Day 13: Anemone Metropolis with Pharaoh Dive Club

It would be easy to think that in a faraway place like El Quseir, life would be laid back and not taken too seriously. However, there’s something about the dive industry and the professionals who run it that provides the efficiency when you most need it and our pickup arrived as planned, bang on 7:30am. That was earlier than the normal pickups for Steve and Clare of Pharaoh Dive Club but we had three dives to do today and needed to get away by early evening.

Unlike some other diving destinations, it was remarkable to find such good quality coral so close to the local jetty. The first dive was by rib, although we were based on a moored up day boat, which became ‘the mother ship’. This allowed us to ride out a couple of hundred meters in the chop without being chucked about on a large boat. Steve uses the boats after evaluating the weather and chooses the most appropriate. The first dive was the deepest and we dropped down a sloping wall to 30m. Visibility was good at around 25m even in the overhead swell and windy conditions. Like other Red Sea resorts, the wind dropped in the afternoon and it became flatter. The Lunar Eclipse resulted in an exceptionally low tide, which exposed the reef some 100 meters from the shore. The dive ended in what can only be described as an amazing long stretch of coral spanning nearly one kilometer. We would visit this on all three dives since the overlap into other sites was vast.
The second dive was a little shorter to reach, and even nearer to the jetty. In Sharm we have a site named, ‘Anemone City’. The one in El Quseir was like Anemone Metropolis, with hundreds upon hundreds of swaying anemone plants and their accompanying clown fish. We spent half the dive in this area alone at 18m. Steve said there were many more of these around the sites of El Quseir. Then it was back to the hard coral field (garden is too small to describe it!) where visibility had improved to nearly 30m. The light hitting the hard coral in the shallows exposed the site in all its glory and for the first time in ages we could witness what an untouched and natural coral field is supposed to look like.

Lunch was a nice spread of good old Egyptian boat food. We shared the boat with German and Belgian divers, some of whom had been out 16 times already with Pharaoh Dive Club. There are many British clubs and guests who also visit the club on a regular basis.

We planned the third and final dive to visit a nearby shallow cavern system, although the tide was so low and the wave action was stirring up the visibility a little too much to make a comfortable swim through. It’s quite easy on most days but caution was the order of today and Steve gave it a respectful side step. So, it was back to the long wall of untouched hard corals, which even in low tide looked fantastic.

Once again, we saw but a small slice of what is on offer in this rich and diverse area. Steve mentioned that his diving area runs for several kilometers and includes the wrecks of Safaga (6 wrecks) and further south towards Marsa Alam. On the last dive we narrowly missed a full grown dugong, which the other divers snapped on their digital camera. There is much big stuff in this remote area of the Red Sea and many more sites to explore. Pharaoh has two websites for both the UK and European markets: www.pharaohdiveclub.co.uk and www.pharaohdiveclub.com Check them out for further descriptions of all the unique sites that they visit.

We packed up the bikes and set off for Hurghada, which was about 150 km away. Along the way we encountered the strongest side winds yet, which was like flying a light aircraft in massive turbulence. This often happens at sunrise and sunset as a result of the difference in temperature between the sea and the mountains. These thermal winds hit in every direction including up and down! Reducing speed and bracing yourself helps. They won’t knock you over but it’s important to adjust your riding to stay in control.

Hurghada was reached just after sunset and our good friend, Anders, who runs the website www.aziab.com and its bi-monthly Red Sea magazine, ‘The Equalizer’, informed us that if we hurried to the Viking Bar we would be just in time for quiz night!

More tomorrow!

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