Personal journey and diving in Dahab, Egypt
During my last summer break I went to Dahab, Egypt for 10 days on my own. I booked my diving vacation via the Padi Travel site and found a great diving hotel, named Dahab Divers. It was my first time going diving outside of the Netherlands, so you can imagine that it was a real eye opener to see further than 5 meters! But this short story is about something a bit more of a personal journey as well.
I made around 11 dives in the Netherlands before going to Egypt, of which one of the last did not give me that great confidence and I was struggling a bit. My last experience in the Netherlands did not go so well, because I needed more weights than I was used to in fresh water.
I find diving a great sport, but it can also be very competitive when talking about it with other people. When speaking with others about diving you often get to hear: “I have X amount of dives”, or “I only need X amount of weights”, or “I can go X amount of time underwater”. And this is often not done with the intention of making another beginner diver feel intimidated. However, it did make me a bit insecure. Luckly, I spoke up and people were kind and willing to help and right before going to Egypt I made another dive with the mindset: “so what if I need a bit more weight” and everything went fine.
When speaking with others about diving you often get to hear: “I have X amount of dives”, or “I only need X amount of weights”, or “I can go X amount of time underwater”.
And I got that amazing free feeling when I made my first dive in Egypt, with a vision of 20-30 meters and colors everywhere. Some of the cool animals I saw were: Spanish dancers (during night dives), eagle ray, octopuses and a lot of cool fishes of which I do not know the names. A very cool sighting was the frog fish, which the diving instructor has not seen there for over 2 years! Ofcourse these guys are very hard to spot…
Even travelling alone as a blond girl was no problem at all and everyone was very nice and talked to me about their experiences. Almost every day we went to another dive site, which were all just shore dives and were at most a 30 minute drive in a cool jeep. Even in front of the hotel there was an amazing dive site, for which you just cross the street with your diving gear on and hop in the water.
I had a really great time there, and can recommend it to everyone who wants to dive relaxed, accompanied by great diving instructors and well prepared dives.
Hope to sea you soon!
– Laura de Vries