfin lionfish was hunting and didn’t care that we were there. Chris spotted a conch shell with it’s original snail inhabitant shooting across the seabed at the speed of light. But when it noticed that it was being watched, it did an emergency stop and hid inside its shell.

Much to Chris’ joy, there was a blue-spotted ray convention going on, with several scattered about under rocks and corals. The diesel damage that is so prevalent in Sharm was obvious here, which is a real shame, and the knowledge that just by being here and diving, that we’re propagating that is somewhat humbling.

A moray eel popped out for just a moment before retreating inside the reef beyond sight. And the dive was finished off with a big blue triggerfish hunting for food.

On the way back, we stopped for tea and ice cream at the pool bar and chatted to a nice couple, before heading off for a much needed shower.

We had the pizza and pasta option for dinner, which again was gorgeous. I’m quite certain that dysentery is going to come and bite me at some point, but until it does, I’m enjoying myself. And today, we earned it.

Tomorrow we have a lie in and don’t need to be up until gone seven.

Got up at a ridiculously early time, because of not knowing how the system worked, plus not sleeping terribly well, being too tired to sleep sort of thing.

The food at the Hilton is rather different to the food I’m accustomed to in Egypt, and I’d kinda spent the Christmas festivities assuming that I was going to lose weight here. I’m now thinking that my wetsuit may instead be shrinking by the day.

After a lovely breakfast, we picked up our lunchboxes (which, due to translation difficulties turned out to be breakfast boxes) from reception, decided that we could get another half hours dozing in, then dragged ourselves to reception from where our dive bus collected us.

Aquarius Dive Centre, with whom I’ve always dived in Sharm, is based at the Sheraton, but they have a second office now at the Coral Sea, and it was to this that we were taken.

We did a check dive on the house reef which had all the wildlife coming out to say hello, and really made me feel like I’d come home.

A pair of surgeon fish greeted us on the shot line. A couple of large clown fish showed us their tiny, tiny babies in their anemone. Baby dominoes popped out of coral, a puffer fish did a barrel roll, saying ‘look at me, look at me!’ A napoleon waved in the distance, while a clearfin lionfish poked his head out of a hole to ask if we’d be joining him on a night dive. A goat fish stirred up some sand with his whiskers to wake up some baby lizard fish for us and after a big red anemone waved, a tiny baby red anemone made itself known, so small that only one protuberance could call itself a tentacle. Oh, and some small clams blew raspberries at us.

The centre has its own speedboat moored at the Coral Sea which, as it’s located opposite Tiran Island, meant that a trip to the Tiran reefs was just eight minutes away. So we dived Woodhouse reef. There’s a current full-time at this time of year, but it’s a good one. And here some of the bigger stuff made us welcome. An enormous great napoleon did a fly by, while a string of large batfish paraded themselves before us, and a titan triggerfish jumped out and said ‘Boo!’. The dive was finished off with a big blue spotted ray that showed us how pretty she was.

And the piece de resistance was keeping low to the sea bed, hovering very slightly as we snuck up on a colony of garden eels. We managed to get close enough to see their eyes before they disappeared into the bed as if they’d never been.

The people we met were real characters. From Rose, the teenaged, highly enthusiastic diver who couldn’t dive because she’d had flu but was dying to get in and brought us all burgers and coke. To Olga, the Russian young lady whose English was much better than she thought it was, and when she came out of her shell, was absolutely lovely. And our dive guides, Hoss for the first dive, who’s just a little bit crazy, and Samir, who took us for the second dive and seemed quite protective of Olga both in and out of the water.

We came back to the hotel, but took back roads for some of it, which was a little disturbing as in this highly tarmacked desert oasis, we were taking dirt tracks through building sites. We joked with the other passengers on the bus about one of us staying in a hotel that hadn’t been finished yet. And were somewhat surprised to find that it was us. The plot next door to our hotel is currently being developed. As each hotel is a walled community, we were not aware of this. We are now.

We have just had a lovely Italian dinner which was finished off with Chocolate Salami. Despite the name, it really was gorgeous. It looked like brown salami. But it was made of very rich chocolate.

I’ve ordered the lunch box for tomorrow, while Chris is having the breakfast box, so that we can contrast and compare. Then discovered wifi, and here we are.

Off to Sharm!

Got up at stupid o’clock to make the 45 min drive to the car park at Gatwick. All in all, a good drive, simple park and courier into the airport, with a good quick check in.

Ate breakfast at Frankie and Bennie’s, trekked to gate, boarded plane and this was where the fun started.

The leg room was ridiculously short. I am not in the least bit fat, but have a leg length of just under 34” and I was forced to sit with my knees wide apart, and poor old Chris with his 6’7” frame stood no chance at all. Fortunately, a couple of seats by the front bulkhead were free and the steward let Chris move into one while I remained as originally seated and shared Chris’ old seat with the other passenger in our row.

It was a very uncomfortable five hour flight with a TV I could not see and a headphone jack that was distorted. Oh, and the lady in front decided to put her seat back. With restricted leg room, putting the seat back should not be an option!

I didn’t say anything to her though, feeling that, as I had the use of the centre empty seat, a luxury that the lady didn’t have, it would have been churlish to ask her to put it back up, and instead sprawled over the two seats.

So, you know, I was kinda grumpy when we landed, and had a go at Chris for getting wound up at the queue to get into the terminal building. I managed to keep it together at the heaving multidirectional crowd inside the terminal building.

But somewhere in the third set of queues, which was in fact several queuelets funnelling into one, and watching the people from two flights after ours go through from other queuelets, temper started to go. This was exacerbated by Scottish lady shoving me out of her way with her overly large bag and then calling over her three family members to come and join her, going so far as to lean across and put her hand on the barrier between us and the family in front that we were speaking with.

It was a crowd style queue rather than an orderly one so we queued jumped only very slightly ourselves, moving position and ending up neck and neck with Scottish woman (it turns out that she was Glaswegian. Does that even count as Scottish?), and she tried the same manoeuvre again. But having sussed her, I kept myself glued to the very nice bright orange cardy of the lady in front until Scottish woman backed off and accepted place behind us.

Eventually, nearly two hours after arriving, we queued our way to passport control, which was approximately twenty feet to the right of where we’d first come into the terminal building.

On the up side, we did not need to wait for baggage reclaim. By the time we got there, the conveyor belt had given up working, and our luggage was among a dozen or so other cases scattered forlornly around the area.

Eventually got to our coach and had to wait on that for another half hour before we had everyone on board. There was no Scottish woman on board, much to Chris’ relief – he wasn’t looking forward to the paperwork that was going to be a result of me indulging in a spot of garrotting. Of course we were the (next to) last people to be dropped off.

And from here things got a lot better. The bellboys are wonderful, as they always are. The room is lovely, and I really, really love the whole ‘all-in’ idea. Is kinda like a cruise ship – food available in various forms from 6am to 2am, and alcohol is included too. Fabulous.

Had rather nice buffet dinner, took a stroll around the hotel complex, looked at the stars from our beach, watched the South Park DVD I’d bought at Gatwick, then crashed.