We woke up excited to be going diving today from the dive shop Al Boom which is in the grounds of our hotel. But first breakfast!!!!
We get a free buffet breakfast as one of our perks and it was a very enjoyable one. First taste of a pork sausage and pork bacon in months!! I had poached eggs with hollandaise sauce too which was a delicious treat. There are a lot of Russians here. And apparently throughout the UAE. They certainly believe in eating enormous breakfasts is my observation….
Off to Al Boom. They are a very jovial bunch, mainly Philippinos and they got us all kitted up with nice rental stuff. We had our own dive computers and masks. Water temperature was about 25C so we wore 3mm shorties. Bob and I were diving with the well named Sunny Joy. There was another instructor with an advanced open water trainee on the boat. Nice boat, big dory style with twin 250hp engines on the back. It was annoying actually because the dive shop manager had told us it would be a rib so I hadn’t brought my camera phone down. So no photos…. It would have been fine on this thing.
Our first dive was to 24m on an artificial reef. There was a lot of marine life, a lot of fish of all different kinds but the visibility was disappointing, 8-10m. Lots of plankton in the water. Apparently it will clear in about 2 months. We were down for about 45 minutes in all and had 4 minutes of stops at the end. Which was interesting because Sunny Joy did not return us to the shotline so we had to do an ascent in the blue with the stops in free water too. Haven’t done that for a while but I guess techniques are still there and we had no problems at all.
After about an hour on the surface we dived again at a place called Sharm Rocks. Again about 45 minutes, this time in 12m. We had a tonne of air left at the end. This was a much better location we thought. Lovely great rocks covered in soft coral and anemones, loads and loads of fish – big schools of trevalleys, some lionfish, almost immediately up close and personal with 4 turtles who weren’t nervous of us at all, and just google eyed us. Lots of big red spotted starfish, a moray eel, puffer fish both large and small, crevices in the rocks filled with schools of tiny glass fish…. A really good dive. If the visibility had been better it would have been outstanding.
We were going to dive again tomorrow but probably won’t. It’s about £150 for the 2 of us to have a 2 dive day like today and with the visibility being what it is, that doesn’t seem the best use of money. Really enjoyed it though. Lovely to be back in the water.
Came back, showered off, got our kindles and pegged out by the pools for the afternoon. That was very nice. Did I mention there are a lot of Russians here? LOL. Bringing my noise cancelling headphones down tomorrow….
Had a bit of free high tea in the lounge. Bob had a nap. Later we went up to the sky lounge where we get free drinks and food between 730 and 9. Amazing plates tonight of scallop skewers, fish skewers, caprese mouthfuls. The lovely waiter brought us 2 platters and we had some yummy calamari. Lavish dinner for little money. Thank you Marriott for the excellent loyalty programme. The drinks bill alone would have been £130, then we had 2 platters of very upmarket free food. We just bought the calamari which was about £13 and of course we tipped the lovely bar chap based on what he’d served us.
