Excursion to "Tiran Island"
When visiting Egypt, only "sea excursions" tempt me. This time the excursion "Tiran Island" was chosen. We were already well aware of what Egyptian excursions are like : ) - It is people who gather on the ship, most of whom do not know how to swim properly, and some of them pick up a snorkel with a mask almost for the first time. Further, your ship, surrounded by similar ships, cheerfully moves to the "first stopping place". On the spot, the guide organizes the group and tries to lead it along the established route, while he needs to make sure that no one is left behind, not lost. Accordingly, his desire to make the group look like a "flock of herring" is fully justified : ) From other ships, the exact same alignment is obtained and it turns out that the entire small water area turns into a pandemonium of ships and people furiously flailing water with flippers : ) It is almost impossible to see anything in such a fuss . Before the swim, I find out the EXACT time of parking and my wife and I fall off where the thread is calmer and in this way we manage to at least see something. By the appointed time, we return to the ship and move to the next stop. The whole mess is repeated. Then the third stop usually happens not far from the port. In general, the scheme of excursions is known, the hopes of seeing something unusual are rather small, BUT the sensations of a warm smooth deck wood, the measured vibration of a marine diesel engine, a light breeze and the smell of the sea... each time lure us to "sea excursions" : ) And the ghostly hope that here this time we will definitely see: uuuuhhh! what will we see! : )))
And so the "first stop" was at the wrecked Soviet ship. Naturally, the ship crashed on the other side of the reef, and we swam from this one : ( At this stop, we didn’t see anything unusual, except for grabbing a little adrenaline when our ship began to maneuver ahead of time by 20 minutes, with the clear intention of moving to the second stop. We swam to it very quickly, but we obviously couldn’t fight the ship’s diesel engine, and therefore we had to shout, violently jumping out of the water, and wave our hands : ) blah : )
Nu-nu! Let this be the official version : ))))
At the second stop near the island of Tiran, we managed to see two small stingrays and, in general, that's all... It is forbidden to approach the island itself quite close, and even more so, it is forbidden to land. The border zone is there. And there is some kind of military unit on the island.
The third stop was near the port in the bay of El Fanara. Upon arrival there, we saw a pandemonium of ships, in the water in "free swimming" were both the same excursionists as we are and vacationers in the hotels of this bay. People were like in a good bazaar - not overcrowded. The water is very cloudy. We didn’t swim for a long time, because due to the crowding of the ships it was not easy to keep track of our own, and after the first stop was pinned, it was somehow uncomfortable to leave our ship out of sight... because we really didn’t want to fall behind and then get to the hotel on foot : )))
In the end, I can say that everything was as always, but the money spent "per day at sea" was not a pity. : )
Next time if we find ourselves in Sharm - in the plans of the "blue hole". The legendary "blue hole" haunts me : )
