A short trip to Dahab in the Sinai

Wednesday 25 April is Sinai Day in Egypt, a bank holiday. So we decided to take the Thursday off as well and go to the Sinai for a long weekend. It is more than a year ago we were in Dahab for the last time (before the bombing of 24 April 2006, when 22 people died in a terrorist attack). There are two dives we liked to do in Dahab that we had on our list for a while, which had not happened yet: The Canyon and The Blue hole. Moreover, we wanted to visit the Coloured Canyon, a famous site in the Sinai desert.

The reason we do not go so often to Dahab is that it is a long drive (about 6-7 hours). Previous time we drove though the southern tip of the Sinai via Sharm el Sheikh or via Saint Catherine. This time we decided to try to faster northern route via Taba, close to the Israeli border.

We arrived in time to watch the sunset from our hotel balcony with a chilled glass of white wine. A good start of the holiday!

The next day we wanted to buy fins to complete our snorkel gear, get signed in at the dive centre and get the dive equipment fitted for tomorrow and do some snorkeling with our underwater camera!


The site where we snorkeled was recommended to us by two dive centres. It is called the Islands, because of the coral pinnacles. Just when we got in, still swimming above the reef we were greeted by a beautiful purple jellyfish.

Purple jellyfish

We continued towards the reef drop-off where a masked pufferfish swam up through the cracks. We were happy with our new fins, that had more propulsion power than the rental fins we usually have.

Masked pufferfish

We swam over one of the pinnacle reefs, but closer to the deep water the temperature became a bit chilly. Just in front of us three cornetfishes passed.

Cornetfish

We started to swim back to warm up and close to the reef edge, a beautiful lionfish swam underneath us.

Lionfish

The next day we met our dive guide early we thought. But Egyptian summer time started for the first day, and this had taken our guide by surprise. So we left late to the Canyon. At the site it turned out that we arrived passed the rush hour as many dive groups from Sharm where just coming out of the water. So we had the canyon for ourselves (we had to wait a few minutes at the entrance at about 20m depth, until all divers had left. We descended down to 30m metres and enjoyed how hundreds off dusky sweepers (a cave fish) where circling around us. From there we swam out though a narrow tunnel to the edge of the reef table to continue the shallow part of the dive along the reef. We saw a lot of of reef life, but we did not take the camera this time.

The Canyon

We had lunch at the Blue Hole, while we were waiting till the dive groups from Sharm finished. The Blue Hole is a very deep (110m) circular hole in the reef. Our dive started north of this hole at “the Bells” where we descended through a crack in the reef and swam out through an arch at 26m. We swam along the reef south while slowly ascending to the saddle at 7m that leads to the Blue Hole. On the way a big school of Fusiliers, with black-tipped fins, passed us. Thoughout the dive we had to watch our depth meters as there was no bottom below us. The Blue Hole is infamous for this, and quite a few divers have died here when they tried to go too deep, or when they panicked from not seeing a bottom.

The Blue Hole

On the last day we drove back to Cairo, but not before we did a offroad detour the the Coloured Canyon, famous for its coloured rock formations. The offroad drive is at least as beautiful as the canyon itself.

The Coloured Canyon

The Road to the Canyon