Simply Magnificent

Warning: What follows is a trip report. It is long and not necessarily exciting unless you care what we've been up to. This is probably one of those posts that is more for us than anybody else.

Our Emperor dive safari followed the Simply Magnificent itinerary aboard the Emperor Serenity. We flew from Rome to Cairo and then from Cairo to Hurghada. We had a really long layover in Cairo (5+ hours) so we watched The Godfather and did a little reading. (Note to all of you travellers out there, connecting through the Cairo airport is a real pain in the butt!)

We arrived in Hurghada sometime around 9:00 and were on the road in our suicide Egyptian transfer van by 9:30. The ride down to Port Ghalib in Marsa Alam is a little under 3 hours. Kelly and I weren't feeling spectacular so we tried to sleep most of the way. Not comfortable but not terrible. We arrived at the boat shortly before midnight, hopped across the water (a couple of feet) to the deck with our bags. We were met by one of our dive guides, Ute, who told us there were only 8 people aboard so spread out and get comfy. She had the cook make us some sandwiches and helped us get settled in our first room on the top deck.

We left the port Saturday morning and spent every day until Thursday sailing and diving. At each dive site Jim, our other dive guide would draw a picture of the site for our dive briefing. Below, you can see Jim's pictures along with some notes we made about the sites.

We did our checkout dives at Abu Dabab. This is where I first encountered ear difficulties and ended up snorkeling instead. You can see the reefs on Google Earth. Drop a note if you want the KML file of our dives. The boat was moored between two of the reefs. I snorkeled over the one in the north while Kelly and the rest of the crew dove on the south reef before crossing over to the north reef. Ute claimed to see a small shark here but Kelly was the only one who could say that she might have seen a shadow of it in the distance.

Aaron with the Abu Dabab map.

Red anenome with anenome fish. The anenome and fish are common, but red is pretty unique.
This is a blue spotted stingray. Typically you see them laying in the sand like this.

After Abu Dabab, we went to Elphinstone. Elphinstone is a thin reef with steep walls. Apparently, they used to do shark feedings here and you'd see the occassional oceanic white tip shark. We did a pair of drift dives on the west side of the reef. Actually, I only did one because of my ears. There were a ton of fish, a giant moray's tail, tuna and a sea turtle.

This is the map of Elphinstone.
A small fish at Elphinstone reef.
A turtle mingling with us divers at the end of the dive.
Kelly hanging out. Ok, so scuba gear isn't the most attractive thing in the world :)
For a some of the dives, we dove from the back of the boat. The rest were from the zodiac as shown below (reef is where the waves are breaking). We took the zodiac from the boat , out to the reef, and dropped in the water. When you are nearing the end of the dive, you (or someone else) sends up a surface marker buoy (orange thing) while you are at 15 feet for 3 minutes doing the safety stop. After the zodiac arrives, you come to the surface and get in it!We visited again on our final day to dive the north plateau and east wall. We were told it typically takes an hour of diving to travel the length of the reef. The current was so strong however that we reached the southern tip in about 20 minutes. It was a real roller coaster ride. Spotted some big morays and a big sea turtle at the end.

We sailed to Daedalus overnight. It is a huge reef out in the middle of the Red Sea with a lighthouse on top of it. People travel out there for a chance to spot sharks. Specifically, hammerhead sharks. We dove the northwest side of the reef twice and the east side once. We spent an awful lot of time looking out into the blue on the first two dives and saw nothing. For our third dive briefing, we were told that there is pretty much nothing in the water. From a wildlife standpoint, this turned out to be one of our best dives. Kelly and I stayed behind the group, relatively shallow and 31 minutes into the dive, 3 very large hammerheads swam in from the blue directly at us. I became Kelly's shield and they made a turn to check out the rest of the group. Yes! We saw and swam with hammerheads. VERY COOL! We also saw a large moray hunting along the wall, tons of tuna, a big old napoleon fish and a grey reef shark. Thanks to the sharks for not letting us down after two very normal dives Daedalus!

Here is Kelly on the boat with the Daedalus drawing and the lighthouse in the background. It was a really cool setting.
We went on the docks to climb the lighthouse. It took some negotiations, but eventually they let us go up. Me with the boat in the background (looks small but it is something like 30 meters long).
Nerds at the top of the lighthouse. It was worth the climb! The reef was huge, and it was really cool to see it from above.
We didn't have our cameras, but here is a hammerhead from some other divers. Yes, they are big, and they came pretty close to us!


After Daedalus, we sailed further south and woke up on the southeast corner of Rocky Island. We were in the first zodiac out and were accompanied by a large pod of dolphins all of the way to the dive site. When we dropped in the water, I looked down and saw a pod of about 25 dolphins directly below us. Another fantabulous experience. Hammerheads and dolphins in back to back dives. Unfortunately, neither of us had luck clearing our ears so we sent up the surface marker buoy and waited for our zodiac. While waiting, we were able to drop down a little bit and ended up swimming the length of the reef and back to the boat. The dolphins were the real highlight for us on this one. Unfortunately, no one on the boat got a photo of the dolphins :(

The part of Rocky Island that we dove and the map :)
After Rocky, we motored over to nearby Zabargad island, dropped in the water on the south side and headed west. Kelly's ears didn't cooperate so she went snorkeling instead. Tons of fish life and lots of pretty corals. Visibility was remarkable and it turned out to be a good place to snorkel anyhow. Quite a few schooling fish, a moray, some blue spotted stingrays and a small crack in the reef that we checked out. Kelly joined us for the second dive here and spotted some lion fish. Quite a few napoleans swimming around and some fun "Nemo" fish.

Zabargad Island and the map.

Me scuba diving. This was taken by Kelly while snorkeling. Kelly hovering above some coral.A cool lion fish. He had some neat antennas on his head.
Another anenome fish.
I was there, too.Once we finished at Zabargad, we high tailed it a bit further south to Gota Kebir for a night dive. After 3 dives, we were both cold and our ears were in rough shape but I hate missing night dives so we jumped in the water with our little single LED torches. The Swedes on the dive boat had some high intensity discharge lights that were insanely bright. Fortunately, they went the other direction along the reef wall. As we floated along the wall to the left, letting our eyes adjust to the darkness, Kelly started working her magic and found all sorts of little crabs and shrimp. When we turned around to head back to the boat we nearly took multiple detours into small caverns cut into the coral reef. This reef had some great structure. At one point we thought that we spotted the other divers' flashlights but it turned out to be some fish with REALLY BIG eyes that glowed green in the dark. We also saw a bunch of parrotfish sleeping in the coral. They literally pulled up to a piece of coral and laid on their side. Very strange to see.

In the morning we dove the same site but went right. I didn't think it was as nice but it was still pretty cool. Some of the others saw dolphins . We saw nothing of the sort. The real highlight of this site was the way the coral reef was filled with caves and stuff.

Gota Kebir map.
Some interesting architecture at Gota Kebir.After Gota Kebir, we had to start heading back north. Our first stop was St John's Paradise. Unfortunately, Kelly's ears acted up and she had to bail while I dove shallow with Sam. There were a bunch of cool pillars on this dive. At the end, the group did a swim through but due to my ears not being up to snuff, I took a shortcut. It turned out to be the best shortcut ever. I found a piano fangblenny. The experience was the highlight of the dive. After snapping a few photos of this little guy hiding in some hard coral, I started to swim away. By chance, I looked back and here is this little 2 inch long fish chasing after my fins like he was going to take a bite out of me. I laughed so hard I nearly lost my regulator.
The famous chasing blenny.
From there we went north to Fury Shoals for a night dive that Kelly and I skipped as our ears were shot. The next day, we woke up on Gota Sharm for a nice shore dive. Kelly and I stayed pretty shallow with our bad ears and had a sneak preview of things to come when I took a jelly fish sting across my upper lip. From the boat, we worked our way right until we bumped into the others working their way back along the wall. It was a really pretty dive with tons of fish but unfortunately, there were also tons of stinging jellyfish. Somehow, Kelly was the only person who managed to escape without stings. Between the ears and the bastardini jellyfish, we skipped the second dive at this site.

Well, here is the map at that dive site. We don't have any others :)
From Gota Sharm we moved still further north to Gota Sha'ab Marsa Alam. Again we followed the group, led by dive guide Jim, shallow but got deep early enough to check out a monster moray eel that Jim spotted. Unfortunately, I am a chicken and won't get close enough to these guys to get a good photo. I did manage to get a shot of a Steinitz Shrimp Goby and his shrimp friend. These two animals have a symbiotic relationship, the blind shrimp digs a hole for them to hide in and the goby keeps an eye out for danger, like divers with cameras. It's really interesting to watch. Kelly spent some time "making friends" with some clown fish and we finished the dive on the wreck of an old safari boat.

That evening, we dove the site again as a night dive, this time with dive guide Ute. The dive started off pretty boring but rapidly became interesting. We saw all kinds of neat critters such as a big spanish dancer, a brown nudibranch with green horns, slate pencil sea urchins, toxic leather sea urchins and some really big sleeping fish. The wreck was much cooler at night. Just before surfacing, we encountered a very nice scorfono (that's italian for scorpian fish). Really a nice dive followed up by some tasty, warm egyptian tea like substance back on the boat.

Ute with the Gota Sha'ab Marsa Alam map.
Cool lion fish.
Another type of lion fish.
Kelly hanging out with an anenome fish.
Kelly checking out a wrecked dive safari boat. There were even curtains and lights left.
A cool photo of a blue spotted stingray.
After visiting Elphinstone one more time in the wicked current, as mentioned above, we finished up our diving just south of Port Ghalib at a site called Marsa Mubarak. This site had a sandy bottom with lots of small sea grass running up to a very lively reef. The dive started off very uninteresting, but after the obligatory 5 minutes sitting in shallow water, we were finally able to descend a bit and check out the creatures living in the sand. Easiest to spot were the carpet anenomes and the associated fish. These anenomes have very short tentacles so Nemo can't really hide from you. In the sand we spotted a number of clear slugs, a neat looking clear colored star, some colorful nudibranches and some really cool looking pipefish. One of them looked just like a sunken twig. We followed the reef back to the boat and were rewarded with about 10 puffers resting on various pieces of coral just waiting for their pictures to be taken. Considering it's proximity to the port, this was really a nice site to end the trip on.

Me posing for a photo.
The carpet anenome.
A nice photo of the anenome fish close up.
A file fish or something. Kelly is also taking a picture. This gives you an idea of how difficult it can be to find things on this dive.
If you look closely, you can see two fish that are cleaning this guy. Not very often you see this type of fish laying on coral.
Me with the map. This was taken once we got back into port. If you look at the buildings, you can see that there are tons of brand new buildings with no one there. It was strange, but I guess some rich Saudi built it so he probably doesn't care if anyone visits or not!
That night, Emperor put us up in the Coral Beach hotel since the boat had to reposition north that afternoon. We laid by the pool and had a nice dinner with our new friends from the dive boat (Sam, Paul, Rose, Marcus, Stefan & Andreas) The following morning, we were up super early for the long ride back to Hurghada. Making our connection in Cairo reaffirmed the stupidness of that airport and finally a flight back to Rome with our friends at Alitalia. We can't prove it, but we suspect the food on the Alitalia flight was a little "off" if you get my drift.

Me watching the sunset at the resort. They had about 8 pools and was really nice.

Ciao ciao!
Friday to Friday, March 28 - April 4, 2008, Marsa Ghalib, Simply Magnificent (Emperor Divers)