Red Sea Diving in the Blue Sudan

I hear exclamations from dive guides wherever I go about diving in the Red Sea. I learn from research that eight of the top 100 dives in the world are in the Red Sea. And Egypt of course has pyramids. When a friend said she was planning a trip to Egypt, I signed up. The plan was to be at the pyramids for the Winter Solstice, maybe not timing of my choice, but I’d make it work. And yes, I orchestrated leaving on this trip just a few days after finishing up a photo journalism experience in Nepal. The anticipation of twelve days of diving on a liveaboard dive boat in the Red Sea, going south into Sudan, overcomes any jet lag of traveling from Nepal to the US, and on to Egypt.

Dive guides had stressed going as far south as possible to reach more pristine dive sites, so upon seeing a trip that extended even further south into Sudan, I sign up to cruise on the Royal Evolution. I’m fortunate to have a cabin to myself, as no other female signed up to the confirmed twin share. I meet the other 22 guests slowly, a half dozen from the UK, more from Germany, couples from Russia and Poland, one from Holland and my dive buddy from Belgium,

We check out of Egypt at Port Galib the first night we arrive at the boat. It’s a small matter of getting the passports and paperwork organized and us walking through minimal security. We sail overnight; do four dives in Egypt, then check into Sudan, each of us paying a mere 350 Euros (yes Euros, not Egyptian or Sudanese currency) for the visa, and four hours of dive time. Luckily, we’re checked in and out at the same time, so no need to return here and spend another four hours when we leave.

We quickly develop a routine. Wake up calls come over the intercom system one-half hour prior to our first dive briefing of the day. Breakfast is served after dive one. An hour or so later, we dive again. Now it’s almost time for lunch. A couple of hours later, we dive for a third time. Then we have snacks. After a short surface interval, we do a night dive. Given the warm air temperatures in Sudan, night dives are very pleasant here. I go on all but one, that one having a rocky Zodiac ride to and from the dive site making me more wary than excited, especially given the limited visibility of the third dive that day. I force myself, or shall I say, give myself permission, to miss at least one dive on a liveaboard.

We dive in three groups via Zodiacs, or from Royal Evolution’s dive platform. Walter is a conscientious dive buddy; he’s a very polite retired financial man who speaks slowly in English. He’s easy to spot underwater—attached as he is to his SLR camera with strobe. I envy his pictures to which mine, on my new Sea Life camera, don’t compare. Yes, I know, it’s the photographer not the camera at fault, but I happily prefer to see these active underwater fish cities and their ever growing architecture with my own eyes, not through my camera’s lens.

Many divers are here to see hammerhead sharks. A few do. Luckily I’m one of those. (My traveling angel works as hard for me under the water as she does for clearing mountain tops for my observation!) I get caught up with wanting to document this citing so futz with my camera rather than focus on the hammerhead’s first swim by. Thankfully, he wanders by two more times. I get a misty shot of the average six to seven foot long scalloped hammerhead. It’s not as large as one might expect, yet rather more attractive in an out-of-this-atmosphere sort of way than I would have thought from photographs.

Given all the English and Europeans aboard, I realize most of the divemasters who recommended diving the Red Sea are from Europe or the UK. Now having been on around 400 dives, it’s harder to find unique marine life. Yes, I’ve seen some marine species I haven’t seen before—juvenile Slingjaw Wrasse, Royal Angelfish, Blackspotted Sweetlips (which the dive guides refer to as Angelina Jolie fish), and juvenile Axel Hogfish; and miss some of my favorites, Rock Beauties and Indigo Hamlets. The nocturnal crustaceans hide well, yet with patience, offer big rewards—four Pronghorn Spiny lobsters on one dive, a Shrimp lobster, a Convex Reef crab and a Hermit crab, plus millions of tiny shrimp. And yes, we saw turtles, my favorite one seeking his reflection in our camera lenses. He mingled with us for quite a while. Unfortunately I don’t have any footage of him trying to bite my new underwater camera. I was too busy fending him off.

Just as we are settled into our routine, we find that our twelve days of diving draw to an end. We hear about snow across Europe and the UK, so much that Gatwick closes down. I’m glad I have three more weeks of warmth to look forward to. Almost another week of diving around Marsa Alam, and then the land-based part of the trip—Mount Sinai, St. Catherine’s Monastery, Luxor, a cruise on the Nile, the pyramids in the suburbs of Cairo and more. That should keep my mind off of snow for a while.