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Dahab trip report
My wife Ruth and I fancied a little break before the winter started, to do some
more warm water diving. We first dived in Thailand in May, and then did some
more in the UK over the summer, so when we went away we were both PADI OW with
14 dives logged. We were looking for somewhere to go just to build some
experience and see lots of corals and fish. We were not going looking for
wrecks, or really for big stuff. We're new enough to diving that we're still
easily amused.
We talked about various different destinations including Malta and Sharm el
Sheik, but some of the instructors we had dived with from Edinburgh recommended
Dahab as an alternative. The main reason for this is that most of the diving is
shore diving, so for those without much expereince it's very relaxed and most of
the dives can be accomplished without going very deep - being limited to 18m is
not really a problem. They specifically recommended Reef2000 Dive Club to us,
and the attached Bedoiun Moon Hotel. We booked these ourselves directly by
e-mail, and bought Thomas Cook Airways flights from Glasgow separately. We had
no problems getting an extra 10kg allowance for divers, and paying for extra
legroom seats meant we had a very comfortable flight. I can honestly say the
service, food, punctuality were beyond fault!
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| The hotel was pretty much as it had been described to us. It was clean and very
friendly, but providing fairly basic accomodation. A little refurbishment of the
rooms (especially the en-suite bathrooms) wouldn't go amiss and I wouldn't call
it luxurious, but at €49 per room per night for an air-conditioned room (thats
including breakfast) I think it was very good valiu. The other hotel recommended
by Reef2000 is the Hilton, which I am sure is nicer and is certainly
correspondingly more expensive. Reef2000 will pick you up pretty much anywhere
in the area though, and we greatly enjoyed diving with them and thought it was
pretty good value for money. A range of sites was available each day, with boat
and camel trips for the more adventurous. |
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We rented regs/BCDs (we had the rest ourselves) and they were typical battered
but serviceable Scubapro kit. We didn't really have any problems with
it.
Dive Sites
The following are some of the main dive
sites in the area. There are many others, but these are the ones that we went to
and found memorable.
Canyon - Spectacular crack in the sea floor,
which is generally at about 18m. The bottom of the canyon is at about 31m. Very
pretty, also spectacular to watch all the air trapped in the roof of the canyon
bubbling through the surrounding seafloor. The around the canyon (sometimes
called Canyon Gardens) is a real gem though, with plenty of life and pretty
coral formations.
Bells to Blue Hole - The reef here goes from the
surface down to hundreds of metres, almost vertically. The entry is at bells, a
crack in the reef a couple of metres wide and deep. You descent inside this
crack to about 25m, where there is an archway, which you come out under onto the
wall. Emerging like that into the blue with the vertical wall extending in all
directions is a very, very impressive experience. You then swim along the wall
to blue hole - which you enter over a 5m or so deep entry typical of the lagoons
in the area - although this lagoon is very, very deep. Tekkies can head down to
an arch at 60m, but we just swam across. Impressive underwater terrain, animal
life not that exciting!
Gabr el Bint - This was the one boat trip
we took, organised by Reef2000 but on a boat owned by Sinai Divers - the Ganet
6. Very comfortable boat with great food - as long as the sea is calm. It rolled
a lot on the way back when the breeze had picked up a bit of a swell. The site
is a sloping coral wall that drops off to about 50m enclosing a sandly lagoon
about 13-14m deep, with coral outcrops. The wall is impressive, especially some
of the gregonian fans which are several metres across, but the lagoon is truly
beautiful. This was my personal favourite site.
Eel Garden -
Sandy sloping bank with coral outcrops. The reason for diving here though is to
see the huge colony of garden eels which live in vertical burrows in the sand.
They comue up out of their burrows appearing to grow from the seabed, 30cm or so
tall and the thickness of a finger. They sway gently, occasionally twisting and
contorting to pick some morsel out of the passing water!
Islands - A real coral maze, several large islands of coral
with passages and pools riddling them. I was fairly lost on this dive -
fortunately our guide knew exactly where we were! Great test of control swimming
though all the narrow bits, but we were up to it and didn't hit anything! Lots
of large parrtofish on the reef, and also a resident shoal of several hundred
yellowtail barracuda.
Training
While we were out there we
did the Advanced Open Water course. The adventure dives we did were deep,
navigation, night, multilevel and underwater photographer. They were fairly
flexible about when we did the course, and about which adventure dives we did,
but the final list wasn't necessarily all our first choices.
We had both
read the book carefully, and we both had our own computers for monitoring dives.
Boy were we glad. We didn't really get any instruction beyond being told to read
the book, and briefings before the dives. We were not encouraged to plan any
dive (except the multilevel). Although we were asked to hand in our knowledge
reviews, the instructor told us just to copy the answers from the book, and made
no effort to check them or go over them with us. The standard was pretty poor
compared with the instructors we had previously. We read and understood the
book, planned our dives etc, but the rest of the guys training with
us...
We were also disappointed to note that we were the only ones that
stayed buddied up at all during the dives, the rest were all over the place and
the instructor didn't seem interested in telling them to buddy up. I know some
of the other instructors running OW courses seemed to be being more thorough so
I think this is an instructor rather than Reef2000 issue
This was a
standard far, far short of the training we have had
elsewhere.
Conclusions
I would throroughly recommend Dahab
as a diving destination, and we were happy with the hotel and dive club kit and
guides. We had some reservations about the training we had from our instructor,
but can't really comment on the other instructors at the club of which there are
many!
I would definitely go back there again to the same hotel and dive
club, and would especially recommend it to those who enjoy a relaxed atmosphere
and not having to mess about on boats every day!
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We also bagged a full catalogue of Morays, often in twos and threes so that I was blissfully unaware that whilst taking dental records of one Moray there was it’s big brother next to me and another of it’s cousins sniffing my glove. (Good thing I didn’t realise this at the time as I already had a mask full of water and a bad case of giggles, fear and panic would not have helped matters!) |
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| On another dive we also took all the younger divers here. Mike was able to invite a round stingray up to the top of the drop off (13m) to meet them, all of whom impressed me by not being scared of these massive creatures (as I had been the first time I encountered one). They come at you like an over exuberant puppy looking for food attention and interaction, somewhat like being mugged by a large duvet. |
Mar Azul:- literally Blue water.
This site is beautiful with clear bright blue water and plenty to see. You get in via some old stone steps next to the disused sardine fishery. We had lots of octopus sightings here, especially the rather stupid octopus who can’t get back into it’s hole once it has an armful of urchin. For some reason this octopus, despite being spatially challenged and not very bright, has a great memory and inks Micheal every time it sees him even before he tries to interact with it. This site is famous for it’s caves and caverns: Particularly the one with the hole in the top which is flooded with sunlight creating the most photogenic “cathedral rays”. |
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It also has some lovely shrimps hiding in the corner which probably just about everyone photographs, well it would be rude not to! Again I think I could dive this site repeatedly and still find new stuff to see.
Radazul:- Another locals swimming spot (not really a beach) with old stone steps down to the water. If you go on Sunday, the local kids all try to mob you and nick your mask, underwater, which is a bit disconcerting. There you are in 3 metres of water trying to take a picture of a rather shy blenny and there is a 10 year old free-diver pulling off your mask! There is a sandy bottom with some rocky outcrops (with sea horse sightings, but not for us on this occasion). The majority of the dive is the rock wall which makes it an ideal “there and back again” kind of dive and easy to navigate for a night dive (which we also did). The sandy bottom kicks up easily especially if mike is trying to photograph something and three teenagers decide to mug him. The rocks are home to lots of fish, crabs, fireworms, cleaner-shrimps, canary lobsterettes and plenty of other marine life. The night dive we did here was brilliant with shrimps everywhere. Zillions of them! |
We stayed in one of the bungalows in Abades, which is a lovely quiet village with a beach, a fab restaurant and a handful of bars. The Blue Bossa bar is run by a doppelganger of Leon the Assassin (the actor Jean Reno) only his name is Dirk and he is german. The restaurant (name escapes me now Bahia?) , is great, doing really generous main courses for about 7 euros and the food is top notch. Abades itself is maybe a little quiet for teenagers but lovely for a couple for a quiet week or younger kids who just need a bucket and spade and waves to splash in. You can sit in one of the shoreside bars and watch the local “trydive factory” dragging their hapless trainees down the beach for a low viz splash in a sandy bay. Suffice it to say that Mike’s DSD courses are run somewhat better and at sites likely to entice you to take up diving rather than put you off.
All in all I know I will return to Tenerife and dive with Ocean Quest again, if only to collect on the dive Mike owes me for playing hide and seek on our last dive and sneaking off to photograph some rare shrimps in a cave without telling me. Many thanks to Mike and Rebecca for their hospitality during our stay, the airport runs, supermarket runs and I am not allowed to mention anything about excellent cheesecake or banana bread, so I wont.
On the day of our last dive Clive arrived to do one day’s diving and immediately booked a second. It’s an ideal place to take non diving family and sneak in a few dives, the only problem is that a few won’t be enough and so don’t blame me if you end up in trouble with your better half.
The water temp was 22 degrees C. we all dived 5mm wet suits, with Beth and I wearing hoods and gloves. Matt is tough and has entertaining underwater hair, so dived without either. I prefer gloves because as a photographer you do tend to put your hands on things and having had a nasty run-in with fire coral previously then I am careful. I was little chilly on some dives but only because I had been stationary for ages and had forgotten to fin.
Ocean quest can be contacted at http://www.oceanquest-divers-tenerife.com/
Jules
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