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
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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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