Red Sea, M/V Oyster Liveaboard, 1999
Author: Bob E

The Red Sea is the European divers’ Caribbean. Only a few hours from most European cities, it offers tropical diving and lots of choices of operators. However, the northern end of the Red Sea, where most Europeans go for day boat opportunities, gets very busy and some operations give a new definition to the term "cattle boat." Everything I have read about the Red Sea tells me that the farther south you go the better the diving gets. We boarded our live aboard, the M/V Oyster, at Hurghada and sailed south.

Hurghada is the southernmost point on the Egyptian side of the Red Sea which offers an airport with frequently scheduled flights. An easy flight from Cairo on Egypt Air, it has a very busy dive community with about 90 dive shops, almost all of which have day boat operations. As one might imagine, dive sites around Hurghada can become very busy.

We dove some sites near Hurghada on the first and last day of our trip and saw crowded conditions which make the Florida Keys seem deserted. One advantage of live aboards is that they can get to dive sited such as these and tie up very early in the morning, long before the day boats get there. Our first dive was at a site called Gato Abu Ramada. It was a nice site, a sea mount rising from a 50 foot sandy bottom. We made our first dive at about eight in the morning when there was no one else around. By mid morning, when the day boats arrived, we saw six or seven day boats tied to a single mooring buoy. One would tie up to the buoy, the next boat would tie to the first boat, and so on. Surprisingly, this site seemed healthy.

By the second day we were far enough from Hurghada to be out of range of the day boats, and saw only other live aboards until the last day when we were back near Hurghada for our final dives.

There are a large number of live aboards operating in the Red Sea. Again, most cater to Europeans. My impression is that the majority are not up to the standards American divers have come to expect, such as those set by the Peter Hughes and Aggressor boats. Some are very large. For example, we saw a boat called the Number One which I have seen advertised occasionally in US dive magazines. We were told that this boat carries more than 40 divers who only get in two dives a day. There are so many divers they have to dive in shifts and thus are limited in the number of dives.

Another story we heard was about the live aboard which left three divers in the water for 52 hours before they were picked up by chance by another boat, since the divers had not been missed by the boat they were on. The divers, who had rented equipment on their boat, naturally dropped all their equipment except their BCs. When they were finally recovered the owner of the live aboard they were on tried to make them pay for the equipment they had dumped.

The moral of all this is that if you go to the Red Sea you need to be very careful of the dive operator you choose. Evidently there are some less than top notch operators.

The M/V Oyster, our boat, was a first class boat built to standards Americans would expect from a live aboard. It was operated as the Peter Hughes Moon Dancer for a short time. The story of why Peter Hughes decided to sell his interest in the boat depends upon who tells it. One version is that Peter felt that the politics of the local situation prevented an American owned boat from access to the best sites. The other is that Peter was just not attracting enough American divers to make the boat profitable. The boat is now owned by an Egyptian doctor who now has heavily invested in the travel business. He visits the boat every week to welcome the new guests, and the week we were there he spent the entire week on the boat.

The captain of the boat and all the crew except for the three dive masters were Egyptian. The dive masters were all Brits and they did a first rate job. Good spirited, they were always ready to help, were in the water leading dives if you wanted to follow them, but never interfered if you wanted to do your own thing. Dive limits were announced to be 130 feet, but depths were never checked, and one morning we were led on a dive between 140 and 150 feet looking for sharks and other big stuff at a site where they are frequently seen at that depth. My computer showed 144 feet on that dive. Didn’t see any sharks, but got a great lion fish picture there. At the beginning of the week there were never time limits put on any of the dives. However, two members of our group were doing 80 minute dives and toward of the end of the week, usually on the second dive at a particular site, when the boat was planning a move to a new site after the dive, a 70 minute limitation was placed, usually made with a glance and grin at an attractive blond lady (a frequent contributor to this board) and her usual dive buddy.

The Oyster is certainly a first class, well run live aboard dive boat. Food very good and crew very attentive. Most of the diving was drift diving from two outboard powered inflatables. The dingy drivers were very good and I never had any sort of a wait before being picked up. Currents were not strong at anytime the entire week and we never drifted far from the reefs. On the other hand, there were times at some sites far out in the middle of the Red Sea when we hit some pretty good chop. Diving from inflatables in 5 to 6 foot seas can be exciting, particularly when getting back in the boat. It’s hard to be graceful while flopping over the side of the raft in 6 foot waves.

We found the diving to be very good. The part of the Red Sea we saw is hardly high voltage diving, at least at this time of the year. We saw one manta, doing loops, and I saw no sharks, although others reported seeing one or two. What we saw were very beautiful, healthy coral reefs. The ones near Hurghada were surprisingly healthy considering the heavy diving they get. The variety of fish in the Red Sea is clearly greater than what is seen in the Caribbean, with plenty of anemone fish, more varieties of butterfly fish and angel fish, and some really weird fish like crocodile fish that we don’t see in our hemisphere. Two types of lion fish, one type that I had never seen before. Soft corals abound as well as hard corals. Nearly every dive site was overflowing with anthias, sometime great clouds of them, and the abundance of fish life was evident everywhere.

The water temperature when we were there in late August was 84 degrees, which may explain why we saw no sharks. We were told that sharks are frequently seen at other times of the year when the water is cooler. Visibility was always good, never much less than 100 feet and sometimes more.

Probably the most famous dive sites in the Red Sea are The Brothers, two small islands, really sea mounts, that sit out in the middle of the sea with nothing around. We spent three days diving around these two islands, which were only recently opened to divers after being closed by the government for three years to allow the area to heal after reef damage. At north end of Big Brother is the remains of a wreck which is the site of one of the best dives anywhere. The ship was carrying a railroad engine, so in addition to remains of the boat wreck are the remains of the engine with two huge spoked driving wheels making great photo subjects. The remains of the wreck begins where it struck the reef at ten feet and spill down the side of the wall to about 130 feet. The islands are very small, Big Brother is only 1300 feet long and Little Brother is even smaller. Both islands are solid coral reefs completely around, so it doesn’t much matter where one drops in. It was here that we made our deep dive one morning looking for pelagics, since they are frequently seen at these sites which located 36 miles east from Egyptian shore. The fee for diving these islands was $95 per diver.

Although we didn’t have a bad dive the whole week, after The Brothers my favorite dive site was Panorama Reef, a site which is within the range of day boats from Hurghada. This was a completely submerged sea mount which comes to within 10 feet or so of the surface. It was typical of Red Sea diving with an abundance of life.

Traveling in Egypt

There seems to be a lot of fear in the US about the risks of traveling in Egypt. We found such fears to be unfounded. Two years ago at the Temple of Hatshepsut, on the west bank at Luxor, some radicals with automatic weapons killed a large number of tourists. When this happened there were only two guards at the gate. They were killed immediately by the terrorists. Because of a lack of communication it took the police nearly half an hour to respond. The result of the tragedy was a dramatic loss of tourism, Egypt’s largest industry. The Egyptian government has responded with enormous increases in security at all tourist sites. Most have metal detectors at the entrance and many, many uniformed armed guards at every site. None of us ever felt a bit uncomfortable about security. Egyptians do not seem the least bit hostile to tourists, and seem very friendly to Americans. We concluded that it is possible to get shot by a nut in any city in the US and Egypt seemed no more dangerous.

Cruise Down the Nile

Most of our second week in Egypt was spent on a first class cruise boat traveling from Aswan to Luxor, with stops to see the remains of some the most magnificent of temples and tombs imaginable. There is no way to describe the beauty and grand scale of what these people built thousands of years ago. These structures would be awesome if built today. Indeed, they are grander than almost any building I can think of in this country. It is difficult to imagine even one of them being built entirely by hand, and there were so many of them. Every time we stopped to go to another historic site, we saw something even more impressive than the last. I’ll post a few more photos of some over the next few weeks, with some explanation of the things which make the buildings seem so remarkable.

There are several hundred luxury cruise boats on the Nile. They are limited in size by the size of the locks and the height of the bridges above the water. Two to three hundred feet long, our boat had five decks, 65 guest rooms, a nice swimming pool and was very comfortable. I you want to tour Egypt, one of these cruises is the only way to see the sights of the upper Nile.

Cairo

A city of twenty seven million people, Cairo is not a very attractive city. It does not have beautiful boulevards and main thoroughfares as does Mexico City, for example. Nevertheless, it is a fascinating city with remarkable contrasts. Traffic is an absolute disaster, often impeded by donkey carts which share six lane streets with bumper to bumper cars and trucks. Don’t even think of renting a car in Cairo. It is the wildest driving of any city I’ve ever seen. Traffic lights and signs are totally ignored. No one ever stops for a red light or stop sign. It’s total chaos. The only saving grace is that it is so crowded the cars never get going fast enough to hurt anyone seriously when they do crash. At night it is considered macho to drive without one’s headlights turned on, somehow they thing they are saving a great deal of money by not turning on their headlights. A pedestrian crossing a busy street might as well be crossing the Long Island Expressway. No one even thinks of slowing down or yielding.

Cairo has some nice hotels and some very interesting places to buy unique goods at very reasonable prices. And, of course, the Giza pyramids and the ruins at Memphis and Saqqara are really a part of Cairo. As are the oriental rug factories where I left a considerable amount of Egyptian Pounds in exchange for a hand made silk rug. (And yes, I did declare it when going through customs.)

Also at Cairo is the museum which contains an enormous collection of artifacts, including the contents of King Tut’s tomb. This museum shouldn’t be missed, although it is quite crowded, too small and badly in need of enlargement and renovation.

Egypt is fascinating in many ways. Diving in the Red Sea shouldn’t be missed, but be very careful about the operator you choose. Nor should anyone traveling that far from the US fail to take the opportunity to see the most magnificent ruins of ancient cultures found anywhere in the world.

If you go to Egypt be sure your package includes pickup at the airport and ground transportation. The airport is crazy madhouse which I am glad I didn’t have to negotiate without the help of representatives of a local travel agency. I should say here that this agency (Five Star Travel) is top notch. It is owned, in whole or in part, by the same doctor that owns the M/V Oyster. They were always on time and provided top notch service. Indeed, while in Cairo they provided an armed guard with out group in addition to the driver and guide. As an example, the morning we left Cairo for our return, we arrived at the airport to check in at the ticket and baggage check counter and there was a long line at all of the attended positions. Our guide took us to an unattended position and instantly there were two representatives of the airline checking us in. Obviously, some money changed hands to get us in front of the line, but that was the kind of service we got.

One cannot go to Egypt and see the sights without a guide to maneuver one through the crowds and explain the details of what you are seeing. Our guide for all but one day was Ayman and he was outstanding. All such guides are licensed by the government and must pass tests periodically on their knowledge. Ayman spoke three languages in addition to Arabic, and was very good in English. If you go, do not get involved in a large group. There were only nine of us in our group with Ayman and many more would have been too many. Ayman did an especially good job of taking us to local Egyptian restaurants where we were the only foreign faces, so we got to know what real Egyptian food was really like. It was good.

The Bad Stuff

Egypt is a very poor country and there is much poverty everywhere. At the tourists sites one as assaulted by vendors hawking everything from postcards to pottery. Public bathrooms have no toilet paper except for what the attendant gives you, and the attendants expect a tip. Public bathrooms were none too clean either. Indeed, everyone expects a tip. At the tourist places if a native holds a door open for you he begs for a tip.

Of course, one cannot drink the water and must be very careful about eating anything that is not cooked. Unpealed fruit or salads are particularly risky. Cold bottled water is available nearly everywhere. And the Egyptian beer is great, better than domestic US beers by a long shot. (Why can’t US breweries make decent beer?) Anyone traveling to Egypt should get a prescription for the antibiotic Cipro, which is the treatment of choice for travelers dysentery. Several in our group felt problems coming on which were quickly relieved with Cipro and Imodium.

Egypt is hot and we were there at the hottest time of the year. This made for warm water diving. At other times of the year the Red Sea can get a lot cooler, which increased the chances of seeing shark and other big critters. One day when we were out at one of the ruins the temperature was 114F, although there was no humidity so it really didn’t feel quite that hot. The high tourist season is November through May. It was crowded enough when we were there.

All in all we had a wonderful trip. Our group, which is called the International Fellowship of Rotarian Sport Divers, are Rotary members from all over the US as well as Germany on this trip. We make a trip like this once a year. It is our custom on these trips to make a donation to a local charity, preferably through the local Rotary Club. In Cairo we made contact with the local club and learned that they had a project which was involved teaching young adults to read, particularly women from the ages of 18 to 35. The illiteracy rate among women in Egypt is 65% and they are in dire need of additional education. This local Rotary project has already taught several thousand people to read. We donated $1,000 to this project.

We were honored to have Stef as our guest on this trip and hope she will make another trip with our group sometime. She was delightful and fit right in with all of us old fogies and one or two younger ones. Actually, we did have one man who was 82 years old on the dive part of the trip. He said he had wanted to dive the Red Sea all his life and he wasn’t going to miss this opportunity.

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