Tulip Resort, Marsa Alam 1-8th November 2006

[Mal Bridgeman]

I am in the habit of taking annual diving holidays with my wife and this year was no exception. As the years pass so diving has become less consuming of the holiday but still fairly central.

We have moved from an obsessive 6 day diving through a more relaxed 5 days including a day off at the mid point to this time chosing to have a day of rest at the start of the holiday as well giving us four days of diving.



The hotel we chose, Tulip Resort, had its own Dive Centre run by Italians which is fine because the hotal is mainly fraternised by Italians. There really is nothing in Marsa Alam other than a few hotels so non-diving activity, other than the excursions to the Egyptian antiquities is absent meaning everyone in the hotel was there just to relax and chill out. I was more than happy with this arrangement since it meant there were none of the loutish behaviours which are starting to invade Sharm & Hurghada [1}.

We had arranged the diving with Angela, Dive Centre Manager, in advance but they were extremely busy with a group ofbetween 60 & 90 french divers who were stretching their infrastructure to the limit. As a consequence our first day of diving could not be on the boat but would be shore diving from Marsa Abou Dabab, home of the famous Dugong. Although he was not there we had two really nice gentle dives seeing the two big turtles and, since this was my wife's first sea diving for a year, gave us a really gentle re-introduction. The Dive Centre, though, concerned at not giving us the boat dive gave us the day for free



Dive Day two was on the boat, ably captained by Hussein and crewed by the sort of affable crew member that only Egypt seems to produce and predictably named Mohammed. The Nitrox we had requested duly arrived and was close enough to 32% to not cause us problems and off we set for Marsa Shoona for the dive. This was change over day for most of the nationalities so we had the boat to ourselves....literally we were the only two guests....so a Captain, Guide, 2 crew, a driver to deliver us to the boat, just for us. What luck.

We arrived at the dive site and dropped in to do a drift dive from the Northern Coast down to the bay itself. The dive started very unpleasantly....more of that elsewhere....but as the dive settled down it was really a very nice site with abundant fish life and no apparent damage to the coral, which made a great change to the Red Sea Dive Boat diving I've done recently. Dive Two was similar but delivered us another close up of one of the really big turtles.



The wind had been getting steadily stronger all week so when we awoke on dive day three to find a hooley blowing we were somewhat relieved to find we were destined to dive the nearest bay to Port Galib, Marso Mubarak. By all accounts this is a very pretty site, but the rough conditions had stirred up the sand so that the whole area resembled a weak cup of tea with vis down to 2m. My wife decided this was not for her so got back on the boat and I carried on, buddying with the guide. Funnily enough the dive was bereft of interest .... and the second dive we took a zodiac ride so we could drift back to the boat.... a feat the guide achieved and that was about the only notable thing of that dive ......

The wind on dive day four was even stronger and had now been blowing for most of the week. This had roughened up the sea and a fairly big sea faced us on our passage to Marsa Shoona. We went with the sea on our way there....and arriving at the drift set off point dropped into to a really nice piece of reef....particularly enjoyable for me because I could see it this time. As we neared the bay itself the visibility closed in so we called the dive. The second dive we went to the South side of the bay and dropped in right on top of one of the big turtles that frequent the area and watched in amazement as one of the main attrations was the turtles two ramoras fighting over who should be on top.



We drifted out of the bay and followed the wall till we reached the predetermined dive time, where a rather hairy Zodiac pick up awaited us....but that was nothing compared to the ride back to the port in which much stomach content was returned to the sea....fortunately not mine

I would like to come back here again next year....I think the choice of dive sites may be limited but the general lack of development in the area should keep it quiet enough for me to enjoy a little longer.

Thanks for reading if you managed to get this far.
Mal

[1] I met some friends at the airport who explained that some ussians had gone to their hotel and in vodka fuelled frenzies had attracted the attention of the Tourist Police and started a fist fight with German holidaymakers in the restaurant....so maybe it will not be so goo for so long

[Ding Dang Doo]

Mal,

nice little report... there really isn't alot at Marsa, like you say, but it has got some quality dive sites close by.

Russians... vodka... deep sigh... shakes head... spoilt a couple of evenings for us when we stayed in Sharm... sorry to here it's spread furtherafield... we just learnt to avoid them in the end...

Pete