It was back in autumn 2006 when Martin Lucas came into the pub with a grin on his face and announced that 8 of us had won a free holiday including diving to Taba Heights in the Gulf of Aqaba. It wasn’t  until we saw the tickets that we really believed him, all I can say is thanks Longwood Travel and the Dive Show at the NEC, we were the lucky winners of the pre-purchased ticket prize draw.

So many months later and the eight of us plus two ended up at Manchester Airport on our way to the five star Intercontinental Hotel in Taba Heights. We arrived late at night and what a place, even though we had missed dinner the staff rustled us up some supper and showed us to our great rooms with pool and sea views.

Early start the following day and after breakfast we were picked up by the staff of ‘Red Sea Waterworld’ who were to be our diving hosts for the week. After the necessary formalities of checking in we met our guide for the Kev, a proper Essex lad who quickly sussed us out and after the first dive declared that this week would be just like a holiday for him.

Warm clear water                                                      Chilling on the Reef

The diving was based on day boats and we were lucky enough that because we were more experienced then some of the other punters we had a boat virtually to ourselves. Most days we went out we decided to stop out all day with lunch on the boat and pay for an extra dive (above the two already included). This had three advantages, first there wasn’t an awful lot else to do in the resort, second it was cooler then the 42 deg +  temp on land, but mainly it got us back to Waterworld’s bar just in time for the start of happy hour and some cold Egyptian beer.

This boat all to ourselves                                          So this is a Frog Fish!

We dived every day except one and although the diving was OK was nowhere near the standard of other parts of the Red Sea, but it was free so you can’t moan that much. I would say it was good for macro life and everyone found frog fish, moray’s and octopus. However the area could do with more sites and some wrecks!

Kev was a great dive guide / host obviously recognising the fantastic skills and experience of the Belper team, especially in drinking beer in the bar at the end of day!

Congratulation to Stan who as a paying member of the holiday decided to do a PADI introduction to diving course whilst there and enjoyed it so much is now going to learn with the dark side.

The day off from diving was spent on a trip over the gulf to Jordan and onwards to the ancient city of Petra. This trip was well worth doing, it’s a shame we didn’t have time to visit other sites in Jordan such as the Dead Sea. It was a long day made even longer by catching the tail end of a distant storm making the ferry trip back quite rough. This palled into insignificance against the strange goings on with the Egyptian passport control officers when the whole of Taba and the ferry port was plunged into darkness by a power cut caused by the same storm. Waiting in the pitch black on the quayside being buffeted by a searing sandy wind whilst trying to convince the authorities that we weren’t importing guns and explosives is something that will stick in my mind as to why we love Egypt.

 Role on next time.

 The team was:
Andy, Sue, John, Anne, Clive, Martin L, Annie, Tony plus Stan and Denise