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Thought I would do a quick report as I know i was looking for info on Marsa Alam before I went and I could find very little. This was also to be the first overseas outing for my little Inspo classic so it was all a bit of an unknown.
Baggage allowance
I and the good missus were off to the Iberhotel Lamaya in Marsa for 2 weeks with Thomson. Pre-flight organisation went well as I found out I could book extra baggage allowance with the airline Astraeus directly. This cost £20 for an extra 10kg. compared to Thomson who charge £60 for the same !!
Astraeus also give divers an additional 5kg which meant I had the 20kg + 5 + 10 = 35kg. Enough I hope for the big yellow Inspo crate.
Now had it just been me, that allowance would have been fine, but cramming the Inspo, KT frame, suits, force fins, reel, smb along with my wife's bcd, suit, fins, regs etc.. meant the box weighed nearer 40kg. I took out the scrubber canister (rammed full of vr3, spares and batteries) and head which went into a rucksack, along with more of the KT frame. That bag weighed 11kg !
Anyway, check-in at manchester came and went. like others had said, the crate didn't fit on their scales so I casually said it was 25kg. Wearing the rucksack, they didn't mention anything and I walked away rather quickly with a big smile on my face.
Hotel
Thankfully the crate arrive without any issues in marsa and off we went for the 10 min transfer. The hotel was a typical 5* All Inclusive place, with absolutely nothing else around, but nice food, big pools, very clean, nice rooms, house reef, crap spirits, and loads of activities and annoying foreign tourists. Not really much more to say other than i would recommend it, and probably would go back but there are too many other places in the world to see.
Diving
Now the bit you are probably reading this for. The hotel had a dive centre, but a ropey, german run, non-ccr friendly one so I booked a 6 day package inc Elphinstone with emperor divers before leaving the UK. Tekstream opened in marsa in June so I thought, great some extended deeper dives on Tx etc.....However the chap who was supposed to run Tekstream (Kevin rainsford) lastest 1 day before he quit due to the lack of anything else to do around thereand went back to Sharm. Thus, no Tx or extended diving for a while.
Anyway the day boats were the usual Emperor high standard and the 'local' diving was quite nice. Turtles, white tips, octopus, huge salad/fan/table corals etc. All the others on the boats were OC/single tank so i was allowed to just bimble off into the deep and vaugely come back to the group at some point. If you get out there, then I would reccommend Marsa Morena or Ras El Torta as nice sites.
Dolphin House
An additional cost day out was to Dolphin House reef. This is an open water site with a resident school of Spinner dolphins. You are guaranteed two dives on the reef and the chance to snorkel with the dolphins. Diving was nice, with a 15min swim through and lots of sealife.
The snorkel with dolphins bit was a farce. 12 people crammed in a 4.5m rib wearing lifejackets zooming around to try and catch the dolphins. Times that by the 5 boats on site and you have about 60 idiots thrashing around in the water to try and get within 10m of a dolphin. We didn;t and then they swam upto the back of the boat anyway !!
Elphinstone
This was the day out I was really looking forward to. world reknowned as a superb dive site, I coudln;t wait. Got there and it is not much bigger than a couple of tennis courts in the middle of the ocean. The dives are wall dives which are quite spectacular and have loads and loads of life in the top 20m. Below 20 there is not a great deal. Coral is dull and lifeless and very little in the way of life. At 60+ there is little point in being there.
I was actually quite dissapointed. Some of the local dive sites had more life and colour and were 40mins out instead of the 2hrs out to Elphinstone. This is one of the places where you could see a shoal of hammerhead and it would be the best dive of your life, or otherwise see not a lot and think it was crap.
Night dive
Back to Marsa Morena for a night dive from the shore. This was probably the best dive of the hol. Just 4 of us, pitch black and a whole lot of reef. max depth 20m but so much going on. nice to see the coral come out, octopus, squid, sand eel etc. etc.. would definitely do this one again.
Conclusions
Marsa Alam is still very much in it's infancy. There is nothing to do outside of your hotel. The lack of an established techical dept in marsa is a bit of a bummer, but it will come in time. Sofnolime is still a ridiculous 11Euros per kg and the inspo cylinders are very very battered but it does work. I guess if you went out in a group of 6 to 8 you could get an emperor boat out to the deeper sites for just you, but to be honest there is nothing to see down deep. It is much much quieter than Sharm, and much more laid back and I think (excluding the national parks) the diving is slightly better. From talking to others out there the Coral Bay Diving Hotel (where emperor are based) is ok, but not amazing, I think you are better to pick your hotel and then book diving with emperor. All hotels are within 20mins of the centre. I could have done more than 13 dives, but I would have been bored and seen the same stuff.
It was nice to have the box out there for the simplicity of getting three dives a day without changing anything, and for the peaceful easy diving. You don't get bailout cyls unless you pay for stages and regs, so you probs like me had to be happy on your own doing roughly two 50m dives followed by a 30m on inboard only.
just my 2p worth
ash
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