Sunday 4^th July

An altogether easier day all round and we did not leave the hotel until 9.00 am for the very short coach trip to the dive centre on the shore of the Gulf of Aqaba run by ‘Above & Below’.

Steve had opted to go scuba diving here as he is qualified and so he enjoyed several dives accompanied by an instructor whilst we were satisfied with hiring snorkels and flippers and swimming along the edge of the reef which was very impressive. Despite the proximity of the Aqaba container port, the coral is very much alive and growing and there were countless species of exotic small fish on display. Steve encountered all sorts of sea life during his dives including an octopus, whilst the single most impressive thing that I saw was a large parrot fish.

There were 4 other divers in the centre today, all of whom work at the Canadian embassy in Amman. They claimed to be typists, but their size and shape indicated something rather more in the security line! Apart from them, we had the entire centre to ourselves which included a large salt water swimming pool and a bar as well as countless sun-beds and crucially, lots of shade.   And an awful  lot of insistent flies – I think we are looking forward to those islands that apparently   spray the blighters!

We returned to our hotel around 5.30 pm and went off to book our bus tickets for the trip tomorrow up the desert highway to Amman, the capital of Jordan. This involved walking past the impressive Movenpick hotel and so we were all unable to resist having some of their beautiful speciality ice cream – at some considerable expense.

We ended the day by returning to the Royal Jordanian Yacht Club again for dinner where we found the crews of ‘Ko Ko’ (Haaken and Ellen) and ‘A Plus 2’ (Jean and Christiane) enjoying the suchi.