Sharm el Naga

[steveharriss]

Just back from Hurgarda and thought the following might be of use to those of you not particularly good with boats or looking to get some easy hours in on a rebreather.

Sharm El Naga, Sharm el Naga Resort & Diving Center
is an easy 30 minutes or so drive from Hurgarda and has a Geordie operations manager for the dive centre, Murray Hannon. (This may of course put some of you off!!).

The dive centre only does air fills, but Dive Mix in Hurgarda can provide o2 and helium for the techies or rebreather divers, which can be stored at the centre for use there but you'll need to blend your own.

The site slopes away from the beach with a beautiful swim through small canyons to sandy plateaus with reefs stretching away to the North and South. The bottom is sandy at all depths; although I didn't check the 75m one personally!

The reefs are in generally good health but with the Northern section suffering from some sand run off in the first 12 minutes or so of diving. Plenty of life on the reef and the previous week had seen the arrival of a whale shark.

The plateaus mean you can basically pick a depth from 1m to 75-80m and have a safe area to conduct training drills or decompression stops. An added attraction is the Italian snorkelers, of both sexes (just to prove I'm not a sexist) frolicking in the shallows in crystal clear viz.

The hotel on site is nothing to write home about but situated on a sand ridge immediately overlooking the beach.

Now to the best bit. An all inclusive price for half board accommodation, transfers from Hurgarda, and 5 days unlimited diving including air fills come to £210! I'm sure if there was enough interest we could get this down even lower, dependent upon numbers.

Included in that price are two zodiac dives per day at approximately 10am and 2pm.A suggested schedule is an early morning dive at 7am before the day trippers come in, a 10am zodiac dive, a 2pm zodiac dive, and a night dive once the day trippers have left but there is nothing to stop you diving as many times as you want between 7am and the 10pm restriction on diving.

This translates to an easy 5 dives a day or £8.40 per dive if we exclude the additional perks of the bed and meals......cheaper than that trip to Capernwray.

Go on; you know you want to....

[LisaR]

Glad you all had a good time hon. Congratulations to Georgia on passing her Junior OW.
Hope to be on the next trip

[Simon TW]

Put me down for the trip Steve I love it there.

Well done to Georgia, see's a credit you to mate, one of the nicest kids that I've ever met.

[steveharriss]

That's a great number of posts......just make sure your next one is at 12.01am on the 1st Jan