Egypt 2009 - 2014

If you want to go diving somewhere close to Europe Egypt is of course the place to go...

Can be reached easily and quickly.

Especially if you have direct flights to Marsa Alam and Sharm El Sheikh

We avoided overcrowded places like Hurghada, but rather went to Dahab (in 2009), Hamada (in 2010), Wadi Gimal (in 2013) and El Quseir (in 2014)

Dahab:

The hotel where we stayed is called Tropitel Dahab Oasis, located only view minutes away from world wide known dive spots like "Canyon" or "Blue Hole".
The hotel is a four star hotel, not brand new anymore, but rooms have been nice and clean. We had an excellent ocean view room in the upper floor. The room itself and the balcony have been very nice, only the bath room would need some renovations...
The hotel itself is pretty small, around 100 rooms with small pool area, nice beach (the beach chairs are old, but the mattresses are nice) and small restaurant.
The food is quite typical for Egypt, you can find each day something to eat...not spectacular, but eat-able.
Everything is close by, also the Lagona Divers diving centre is easy to reach, directly at the hotel and 20 meters away from a jetty that takes you directly to a nice and not yet destroyed house riff.

One trip is for sure remarkable....a Camel dive safari!!!:
If you once have the chance to go on vacation to Dahab, don't miss this trip...
It's not cheap (€ 55 per person including food and beverages, excluding dives) but really nice...
The trip starts close to the "Blue Hole" and takes around 70 minutes, one way, on small trails along the beautiful coast of the red sea...
At some places the camels have to climb a bid, looks quite freighting, but it only looks like that...

The camels fortunately know what they do, even with the divers including equipment (also tanks and weights) on their back...
Destination is a small bedouine village directly located at  a nice corall riff, called Ras Abu Galum.
There you can do some nice drift dives at the coral garden (north part) or to a sea-gras area (south part). If you are lucky you can spot some nice creatures there, like turtles, indian walkmans, dwarf-lionfishes,...

Hamada: 

We stayed at Zabargad Dive Resort, a smaller four star hotel around 200km away from Marsa Alam airport.
The hotel has around 70 rooms; we stayed at one of the newer rooms at building 6. The room is comfortable, large enough, had a well working split AC and even a TV. Unfortunately the channels are very much limited to Egyptian and Italian channels. However, the flat screen TV was ideal to connect the MP3 player and to listen to some music. You could also use it to have a look at the pictures you took down there, but then you have to take an USB adapter with you.
During our vacation there was no season, therefore the hotel was pretty empty, we have not seen any people at the beach and only some at the pool. In any case most people down there are divers that are on the boats during the day. Pretty relaxing vacations...
When going down to the far south of Egypt we recommend you to take a flight to Marsa Alam. You are very limited to the days when carriers from Germany fly down there (mostly on Thursday) but you save at least three hours bus ride.
Still it takes you around 2.5 hours to reach Hamata / Zabargad from Marsa Alam International Airport. Especially when the travel agencies pick up people from different hotels on the way up or drop people at different places on your way down.

We joint the ORCA Dive Center Zabargad which is directly located at the beach of Zabargad Dive Resort. The dive centre offers house reef diving (24 hours) and full day trips with dive boats to the off shore dive spots of South Egypt. To reach the dive boats you have to take the dive centre shuttle bus to the jetty of Hamata harbor (five minute ride only)...
The ORCA dive centre is well organized, has friendly staff and offers reasonable prices. Not cheap like always in Egypt but worth the price. You can find a large dry room with two large fresh water tanks to rinse your equipment and outside showers .
Directly at the dive center you can find the divers bar where you happen to meet all of the divers.
Depending on the quantity of guest Orca offers up to three trips per day, we had some 20 people on board of our boats. Due to the fact that most of the boats are former safari boats they are pretty large and comfortable, easily able to carry up to 30 or 36 persons.
Besides full day trips Orca offers also some mini safaris (two days) for an up charge of around 100 Euro, food included. We did not do this mini safari because weather has been too rough and wind blowing too strong...
In case weather is not too nice there is a nice alternative for diving on the boat, the Zabargad house reef.
The Zabargad house reef offers excellent diving with great visibility and lots of fished as well as macro stuff... What you can expect to see ranges from turtles to big rays or Napoleons, sometimes Barracudas, White Tip Reef Sharks and from case to case there have been also Dolphins passing by. During night dive you can find up to three Spanish Dancers.
Equipment is brought down by Prince Ali, a donkey. Staff is always around (also during the night dives) to help you with equipment, going into the water and coming back.
The jetty rages over the reef into the blue, therefore no risk of destroying any of the nice coral formations.
Don't worry when going down there for the first time. A storm with some heavy waves destroyed parts of the jetty and the iron is still lying around underneath.
Best spots at the house reef is the northern part of it, even so southern part offers nice things to see as well (we found some nice rays over there).
The dive spots of south Egypt themselves are a must if you like diving in the Red Sea. Due to the fact that there are not that many hotels (yet) and that there are only some dive safaris going down that far the spots are not overcrowded at all, which means nice coral gardens that are sill alive and lots of fishes close by.
Especially the summer months are the best if you want to get chances high to see some big once around there as well. If you are lucky you can find sharks (black tip, white tip, grey riff sharks, hammerhead, silvertip,...), eagle rays and of course turtles. In case you are extremely lucky you can find Dolphins, Mantas and even Whale-Sharks (but, as said, you have to be extremely lucky)...
Unfortunately it was quite windy during our week down there. Therefore we mainly exploited the reefs close by; water was too rough for boat trips further down to the south.
However, those reefs as well offer nice things to see, especially coral formations and each kind of reef fish.

Wadi Gimal:

Small and nicely located hotel in the middle of Wadi Gimal Underwater National Park, with dive center, jetty and nice coral reefs around, lots of fishes and right now hardly any guests at the hotel – what else do we ask for if we go to Egypt….
The hotel was mostly occupied by Italian guests in the past, hence the agency got bankrupted there are not that may Italian guests around right now. Due to that and due to the finance crisis in Europe and the mass in Egypt there are also not that many other guests at the hotel right now. During our stay the average number of guests was some 80 to 100, hotel could host around 300…
The hotel has nice and comfortable rooms. They are kept clean, more or less renovated and the aircon (split AC, therefore pretty silent) is working well.
If you get a room with nice view towards the ocean you can have nice evenings on the terrace or balcony enjoying the view towards the read see or Milky Way at night.
Just the surrounding of the buildings and the paces at the beach (sunshades and sun loungers) would need some renovation. During those days in Egypt and with the lacking tourism it is understandable that the guys try to save money wherever they can…

Wadi Gimal Diving Center:

We did house riff diving, trips with the Speedboats (will take you to the outer part of the house riff) and some with the dive boats (three are there, but only two are operating)…
House riff itself is nice for a relaxing dive or for night dives. And the coral live itself is nice and more or less undestroyed; nature is recovering while there are not that many people around there.
The riffs in the center of the national park are really, really, really spectacular. And not far away from the jetty but too far away for all the other dive centers of Marsa Alam Area.
That's why besides the guys from Wadi Gimal Dive Center there is no - one around in this area.
Imagine, you get a whole national park on your own, breathtaking, isn't it?
And if you need to share it, then only with Safari Boats, but there are not many and diving places are dozens around.

Despite the fact that there haven’t been that many people around for diving and snorkeling the guys from Wadi Gimal Diving Center offer all kind of trips.
The weather was nice and ocean very calm during our stay, that’s why we could do some trips to reefs that are further down.
In the dive center you can get everything that you might need for diving (or that you might have forgotten at home), they have a well sorted shop to get stuff there, rental equipment is nice and well maintained, the crew is very friendly and experienced in diving… we hope that situation in Egypt is going to recover soon so that they guys down there have some business… Otherwise it is just bleakly…

With some luck you might see everything the Red See is famous for. Turtles and Stingrays at the house riff, Mantas, Dolphins, White and Black Tip Reef Sharks, Grey Riff Sharks and if you are extremely lucky also Whale Sharks or Dugongs (there are some shy once around close to the house riff, hard to spot, but they are there…)… Needless to mention the giant moraines, Napoleons, all types of rays, guitar rays and riff fishes that are around.

El Quseir:

As hotel we have chosen the Radisson Blue El Quseir. We made such a nice experience with Radisson Blue during our stay at Fujeirah last year, and again we have not been disappointed.

Even so you can also feel the tourism crisis at Radisson Blue (not each and every part of the hotel looks really nice, some parts desperately need renovation), the rooms that you can choose, the quality of food (extraordinary for Egypt) and the politeness and friendliness of the staff was just great.

There is some animation at the hotel, hence lots of Italian guests are going there. But it is not too much and you can easily avoid animation or sneak away, if you hang around at those parts of the hotel (including those restaurants) and the beaches which are “quite zones”. Hence beach is long and because there are big pool areas given the whole hotel does not appear to be too full and packed with people.  All in all the hotel is worth a stay there, nice rooms and nice facilities, and price is not too high for a “local” five star hotel. The offerings are worth the price.

And the hotel offers a combination with a nice dive center, the Subex Dive Centre El Quseir, managed my Hansi. Surrounded by very nice dive spots (shore diving with mini bus, trips from some minutes to around an hour) and a nice house riff (jetty diving with lots of hard corals but unfortunately not really many fishes) and speed boat diving (from the harbor of El Quseir) also the dive center is worth a stay. And the dive guides are extremely friendly, competent, the dive center offers good equipment, nitrox for free (and for non Nitrox divers) 28% air...

Below you can find pictures of diving at the different places in Egypt. 

Have fun looking at the pictures and share with us our nice memories.

Ellaidhoo