Red Sea Soma Bay Diving

by Hazel Dockney

A trip to Soma Bay, Southern Red Sea
07/12/2007

On 7th December, 10 enthusiastic divers decided to escape the festive madness and get some winter sun (and of course some fantastic diving too!). The Red Sea is both the largest enclosed coral sea, and the saltiest living sea in the world- offering year-round fantastic visibility, a temperate climate and a broad spectrum of sea life along with easily accessible and diverse dive sites.

We arrived in the early evening at the luxurious Sheraton Hotel to find that EVERYONE had been given double beds- this caused great amusement amongst ‘non-couples’ like Mac and Mark, Don and Brian, and Eileen and Alex…however the confusion was swiftly resolved and before long, the Mojitos (and, in Mark’s case, beers!) were flowing in the hotel bar…

The first of 6 days diving began with a ‘check dive’ on the house reef ‘Abu Soma’, these relaxed, easy dives gave us an opportunity to see the usual ‘Red Sea suspects’ including lionfish, blue spotted rays, pipefish, parrotfish, masked butterfly fish, long-tailed bannerfish, clownfish, moray eels and the occasional nudibranch.

The next two days were spent doing 2 half-day trips diving from our day boat, ‘Dreamlife’. We were lucky enough to have this huge boat pretty much to ourselves and there was plenty of space to gear up, kick back and relax… As an added bonus, NITROX 32% was free all week!

The last three days were full day trips diving the ‘Salem Express’, a passenger ferry that sank on 16th December 1991, ‘Panorama Reef’ and ‘Abu Kafan’. The latter roughly translates as ‘The Deep One’ or ‘Father of the Deep’ (depending on which you prefer!) These dives featured stunning 300m+ drop-offs with a plateau at each end and it was like swimming around in an aquarium.

Alternative (drier!) highlights for the non-divers amongst us ranged from some stunning day-trips to Cairo, Luxor and the Valley of the Kings, along with activities closer to home in the form of Quad-Biking and an exhilarating trip on a Catamaran.

Negotiation highlights included Eileen arranging a taxi from the Sheraton to Safaga and Hurghada in pursuit of some authentic Egyptian food and ended up with us being driven all over Hurghada trying to find a decent restaurant! And Mark, who managed to get us all guided dives all week at no extra charge from the Orca Dive Company.

A massive THANK YOU goes out to Mark for looking after us all week!!! A truly excellent week’s diving and relaxing time was had by all.