Dive Holiday in Hurghada - ...

It was a chilled out day, the dive was shorter than I would have liked but it was good to get back into some beautiful, clear water instead of the UK waters I had become accustomed to. That night we got out for some drinks and discussed the day before getting an early night ready for diving the next day off the day boat.

We had a good set of dives off the boat, they even got a surprise cake for me on my birthday and got everyone on the boat to sing happy birthday to me. We didn't see any turtles, big rays or sharks but there was lots of small stuff which was really nice and I got some great photos dotted around this post and in my Hurghada gallery pages.

On Saturday we took a day off from the diving as my friends had finished their courses, Matt wasn't diving and everyone fancied doing something different. Matt managed to get us a private guide to take our group out into the desert on quads to see a Bedouin village. The quad ride was absolutely great and I have never done anything like that in my life. The Bedouin village was pretty disappointing but then we had the drive back which was also great fun - driving around the desert on a quad bike in the dark!

That night we found a Bedouin tent on the beach at the hotel. We thought it would be worse than the Bedouin village but it was actually great fun. The guys who worked there were all very humourous and made us all dress up in what they told us were traditional Bedouin garments. It was good fun, probably just as fake as the village in the desert but they took good care of you and the atmosphere was nice.

Sunday it was back to diving and we went to Fanous East with the promise of dolphins. My friend had told me he dived Fanous West and the dolphins actually swam with them in the water so I was hoping for a little luck. They didn't come near unfortunately and for some reason we were not diving Fanous West in the afternoon and they moved the boat to Tatr Bay which was quite an uneventful dive. We did see some dolphins from a distance which was nice but I have always wanted to swim with dolphins.

Then they gave us the good news on the boat on the way back - they had got the numbers for a Thistlegorm trip and it would be leaving early Monday morning. As my friends had just done their deep adventure dives they also reckoned they would be OK to go on the trip and so they signed up too. It meant a 4am start but from what friends had told me it would be worth it.

We went out for a few drinks that night but got an early night due to the very early start. We got there at 4am as instructed, I was quite horrified to discover our dive gear had been left out in the open in the corridor at the back of the shop, but it was early, I was tired and I let it slide. The dive centre guys arrived ten minutes or so later and packed up our gear and took us to the port.

When we got there we saw it wasn't one of the dive centre's boats. They seemed a little clumsy in their boat handling but it was early, we were all very tired and the sea was a little rough. We got our gear on to the boat and went into the cabin to try and get some sleep. I could see pretty soon that wasn't going to happen for me as the sea was pretty rough and I have never been great at sleeping on anything that moves...

The sea seemed to get rougher and I have quite honestly never seen a boat tilt that far over as I began wondering how far over they can tilt. After about an hour Zizo, our dive guide, told me the boat was going to anchor in a nearby reef and wait to see if the conditions improved. After several hours of waiting and one or two attempts to see what it was like it became clear conditions would not improve.

They told us they were going to have to turn back, I was gutted but I could see how bad the sea was. We were offered the opportunity to dive some local wrecks or reefs and after asking everyone else we decided we might as well salvage something from the day and do a couple of the local wrecks. They turned back and kept doing circles and stuff, the sea was very rough and it took hours to get back to Hurghada where our port and the wrecks were.

We did a couple of wrecks, the second was from a RIB they seemed to barter for from a guy working the area. On our way back from our last dive we sat in the rib and watched as our dive boat went headlong into the middle of another dive boat leaving a large crack down the side of their cabin! At that point we all just wanted to get back on the boat and back to shore as we were having serious doubts about the crews ability.

A little later they pulled into port alongside another boat, the sea was a little rough and they proceeded to grate our boat against another boat alongside us taking large chunks of wood off of both boats! This was the dive trip from hell! We really wanted to get off now as the owners of the other boat shouted stuff in Arabic.

The crew amazed us then as they pulled away, starting pulling up to the harbour wall and proceeded to bounce their boat off another one that was moored in some strange attempt to pull alongside as many others shouted stuff at them in Arabic! As soon as we could we jumped ashore and got in the van to get out of there.

Hopefully this will always be the dive trip I will remember as my worst! To rub some salt in the wound the dive centre insisted on charging us full price for the trip and still haven't processed the certifications for my friend's courses! Overall it was a great week away with some really nice diving, but a bad last day...