Going Posh!

[Andy Phillips]

Hi,

I just spent a week at the Movenpick in El Gouna, dived with Dive Tribe and the following is going to be a bit of an advert for both:

Firstly, the Movenpick;

This is a seriously nice hotel, 5 Star, but with an Egyptian edge, by this I mean it has all your 5 * atributes but with that, not quite perfect Egyptian touch to it. I just loved the place, if your into breakfast, then your made for life. I'm not, but I could appreciate the shear volume of food on display. The hotel complex is huge, broken into what they call "Clusters", each has it's own pool complex and nearby restaurant. If you go and your diving (which on this site is usually a given) then book into "Cluster 6" as this is very close to the dive centre. Go for a meal at the El Saladin restaurant which just happens to be above the dive centre, views over the sea and superb food. The wine made in ElGouna is surprisingly nice, we stuck to the white so I can't comment on the red.

Dive Tribe;

I took my breather out, OK they weren't really set up to cope with it (or me for that matter) but, they really put themselves out to make sure that all my needs were accomodated, tins were arranged and brought in for me and Sofnolime was bought in. As it goes I carried enough out there for the diving which I did so I never used there's, but it was there if I needed it. There were only two issues.

1) When I arrived on the first morning I had to wait till I got to the boat before I got the tins so I couldn't set up the unit until then. As it happens, the boat was big, in fact, very big so this turned out not to be an issue as I had room to spread myself out and get it all sorted, but it did give me a heart sink moment when I found out.

2) I had ordered two tins for the Inspiration and 1 normal 3L to carry as bail out and back up for an OC buddy, the morning game was, which tin would have the 02 in it. Again, not a problem, because once we had assertained if the wrong tin had the gas in, the VERY helpful Dive Tribe staff on the boat, ran off to the filling station (20 M away) and got the tin blown off and re-filled in about 15 mins. The O2 fills were only 90 ~ 110 bar, this was fine for the type of diving I was doing, but if I was planning on a bigger dive, I would have been limited by this. As it goes I easily got two hour long dives out of it with gas to spare (breathers rule OK). My advise is to contact Dive Tribe before you go, be precise about what you want and they WILL sort it for you.

The dives, I only did four days diving, altough I can't say they were the best dives I have ever done, they were all very good quality. From El Gouna it is a short hop to Abu Nuhas which means there are several 20 ~ 30 M wrecks on offer. We did the excellent Carnatic and the Giannis D, both of which I have done before and both of which I enjoyed doing again. I did 6 reefs dives, sorry, due to the fact I am pants at logging dives I don't have the names of the reefs, but out of the 6. 3 were excellent, 2 were very good and 1 was a bit average, though in there defense, the current decided to go the wrong way on the day we did the dive so we had to do the dive the wrong way and didn't get to see the really good part of the reef.

Dive Tribe is run by a chap called Rob Read, a nicer bloke you could not meet. He cares, and this attitude pervades the company, if they could help, they would. OK they are not the cheapest company in the Red Sea, but as they say, " you pay's your money, you make your choice" and I would recommend them to anyone. Boats were organised, briefings were good and accurate and there were no attitude issues (other than mine) of any sort. One really nice thing was the high percentage of Egyptian dive guides. It's there Sea, and they really should be the ones to show it too you.

On the whole, I was impressed. It was a cracking week away, and I have a tan in October.

Take care,

Andrew

I missed a few bits, I used Longwood Travel for the first time, they were efficient but I did have to bully them a little to get them to do a couple of things, the flights were with Astreus on the way out, they are fantastic, because of the breather I have to get extra baggage allowance and they did 25 Kg's for £25 (one way). When you consider Excell charge £7 per Kg you can see what a deal that is. Also, they have leg room, and I mean lots of it. Excell on the other hand, whilst they give divers an extra 10 Kg free, have the worst leg room of any airline I have ever flown with. For that reason I avoid them like the plague. Sadly we had to fly back with them, which meant a horrid flight back, no chance of any sleep at all.

Wine is seriously expensive, in the Movenpick, a bottle of Chablis is £72.00, and a bottle of Muscadet is £37.00. We took a wine box with us for the sundowner on the balcony drink which prooved to be a boon. The Egyptian Shazabad (spelt wrong) was about £14.00 though it was pleasant, it still cost a lot. Ah yes, in case you can't tell, I do like the odd glass of wine.

Lastly, just for the breather or rather specifically the Inspiration Classic owners out there;

The unit, in it's case complete with a fill of lime, a pair of wet suit boots to protect the 1st stages and some bubble wrap for the hand sets, but no cylinders weighs 31.2 KG's on the airport scales. I have an additional 5 KG's of lime in a 1 gallon container in my luggage. Between two of us (1 breather and 1 OC diver) we havd available 75 KG's on the way out and were 5 KG's under (drat, I could have actually taken enough pairs of pants for the week) and on the way back 60 KG's of allowance. With the lime gone we were 1.5 KG's over (not paying £7.00 per KG to anyone up front) the luggage allowance with Excell. That being said, the scales did not work in Hurghada, so it didn't matter that much anyway. Coming home I pack the empty scrubber with a couple of dirty tee-shirts to make sure it is safe and happy.

[Jules]

Bethi and stayed in the movenpick and dived with Dive tribe a couple of years ago. Both excellent and yes Rob is very switched on.

Wine is very expensive everywhere in Egypt so that's not a movenpick problem specifically.

Jules

ps you forgot to mention the ice cream! it's fab