Early February 2007 I decided that I wanted to finally do a diving course (I had always wanted to do this but never actually got round to it).

I had a look on the website for package holidays and found a few that looked good, but most of them ended up costing a lot more once you get to the booking stage.

In the end I thought I will just get a flight and arrange all the bits myself, so found a flight with BA, who fly to Sharm from Gatwick daily, the price worked out at £131 for a return for nearly two weeks, booking process was nice and easy, and as I am a frequent flyer member (not that I fly that frequently with BA) checking in and seat allocation as well as prepared meals was a great bonus.

Having sorted the flight, next step was the hotel and a diving course, after spending a few hours scanning the Internet, I found Camel Diving in Sharm, as that fulfilled both of my requirements, they run a Diving school and a hotel too in centre of Naama bay area.

The hotel is small (38 rooms) compared to most others in the area and is located right in the middle of the resort, so great for just walking around and browsing. Another big plus was that they have free wireless internet around the hotel so I was able to do some work too.

I booked the PADI Open Water Dive course and a room for 9 nights, total cost was 637 Euros plus 30 Euro for the PADI certification fee.

I took a cab from the airport (plenty of knocked about cabs outside), after a little haggling agreed on a price of 100 LE (around £9) I could have arranged a transfer with the hotel for 18 Euro, but I wanted to try it for myself and see how easy or difficult it was.

The cab dropped me off on the main road (Peace Road) because cabs aren’t allowed into Naama for security reasons, luckily I was traveling light, so was not too bad to walk a few minutes and find the hotel after asking couple of people.

The hotel is in a good location, lots of restaurants and clubs on the door step, the hotel’s own restaurant is pretty good too, most nights it was packed.

The diving course;

My course started the following morning at 9.00am, there was only me and a Russian girl called Elena on the course, our tutor was a very nice lady called Poliana (Poli), a Brazilian living and teaching in Sharm.

You have to buy the PADI instructional manual, this cost 450 LE at the dive shop.

First two days was theory and practice, this consisted on watching videos which covers the instructions in the PADI manual, followed by tutor instructions and tests afterwards to test your knowledge on what you have learned. In the afternoons we undertook instructions on using the equipment and practicing diving basics in the pool.

Our instructor Poli was very patient with us and covered everything well and went over anything we didn’t understand as many times as we needed to, I would highly recommend her if you plan to go and do a course there.


After the two days of theory we were raring to get into the sea and do some real diving. We went to the harbor around 9.00am and boarded a boat with about 8 other people from the dive centre, these were divers going out on dives with another dive master.

We went for out north for a few miles and stopped at a site called the Gardens, named because of all the coral in that area.

The weather was great, nice and sunny and not too hot, we got ready and did our buddy checks, everything OK and we were ready to jump in and see some fishes - yipeeeee.

First thing I noticed the water was not cold as I had expected, visibility was good and we had a good wander around for about 40 minutes, keeping a very close eye on our instructor and each other.

I was nervous to start with but soon got the hang of keeping myself in roughly the same depth, without going up and down, the dive was fantastic as this was my first time being able to get down and see all the marine life close up.

Time to get back to the boat before the air runs out – it was much harder to climb back up the boat then it was to jump off it, the weights and that tank seem to weight a ton and the flippers make it difficult to maneuver outside of water.

Lunch was cooked on the boat by the guys running the boat and helping the divers in and out of water, after lunch it was time for our second dive, this time I was allowed to take my camera which I had been dying to test out underwater, I need some more practice as you can see from the results, well it gives me another excuse to go back and try again.

Here are a couple of pictures from dive;








Second day the weather changed, the sea was a bit rough – it was lot more difficult to get in and out of the boat, the visibility was pretty bad, and we had to make extra effort to not get very far away from our instructor, still it was good fun and very enjoyable.

All in all I had a fantastic time, the Camel Dive centre was very good and professional, hotel was clean and comfortable with very helpful staff – highly recommended.
I plan to go back and continue with my diving very soon.

www.CamelDive.com

__________________
CrescentHomes real estate, TurkishLiving & EgyptianLiving forums.