Diving 1

The modus operandi over the next week was eat, sleep, dive, and repeat. A bell on the main deck indicates that it's time for the dive briefing or that food is ready. To figure out which one it is, just keep it mind that it alternates. So if you last dove and hear the bell, it's time to eat. There are a number of potential origins for the name of the Red Sea: 1) the abundance of red athias, 2) the red-glowing sunsets, or 3) the infrequent red-colored algae that can be found on the surface.

On the first day, we cruised north along the shore for some easy checkout dives. These dives were relatively shallow at 50ft with nice coral. We saw two smaller turtles that were very cute and swam close, a bluespotted stingray hiding in the sand, a crocodile fish also hiding in the sand, nudibranch, various fish and a fat eel.

We watched a very pretty sunset over land. Shortly after sunset we had our final dive briefing for the day - a night dive. With 3 night dives under our belt, it still causes Brittany some anxiety but has gotten noticeably better with each dive. There was some additional anxiety about the battery life of the torches we brought from home so we borrowed one as a secondary. Luckily we did because both of our torches went out and we only used the borrowed light. Surprisingly, even with one light, Brittany felt much calmer and didn't start to get spooked until we left the group to return to the boat. It was a successful, although short, dive because we saw a little cuttlefish and a Spanish dancer.

We ate again, then went to bed shortly after, to do it all over again the next day.Read more