A Nomadic Divers resting place?
Posted By Lucie Wright on 22 December 2004
Dive Instructors have to be the worst clients to enter dive shops; they expect perfect divemasters, with dives that are picture book beautiful, cheap, quiet and very fishy! What a tall order! The Red Sea has been top of my dive wish list for some time, so armed with the internet and a credit card, I surfed for information and best prices. Before leaving Ireland, I had booked and paid for a 2-week return flight to Sharm el Sheikh airport and 1-weeks self-catering accommodation in Dahab. The rest was left to chance!
Dahab is a Bedouin town, an hour's drive north of Sharm el Sheikh. Dahab means 'gold' in Arabic, undoubtedly referring to the beautiful beaches that sweep straight from the mountain to the sea. It was once on the hippy trail, but in recent years Dahab has become more conventional, with a number of big complex hotels situated on the outskirts of town. The main tourist strip along the seafront has recently been paved for pedestrians, where many restaurants, shops and dive centres all tout for business. Other activities offered are; windsurfing, kite surfing and desert safaris on camel, truck or quad bike.
Dive Centres range from busy factory style set ups, to those that offer a more relaxed, personable service, which is what I wanted. So I wandered along the seafront following my nose and ended up at Desert Divers, a pure stroke of luck!
Desert Divers is a Bedouin run dive shop and a hidden jewel. Wander in and you will find an Oasis of calm and relaxation where glasses of delicious Bedouin tea are offered on arrival, on departure and at every other opportunity. The first person I met was the owner Said, who was welcoming, friendly and helpful, as were all the staff. My buddy was immediately booked onto an advanced course for the next day and Said calmly promised and delivered me my perfect, anticipated dive holiday.
The majority of Dahab's 25 or so dive sites are reachable by truck/jeep, making most of them, shore dives. Each day the trucks are packed with equipment, tanks and oxygen before heading off for 1 or 2 dives. The 9am start is invariably delayed, involving another tea break, however the whole atmosphere and general relaxed attitude of the place make any hold-ups go right over your head. Occasionally we lunched out near the dive sites, in one of the Boudouin restaurants that can be found along the beach.
My first Red Sea dive was amazing, there were huge numbers of pipefish lying on the sand, lionfish hiding in the corals with unicorn fish hunting around us, and the beauty and number of corals delighted me. Where I had worked in Thailand, the sighting of a unicorn fish or a lionfish was a noteworthy experience, on the house reef in Dahab 'Lighthouse', they were everywhere. The parrotfish were huge, the bream cavorted around us, the octopus slide carefully over the corals hoping not to be seen. The wrasse, angelfish and butterfly fish were all differently coloured to what I had been used to in Asia. It was magnificent.
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