November 9th, 2019
Today was our second day of diving and a full day out on the boat. We got up early and had a great buffet breakfast before getting on the dive boat around 8:30am. There are many super nice boats in Sharm El Sheikh and the dive boat we were on today was the nicest one we have been on. It was a huge beautiful boat with lots of places to lie down on and nice cushions. I really enjoyed the ride out to the dive site.
Today we were going into Ras Muhammed National park. It is a large protected area in the sea as is the land around it. To preserve these waters, nothing is allowed to be built on the land. There are no hotels or other structures. The vast desert meets the crystal-clear waters of the sea and the whole area was very beautiful to look at. The temperature in Sharm this time of year is perfect as it is dry with the sun in the mid to high 80’s during the day and mid 70’s at night. The water temperature is 81, which is super pleasant.
We jumped into the water for the first dive and again it was mind blowing. We went into a cave for a short distance. It was just beautiful with soft coral growing and light that flickered in through the rocks. It felt like something from a movie and was really stunning.
The whole dive was amazing. We didn’t see any BIG things like sharks or huge fish, but the amount of beautiful small fish they have is awesome and the coral is amazing. That combined with the clear water made this definitely one of my favorite dive days. Swimming around looking at all the beautiful underwater gardens made all the travel to get there completely worth it. I no longer cared about all the people who tried to rip us off on the journey to get here. Once you are here, it is worth it.
After our dive I told Brendan that it might have topped the outer Great Barrier Reef in Australia for me or at least came close. Brendan’s favorite was still Australia because of all the sharks and bigger stuff we saw, but this was definitely a close second. Our second dive at Shark and Yolonda reef was even more spectacular and is rated as part of the top 10 dive sites in the world. The walls of coral and fish were just stunning. This was a drift dive and you just float with the current past incredible walls with amazing things to look at, as far up as you can see and as far down as you can see. It is over a 900-meter drop (which is almost 3,000 feet to the bottom)! I won’t lie, I got a little nervous swimming in that part where I knew the bottom was 3,000 feet below me. But it was so beautiful and an amazing day.
They offered an optional 3rd dive on the way home but I was too tired, and perfectly content hanging out on the big beautiful boat chatting with our new friends who live in Dubai that we dove with yesterday. It was a full day on the water and we were happy to have a nice comfortable room to go back to.