Diary entry number fifteen - Red Sea. Position 27.42:33N 34.16:08E

California of London
Allan and Ruth Dooley
Thu 6 Aug 2009 14:32
Allan and I spent three days heading south down the Gulf of Suez to Abu Tig marina at El Gouna.  It is dry, hot and bleak desert landscapes here with a lot of oil platforms and terminals.  The sunsets, however, are very beautiful with all the dust in the air.
 
Abu Tig is a delightful marina - a real oasis.  Mediterranean like restaurants, bars and facilities - quite a contrast to the half-built buildings and scruffiness of the other Egyptian ports we have visited.  There was even a festival with break dancers, belly dancers, singers and whirling dervishes!
 
Then onto Sharm El-Sheikh where we had hoped to get a permit to go diving around the Sinai peninsular.  This was not to be as 'the government say no'.  Basically Sharm dive boats have got the market sewn up and so instead we had to go on out on one of their dive boats.  However, it was a very enjoyable day around Tiran Island.
 
Mike (Allan's son) arrived but unfortunately his luggage didn't - so he had to fly back to Cairo to fetch it.  We left Sharm as soon as we could and returned to Abu Tig as we can go diving in that area without a permit.  On the way we were joined by two dophins at the bow - the first seen since Ithaca.
 
Then an amazing highlight of this trip.... yesterday Mike and I were diving when we were joined by a pod of six dolphins.  Three were very curious about us and swam round and round us sometimes as close as 1 metre away!!  The other three stayed further away - one of them was a baby.  They were swimming with us for about five minutes, disappeared (probably to breathe!) and then came back for another look.  Mike has two superb videos of the experience.
 

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