Reefs of the Red Sea

  St. Catherines, Egypt
Saturday, May 5, 2007

This morning we headed off on a brief jont out of town to a beach side station on the Red Sea.  It was a beautiful, hot day, and we trekked down through town to the diving and snorkeling centre, then headed off in Jeeps out to the sea once we were geared up. 

We headed for a spot known as the "Blue Hole".  The coral here runs very close to shore, and the Blue Hole is a spot that is circled by coral reef, but is nice and deep in the middle.  Great spot for diving and snorkeling with added reef protection.  We'd heard that the snorkeling here was supposed to be amazing, but it was even better than we'd hoped.  It was like swimming in the best aquarium you've ever been to.  No photos unfortunatly so it's all verbal discription.

We set in a few minutes walk up the coast and swam with the current down towards the blue hole.  Along the way, we followed the edge of a massive coral shelf filled with hundreds of types of coral and sea creatures.  The coral was in all shades of blue, green, purple, red, yellow and orange.  Amazing fan shapes, brain looking coral, spikes and crusty looking bits.  Throughout all of it swam as many different kinds of fish.  Big fish, small fish, red fish, blue fish... huge schools of tiny, bright orange fish, pack of blue striped hand sized fish, schools of long, pencil thin pipe fish which are all shades of blue, and smatterings of bright yellow and black angel fish.  There were huge parrot fish, rainbow coloured in shades of turquoise, bright pink, yellow and purple, massive crimson coloured fish with bulges on their heads.  Sea Urchins that were bright red with big spines on them, and every kind of fish you saw in "Finding Nemo".  You could see down about 20 metres, it was simply amazing.

The Beauty of the Beach

We swam around for some time, but the water was actually fairly cold.  After about an hour we got out shivering, and once we were warmed up, settled for a picnic lunch of pita bread sandwiches, while our group mates ordered the expensive, yet fresh, gigantic platters of local sea food.  We took the opportunity for one more swim and saw more amazing fish that we didn't see the first time, as well as some crazy Russian free divers practicing.  They must have dived 15 - 20m down without any tanks at all.  It was very impressive.

We headed back to town for some clean up and another dash at shopping for low priced Egyptian Cotton.  Striking out, we're getting ready to head to St. Catherines, our base of operations for a 1:00am climb up Mount Sinai tomorrow morning.

All our best from Egypt

Dan and Gabrielle