Gorgonia Garden

The last day of the trip, everybody was excited to get in on the morning dive. The site of the day was the beautiful Gorgonia Garden with lost of small things to see. A bunch of Sea Snails of some kind seemed to attract more attention from the guides than a lonely Moray Eel sitting in its hiding den.
I didn't have my camera on this time so I settled for a relaxing effortless dive without actually seeing anything of interest. Due to the worsening problems with my ears I decided to make this dive the last one on this trip.

As the others jumped to the waters of El Maosur, I concentrated more on sunbathing and jumping off the deck of Nectarious! After a few backflips and
filling my logbook, I fell a sleep on the deck of the boat, just to wake up in the roaring of the Nectarious' motors that would soon take us back to Hurghada.

After getting to shore it was time to say goodbye to the crew, a bunch of amazing guys that made our trip possible with a constant smile on their faces. Such a great trip wouldn't have been possible without an equally amazing group of different people from different parts of Finland. I don't think I've ever had as peaceful and and relaxing trip before! Especially when having to wake up every morning at 6 o'clock!!!

Camel South Point Drift, Aquarium and Aquarium East

The very first dive of the morning was no doubt one of the best dives on the trip. Although it took quite a lot of energy to swim against the current in order to get to the site, the amazing corals, the Barracuda and Napoleon fish were well worth the effort.

We started the dive in about 30 meters, me watching closely on my Suunto D9 dive computer. While using enriched air (Nitrox 32%) I didn't want to go too deep. The slowly flowing current gave us the sightseeing tour we wanted without having to move a fin! A 45 minute dive was a great experience although not as long as everybody would have wanted... we all just ran out of air 'cause of the heavy swimming in the beginning of the dive.

The next two dives were a mix of business and pleasure while I had to help a few AOWD students in their navigational exercises. Luckily everybody got the hang of using the compass underwater quite quickly and we were able to have a look around both the west and east side of the Aquarium site. Nobody even got lost!

A wreck day - Salem Express and El Kahfen

Salem Express was a cruise ship making it's way in a storm from Mecca, Saudi Arabia to Safaga in -91. The captain of the ship, Moro, decided that the ship would take an alternate rout to it's destination. The faster route turned out to be too difficult for the captain to handle and the ship hit the reef with devastating effect: The passenger ship sank taking at least 500 passengers with it including Captain Moro, the person to blame for the accident. Because of the storm it was virtually impossible to get any help to the accident scene. Only 180 people survived the accident.

The Wreck of Salem Express was an impressive sight with a grim silence surrounding the resting place of hundreds of lost lives. The sea floor around the wreck was still filled with old luggage: Tape recorders, shoes and suit cases. Obviously no one was allowed to go inside the wreck but the surroundings of the massive ship were a sight impressive enough. Big schools of small fish had made it a new home and with all the new life surrounding the ship, it seemed as though the ship had a new purpose now.

The Salem Express dive lasted about 50 min. The maximum depth was 25m.

Abu Kafan - 3 dives, Shaap Sheer - nightdive

Friday started out great! The visibility in Abu Kafan was great, at least 20-25m. The morning sun deflecting from the surface of the crystal clear water was well worth waking up early again. The morning for me would only consist diving with the more experienced divers. We did two deep dives to about 30 meters and saw schools of Barracudas and a Napoleon fish that really didn't seem to be too interested about a bunch of over excited divers chasing him... Too bad we didn't have our cameras with us...

After doing the third dive with the AOWD students it was time to do yet another night dive, this time with the experienced group. The night was clear and calm and we descended slowly to approximately 15 meters. We started gliding forwards slow and steady and took our time exploring the surroundings with our flashlights in almost a perfect full moon. This was the kind of dive that made me fall in love with the night dives in the first place! A definite highlight of the dive was the largest Moray Eel I've ever seen in my life! The beast was about 3 meters long getting everybody's attention while gliding in the midst of the chorals.

A perfect day!

Panorama - 2 dives, Tobia Arba - 2 dives, Shaap Sheer - 1 dive

On Thursday we got up around 6 o'clock. The early wake up didn't seem to bother anyone since everybody had been dead tired from wednesday's diving and had gone to sleep around ten. Thursday was about to be a serious diving day for me, since besides my fun dives I was doing my divemaster course that includes helping the PADI Instructors teach new divers for their Open Water and Advanced Open Water Diver courses. So basically when I wasn't enjoying the reefs by myself, I was keeping an eye on a few newcomers underwater.

Unfortunately the night dive on Thursday wasn't quite as good as I hoped it to be. My flashlight didn't work properly and keeping the AOWD students in my sight would've been difficult even without any technical problems. But I guess you need the bad dives in order to appreciate the good ones. Based on this, I was sure I Would LOVE my next dives...

Eldesha - 3 dives

Sometime around midday we geared up eagerly even though the first dive would only be a check dive to see if everybody had the correct amount of weights. The salty water of Egypt surprised quite a few when descending with the regular amount of additional weights (4-6kg) was virtually impossible!
After a few tryouts I found myself carrying 12-14 kilos depending on whether I used my extra hooded 5mm short on top of my long 7mm suit. Even though we were in Egypt, the water really wasn't that warm!

After the check dive and a brief exploration of the surroundings we headed back to the boat for dinner and right after that we made our first genuine fun dive on a site called Eldesha. It was a 13-meter dive on a shallow reef full of small life. The weather conditions were great, even though the spawning jellyfish took care of the poor visibility. Some of the divers freaked out about the jellyfish at first, but these ones, even though big and beautiful, weren't harmful. After the sunset we did the third and the last of the day's dives: a night dive. Unfortunately everybody was excited to jump in for the night and at worst the night dive felt more like a traffic jam compared to a slow paced relaxing gliding in the dark ocean. The depht of the dive was approximately 15 metres. And despite of the hassle it was still great to see a Lionfish eat up a poor small fish trapped in our flashlight beams...

Dive Trip to Hurghada 3.-10.4.2007

It was going to be a well deserved vacation for me: The hectic work enviroment of a Finnish music channel The Voice TV had taken its toll and I didn't really have to make any effort to pass out as soon as the plane left the Helsinki-Vantaa airport.

On our first day we accommodated ourselves into a decent hotel in Hurghada, Zahabia or something like that, didn't really care about the name of the hotel whose pool I rushed into right after unpacking!

After a good night's sleep in the hotel we headed to the boat in which we would be sailing the next six days. Nectarious was a 24-metre cruiseboat that could accomodate all 19 of us plus the crew. We packed only our diving equipment and a few t-shirts along us, for the cabins we were to sleep in weren't any bigger than toilets back home.
After settling in we were soon about to make our first dive!