Sharm El Naga, Egypt, October 2004

Red Sea shore diving.

trip blog

Egypt - info sheet

Visum	A visum is required! In Copenhagen, a one month visum can easily be obtained from the Egyptian embassy within two working days. Besides your passport you must bring one picture, fill in an application, and pay 188 DKK. With some charter companies it is possible to obtain a visum upon arrival.
Transport	• Charter flight from Copenhagen to Hurghada: 5h • Transfer from Hurghada airport to Sharm El Naga dive resort: 1h
Time	Hurghada winter time = Copenhagen summer time They change to winter time beginning of October in Egypt, but end of October in Denmark.
Weather	Air temperature: around 30°C. Warm and dry, blue sky, mild north wind. Water temperature: 27°C.
Currency	1 Euro = 7.5 E£ = 7.5 DKK
Language	English is spoken by some.

Free diving

With clear water and a sand bottom invitingly sloping down between the corals, I just had to try and see how deep I could swim using fins and only one breath of air. A big amphora being the tempting goal down below. Thereby discovering the great feeling of free diving and setting a new personal record - a rather easy thing to do when it's your first serious attempt.


As I reached the point where my lungs were just too compressed to squeeze any more air out of them to equalize, the amphora seemingly only an armlength away, but out of reach nonetheless, I turned around and looked up at the surface high above... what a sight!

Then I started finning up, slightly worried about shallow water black-out. This is not something you want to try without a buddy watching you from the surface, ready to dive down and pull you up should the worst case scenario occur!

Fish let you come much closer, even letting you swim among them, when you're not blowing expanding bubbles all the time, at least as long as you don't frantically move your arms around, using just your fins in stead.

So now my head is buzzing with free diving jargon like: constant weight, static and dynamic breath-hold etc. I definitely have to look for a low volume diving mask... besides training my breath-hold capability and improving my underwater swimming & finning technique.

There's nothing like being under pressure

During our one week stay, we only did two boat dives: Sadana point, a rather disappointing steep sloping wall, and later on, just to make at least one more boat dive, Green gardens, a beautiful hard coral reef - that is, if you can find it without breefing. The wind caused waves made the boat rides, although not very long, not very pleasant either.

So we ended up choosing for the house reef in stead, diving it 10 times, including 2 night dives, and appreciating it more each time.

The beach entrance with its sand slope is a great place for lazy crocodilefish, just lying on the bottom while waiting for a meal to present itself to them, scorpion fish blending in with the corals and pretending not to be there, lionfish resting underneath overhangs, flounders and blue-spotted stingrays.


The left side has very nice hard corals, with pairs of masked butterfly fish slowly swimming around here and there, but there's more marine life on the right side, where we saw schooling fish like fuseliers and sergeant-majors, a big barracuda getting its teeth cleaned for a more snappy bite later on, a turtle minding its own business and a squad of seven squids hanging out in the blue, performing -at a safe distance- a little razzle dazzle show of changing colors and threathening postures.


During our night dives, we saw two small cuttlefish, getting pretty upset with us trying to take a picture of them, a few shrimps, lots of long spined sea-urchins and crabs decorated with anemones according to the latest fashion, unless of course it's just for camouflage and self-defense. All the while with an escort of two not-to-be-pushed-away lionfish, using our lights to successfully hunt by, thus having adopted the frequent intrusions of divers to their advantage. Twice I guiltily witnessed the swallowing of small out-of-luck fish by the bigger fellow - thereby making me, I confess, an accomplice to cold-blooded feeding.

Sharm El Naga

About 40km south of Hurghada lies the Sharm El Naga dive resort, located in a quiet little bay with a beautiful house reef easily accessible from the beach.

The dive center's former managers having left recently -in apparent discontent- to start their own business in Safaga, the place isn't as well run as it should be. The temporary dive crew lacks enthusiasm and knows little or nothing about the dive sites, all maps and buoys having been taken away, resulting in boat dives not really being promoted.

Each day, from 9am to 4pm, the beach is invaded by day tourists, brought from Hurghada resorts by tour busses, as this is the only beach with a snorkable reef in the neighbourhood with full amenities like rinsing showers, toilets, bar, fairly decent restaurant and fully equipped dive center offering rental gear, discover scuba classes, etc. Unfortunately, all those snorkelers also use the rinsing basins meant for the dive gear :o(

The AC bungalows are located away from the beach and have wind sheltered private terraces. We switched the AC off and just left the window wide open, enjoying the quietness and peacefulness of the desert, the silence broken only by the gentle surf of the sea...

Prices
• 8days/7nights half-board w/o diving = 175 Euro
• 8days/7nights half-board with 5 diving days* = 345 Euro (* 2 boat dives per day + unlimited shore dives)

For full-board add 40 Euros to the half-board price. But unless you're a big eater, it's not really worth it, as that includes a big lunch (worth 40 E£), which is just too much food. A sandwich or salad is fine and only costs about 20 E£.

If you plan on doing mainly shore dives, and only a couple of boat dives, it might be worth reserving for half-board only, and pay for the dives separately. A 1.5l bottle of water costs 7E£ as does a can of soda or juice.

Yucatan, Mexico, April 2004

Inside five very different cenotes between Tulum & Coba.

Mexico - info sheet

Visum	Belgian citizens, among others, automatically get a three months visum upon entry. No departure tax. Nor immigration control when leaving. Which strangely means I got an IN stamp but no OUT stamp!
Transport	• Shuttle mini-bus from Cancun airport to Tulum pueblo (35 USD/person): 2h • Taxi from Tulum pueblo to the beach (30-35 Pesos): about 4km • MAYAB stop bus from Tulum to Playa Del Carmen (20 Pesos/person) • ADO direct AC bus from Tulum to Playa Del Carmen (31 Pesos/person): 1h. Remark that the ADO bus does not stop in the tourist bus terminal on 5th avenue (= the shopping street), but several blocks away from it! • Direct AC bus from Playa Del Carmen to Cancun airport (65 Pesos/person): 1h. Leaves from the tourist bus terminal located on 5th avenue - close to the Playa-Cozumel ferry terminal.
Time	Cancun time = Copenhagen summer time — 7 hours
Weather	Air temperature: 30°C hot and humid. Partially overcast and relatively windy, with an occasional thunderstorm. Nights are usually cool during the winter months but were abnormally so now too. Fresh water temperature: 24°C (in the cenotes).
Currency	1 USD = 10.5 Pesos
Language	English is spoken. But knowing a bit of Spanish is recommended when you don't know your way around.

Mindoro & Luzon, Philippines, Oct-Nov 2003

¤ IANTD Normoxic Trimix Diver
¤ TDI Advanced Wreck Diver
¤ IANTD Trimix Diver

travel blog

Philippines - info sheet

Visum	No visum is required - unless you want to stay more than 3 weeks. In Copenhagen, a 59 days visum can be obtained from the Philippines consulate within two to four weeks. Besides your passport you must bring one picture, a copy of your travel documents, fill in an application, and pay 345 DKK.
Time	Manila time = Copenhagen summer time + 6 hours Manila time = Copenhagen winter time + 7 hours
Weather	Air temperature: about 30°C warm and humid. Partially cloudy, with an occasional shower now and then. Water temperature: 27°C.
Currency	1 USD = 54 PHP
Language	English is spoken by most.
Electricity	Electrical plugs are USA style.

Seahorse parade

Armed with a Sea&Sea MotorMarine IIex underwater camera, it's a whole other game now. The hunt for subjects is open.

Asia Divers being rather busy, I've switched to Frontier Scuba. I already dived with them last year and know Rick (the owner) and Oying (the main guide). It's a smaller dive shop, offering a more personalized service, meaning you can have Rick or Oying as your private guide on most dives.


And they're a photographer's best friend! In stead of telling which dive sites I'd like to see, I ask them for a certain fish or marine creature. Then they just bring me to a site and find whatever I wanted to see. It's quite incredible. Today, Oying found three seahorses and a big orange frogfish on our first dive. And plenty of colourful nudibranchs on the second dive.


Not a day goes by without us seeing a new critter: pygmy seahorses, spotted and thorny seahorses, seamoths (aka dragonfish), slender pipefish, seagrass filefish, flying gurnard, dragonet, cockatoo waspfish, frogfish, lion-, scorpion- and stonefish, reef- and flamboyant cuttlefish, octopus, anemoneshrimps and -crabs, hermite- and boxcrabs, green and white mantis shrimp, blue and black ribbon eels, moray eels, flounders, various kinds of nudibranchs, seapens, etc. Besides of course all the other free moving reef fish (usually not inclined to be photographed) and the occasional turtle.

There was a problem with the camera's macro-frame, but several pictures did come out anyway, though not as many as hoped. Lesson learned: develop asap, so you can take corrective measures.

Recreational diving

Having finished all my technical courses, I can now enjoy the freedom of diving with just one tank again. All I have to do is rollover into the water, have a great time just looking around and surface when I'm done.


My recreational configuration is of course technically correct: meaning I'm still using a harness and backplate, but now with smaller, single tank wings. I can't get much more streamlined than that, except by becoming a freediver.

A typhoon passes by

It's been raining through the night and all of the day. The intensity varying from drizzle to tropical downpour, soaking everything and everybody venturing outside. A perfect day for watching movies, except there's no power and they won't start the generator until nightfall. So most tourists hang out in the bars, soaking there insides with San Miguel beer, thus restoring their humidity balance with the outside world.

IANTD Trimix Diver -upgrade-

Instructors	Dave Ross (academics+skills) Sam Collett (training dives)
Dive center	Tech Asia, Small La Laguna, Puerto Galera, Mindoro, Philippines
Duration	4 days
Dives	1 confined water session 3 trimix dives to max 80m
Price	300 USD + about 240 USD for Helium (incl. the instructor's)
Requirements	IANTD
Comments	Having done the normoxic trimix course only a few weeks ago with the same instructor team, this course was just an upgrade to full trimix. In order to go yet a little deeper, there are some new skills to master and some additional risks to consider. The main one being the fact that the bottom mix is now hypoxic at the surface and shallow depths. Actual bottom time gets even shorter and decompression time longer (e.g. about four times the bottom time for medium deep dives). As more Helium is needed in the mix in order to keep a clear head, the price tag per dive goes up accordingly too. Dave and Sam are great dive professionals who take their job seriously and do it thoroughly, gladly sharing their knowledge and experience - they're truly an example to follow. Remark that the full trimix course would normally take longer, require more dives and cost more.

Manila to Small LaLaguna

After a short overnight stay at Malate pension (550 PHP/night), I took an early morning taxi to the City State Tower Hotel (31 PHP) and bought a bus/ferry ticket to Sabang (400 PHP). The bus left a little after 8am, and we arrived in Batangas around 10:30, from where I took a big banca outrigger directly to Sabang beach. The crossing took an hour, and could potentially get wet depending on the wheather conditions.
My fully furnished studio at Sha Che (500 PHP/day) was waiting for me, and I made myself comfy straight away. Now I can truly relax, having worked my way through the two main dive courses I wanted to do here. The one left is just an upgrade of the first one, so I can take it easy from now on :o)

Subic Bay to Manila

Not liking Subic too much, I left it as soon as the course was done. I could again share a chartered van (2700 PHP) back to Manila with Mark and Steve. With the same old driver, barely understanding a word of english, and always nodding yes to whatever we'd ask him. But he got us where we wanted. Through the endless traffic jams.

TDI Advanced Wreck Diver

Instructor	John Bennett
Assistant	Mark Cox
Buddy	Steve Bates
Dive center	MasterDive (used as a base only), Subic Bay, Mindoro, Philippines John Bennett and Mark Cox run the Tech Dive Academy in Port Douglas, Australia
Duration	5 days
Dives	1 confined water session 8 wreck dives on air or nitrox
Price	750 USD
Requirements	TDI
Comments	More than just an introduction to overhead environment diving. The skills are very much the same as for cave diving, but the environment and its hazards pose different challenges. Again, buoyancy control is crucial to perform the line laying, following and retrieval skills, through narrow to tight horizontal, vertical or inclined restrictions. Propulsion technique is very important to avoid silting up. And of course one has to be very aware of one's air reserves. Contrary to cave diving, we were never totally gone from daylight sources, except for a short shaft penetration. Gear configuration is very much an issue here, as anything dangling or sticking out could be a potential entanglement hazard. And believe me, things do get tight in there, I've never felt so big before. Though the skills must be mastered, they're relatively easy to learn. The main challenge really is mental. To remain in control when things don't quite go as expected. With six divers (one instructor, one assistant and four students) we got to practice no viz exits a lot. With that many divers working their way through narrow corridors, silting up is almost inevitable. Bubbles cause falldown, holding on to a coral encrusted corroded beam causes clouds of rust particles to swirl around, just looking at something intensively might cause it to crumble. In these no viz situations, the guideline truly becomes a lifeline. My hands must have a hundred small cuts from feeling my way around and my fingertips are pretty much worn off. The equipment seriously gets roughed up too from all the bumping and scraping. My corrugated inflator hose didn't last very long before being punctured. My wetsuit still bears rust colored marks on the thighs, from when I clammed myself in doorways. And my fins have several new scars. The visibility outside the wrecks varied from around 3-5m to an amazing 8m the last day. A pitty really because one can not get a sense of the size of these great wrecks. Nor that some of them are actually battleships. Visibility inside the wrecks was usually better than outside - that is, untill we messed up everything. John Bennett, current world record holder of deep scuba diving on mixed gas (308m!), is a sympathetic man, who knows what he's doing. He's a good instructor, but being four students was a bit too much to my taste. We did get a lot of training dives, but not as much actual line laying/retrieval practice as necessary in my opinion. Especially if you've never done this before. The course itself wasn't somehow as structured as the cave course I did in Mexico. There wasn't e.g. as clear a progression in skill difficulty or general understanding. There's no exam by the way. We only used MasterDive as a base, it being located conveniently close to the wrecks. Having our own equpment all they provided was doubles with air or nitrox. The doubles were in a rather sorry condition and they didn't have enough of them. They've got no gear storage space to speak of nor adequate rinsing facilities. But what can you expect from a dive center squeezed in a cargo container. I can't honestly recommend them. They're not very well organised and the way the local shop assistants mistreated our precious life-support equipment was beyond stupid carelessness. I've actually never seen anything like it. I couldn't have subjected myself nor my gear to their care a day longer then required. My doubles were bubbling from the right tank valve in a rather noisy way (loosing 40bar overnight), but all one of the guys in charge could say was: "He'll survive". A pity really for I would have liked to do some non-training wreck dives after the course.
Training wrecks	El Capitan: Large freighter about 80m long lying on its port side between 6 and 21m. A nice wreck where we did our initial line laying, following and retrieval skills.
	USS New York: WWI battle cruiser about 100m long, sunk in 1941, lying between 18 and 21m. Ideal for wreck penetration training. Some passages have barely recognisable permanent line.
	LST: Land Support Transport vessel lying upright in 36m deep water. Allowing multi-cabin penetration, after getting through a short but narrow stairwell. We used a deco stage here, left outside the wreck during the actual penetration.

Subic Bay

We stay at the Mangrove mini-resort hotel/restaurant on Baloy beach near Olongapo city. For 1200 PHP/night you get a big but not very well designed aircon room with hot shower (but no direct light in the bathroom) and small TV (uselessly far away from the bed). There's a small closet, but no wardrobe, no table, no chair. All rooms overlook the bay, and there's a mini swimming pool. The restaurant serves decent food at reasonable prices (150-250 PHP).

The busy main street, a 10' walk away from the resort, is rather shabby and of course dusty, heavily polluted and noisy. In short, not a pleasant sight.

Mangrove is a 15' ride from the ex-military base and the MasterDive dive center we'll be diving from. They'll pick us up every morning and bring us back in the afternoon.

Subic is a strange place, with lots of British and Australian expats, all rather storyful characters. Everybody on the wreck course I'm following being British too, I feel very much an outsider, having no particular interest whatsoever in the rugby championship nor being much of a social small talk beer drinking mate.

It being the 1st of November, I witnessed quite a sight: the hillside cemetery crawling all over with people coming to spend the day and night with their ancestors. Having a family picnic around the graves, chatting away with relatives, the ghosts left pretty much speechless as far as I could tell. At night the whole hill was lit up by thousands of flickering candles.

Manila to Subic Bay

I shared a chartered van (2700 PHP) with John Bennett, Mark Cox and Steve Bates. The long ride through congested traffic took about 3½ hours, including a short lunch stop, at, of all places, a roadside McDonalds.

Manila

Manila is a huge sprawling city, with over 10 million people living in it. It's got a chaotic traffic situation resulting in pretty mad driving habits and the accompanying pollution problem. Most of the public transport still seems to be handled by the typical jeepneys, together with loads of taxis, motorized tricycles, pedicabs and even the odd horse cart.

It's not a nice city, and though actually surprisingly clean when you think about it, it doesn't look that way, giving a faded, drab, dusty impression, except for some of the towering glass buildings in the better districts. There's no real side walks to speak of, but then, anybody with some means wouldn't think about walking anywhere. Besides, it's just too hot to do that.

Manila is a city of great social contrasts. Shiny tall buildings look out over corroded metal shacks. A rich inner world of clean airconned malls versus the sweaty hot outer world of the poor. Where one person carelessly spends in one hour what another barely scrapes together in a month, or even a year.

Where on one side of a window a fat kid stuffs himself with a burger, while on the other side a starving kid is sifting through some garbage for a scrap of discarded food. It's a tough world we live in indeed. Armed guards are everywhere, some of them with heavy shotguns, to protect these fairy innerworlds from the harsh reality of the outside.

Ignorance is bliss. Better not to think about it too much. After all, I'm here on holidays, not to change the world. It's just that, well, I guess it bothers me when directly confronted with it like this...

I feel relatively safe walking around here, but I am cautious, trying not to display too much wealth. Most Philippinos strolling around in the mall are better dressed than me by the way. Nevertheless, with the amount of money I'm carrying, albeit in traveler cheques, the equivalent of several years salary for lots of people here, I feel like a walking talking winning lottery ticket.

The other day I'm pretty sure there was a guy following me through the department store. Maybe I'm being just a bit paranoid, but it would be quite a lot of coincidence that he happened to be interested in all the same random things as I was. As I slipped out, I saw him come out a couple of seconds later too, looking around, but by then I was already around the corner.

Small La Laguna to Manila

As I could get a private ride directly from Small La Laguna to Manila today, I got here a bit earlier than planned. I shared a big outrigger from Asia Divers with an american expat who'd chartered it, a 50' sail to some gravel beach near the Batangas harbour (1800 PHP for the boat, being only 2 that came to 900 PHP per person, but you could get a lot more people in that boat).

From there I got a free two hour ride to the Makati area of Manila in his chauffeured company car. From where I took a taxi to get to the Malate part of town (about 40' in the heavy city traffic, 90 PHP meter price).