‘Twas a dark and windy night, well a cold and blustery one, when ten of us arrived at Marsa Shagra for a week’s diving The weather persisted for the next couple of days, before easing to calmer and warmer weather by the end of the week.
Nevertheless, Marsa Shagra is a beautiful bay with two house reefs, which are surprisingly pristine reefs bearing in mind how frequently they are dived. Both house reefs are relatively shallow dives, dropping to around 15m but you could swim out for deeper water if wanted, and the ‘hop-on hop-off’ RIBs could take you to the outer reef, and pick you up as and when you wanted – put up your SMB and a boat would appear.
Our first dive was the usual check dive on the south reef so that we could demonstrate that we had the basic skills, were correctly weighted (a rude shock as the local salinity required more weight than most of us were expecting!) and were not likely to bump into the coral every five minutes!. Anyway, the first dive went well, with Aled as our guide, and the usual range of Red Sea fauna – banner, butterfly puffer fish and blue spotted ray amongst other, including one nicknamed the pinocchio fish (turned out to be a Red Sea Bird Wrasse – how mundane!). That afternoon we took the rib out to the edge of the north reef and while we slowly made our way back to the shore seeing a hawksbill turtle, Picasso trigger fish and lion fish. We surfaced when it became just a little too like standard UK vis.
The poor weather affected some of our diving as the trips beyond the reef were cancelled from a combination of difficulty for the ribs to get to dive sites and dive sites themselves being blown out.
It turned out that we were the guinea pigs for trips that week – the first ones out after all the bad weather to see if the reefs were accessible. It was a bit of a plough in the rib, and quite splashy – however, it was one of the better journeys in those conditions that I have had, the excellent boatman was very good in making sure that once we’d climbed the wave we did not smack back down in the trough – a very common experience I’ve found previously – but it did take about twice as long as anticipated to get there. However, guided by Ezz, we were well rewarded with an excellent dive round some beautiful coral and a shortish swim through under the coral which was fun, culminating in reentering the open water to be met by four dolphins, at least one of which was distinctly curious about us and we spent quite sometime just letting it swim round us and survey these strange beings blowing bubbles.
Most of us went on a trip (guided by Hemza) in the vain hope that we would see a dugong, but as that was on the way to another area of sea grass where green turtles are found, of which there were many grazing, along with a number of remora either attached or a few actually free swimming. Followed by another beautiful reef with and numerous fish including a sand ray – all at 10m.
We also managed trips to the Elphinstone, and Charbel’s sharks and a couple of night dives. Our non-diver also enjoyed her introduction to snorkelling in Egypt.
Some of the group ventured out on quad bikes on the last day and most of the group booked a star gazing trip which was fabulous. Seeing the moon close up was a sight to behold
With much thanks to Teresa for organising a trip we all enjoyed, without incident, and in a lovely place, and where we were looked after extremely well, despite all the refurbishments going on around us.
