It took us a while the following morning to work out what seemed strange at first and then it dawned on us; the wind had dropped! OK, so it wasn’t exactly flat calm, but it was distinctly calmer than it had been of late. You’ll forgive me for not bothering to describe breakfast in detail, won’t you? It’s just that you’re probably starting to get the idea by now…

We were once more on “Sea Star” but we unfortunately weren’t going to have Halid as our driver as he was off to a relative’s wedding. Our zodiac pilot for the day was to be Ahmed (trust me, every 4th person in Egypt appears to be called Ahmed…). The trip out to the reef took half the time than on previous days due to the relative calm of the sea. You could hardly even feel the swell as the boat sped along. On arrival at the reef, we found that the good weather had brought the tourists out in force and there were several other boats in the area. It was a bit of a squeeze getting ourselves moored up, but we managed eventually and quickly “suited up” to be ready to hit the water at 10am. Following a mini-revolution, Ruth agreed that only those not wearing wetsuits had to wear a buoyancy aid, much to my relief as the darned things were really starting to bug me! (Basically most of them were broken and wouldn’t stay in place, so they’d float up and wedge under your chin, making it blooming difficult to manoeuvre…).

So far, only Frankie, Martin, Phil, Maja and me had seen the dolphins at close quarters and, as it was our last scheduled trip out there, we were a bit nervous about ensuring that Val, Linda, Sharon & James got to see them too. We all piled into the zodiac and were surprised to head across the bay rather than into it. Ahmed, bless his cotton socks, had seen a pod heading out of the bay and was steering clear of the crowds of snorkellers inside the bay in the hope of getting us close straight away. Suddenly we saw fins in the water, straight ahead and waited for the command to bail out. I was under strict instructions from Val to keep close and make sure she saw the dolphins, so I hung on a bit when Ahmed yelled at us to go, before dragging Val in the direction of the dolphins… Unfortunately it appeared that they had seen us coming and legged it (or “finned it”, to be more accurate…) so we all clambered back on board the zodiac feeling a little disappointed.

The disappointment didn’t last long. Ahmed quickly found the pod again and skilfully positioned us in front of where the dolphins were heading and slightly to one side, before instructing us to bale out again. This time we were lucky and to the relief of all of us and the utter joy of the so-far unlucky ones in our group, there they were… A wall of slow-moving dolphins with a few solitary escorts on the perimeter were making their way back into the bay and we were absolutely in prime position to see them in all their glory. I spent the first 30 seconds or so making sure that Val and the others absolutely could see the dolphins before enjoying them myself! As the dolphins moved off, we clambered back into the zodiac with big foolish grins all over our faces again and hoped we’d see more. Unfortunately, even though we hung around for a bit near the orange buoys, we didn’t see any dolphins up close again before lunch. Sharon resorted to exposing herself underwater (the life jacket she had on was performing things even the most wonderful of wonderbras couldn’t have done and the pressure was obviously just too much for her bikini top…) I’d just like to point out that, even though I happened to be diving underneath her & James at the moment I noticed the, er, escapees AND I had my camera in hand ready to take a picture of them from below, I didn’t take advantage of the situation and, instead, quietly suggested to Sharon that she put them away before climbing back on board the boat.

The pressure was off! Everyone in the group had seen the dolphins close up and we could now relax. In the afternoon, Ruth took me, Martin, Frankie, Linda and Phil over to the far side of the bay where there appeared to be some fantastic shallow & tranquil lagoons to explore. On the way, we suddenly ran into a pod of dolphins again, but they were moving too quickly for us to get anything but a fleeting glimpse. We noticed that the small pod was heading directly for the “Sea Star” and shouted at them whilst gesturing frantically at the water to draw their attention to the dolphins. We saw James jump in, but heard afterwards that, even though they’d seen the dolphins swim by, they’d not got particularly close to them. We set off for the lagoons again and once again unexpectedly came across another pod of dolphins. Yet again they moved off too quickly to be caught up and, eventually, we made our way to the lagoons.

These were fantastic. It was only about 10ft deep and we saw loads of interesting fish, including a big puffer fish and a blue spotted ray or two. We then set off slowly across the bay in the hope of intercepting a pod or two on the way, but unfortunately we didn’t see anything. There was one entertaining moment when Ruth realised I had strayed inside the Orange marker buoy zone, so she frantically shouted & waved at me to head out of the zone in case I got spotted by the rangers… then determinedly put her head down and set out herself for exactly the place she’d just yelled at me to get out of! Linda and Martin headed back to one of the zodiacs and the rest of us ended up swimming all the way across the bay and back to the “Sea Star”. Martin & I briefly entertained ourselves (and some of the other boats) by diving off the back of sea star in a variety of ways. Martin challenged me to do a backwards dive, something I hadn’t done in absolutely years (mainly as bottling out of a backwards dive halfway through is a) incredibly easy and b) incredibly painful!), so I was a bit nervous about trying in front of quite so may people, then thought, “what the heck, I’ll give it a go.” Fortunately it turned out ok and I managed to enter the water in a vaguely controlled fashion and even earned some applause from some of the staff on the other dive boats… I think it’ll be a while until you see me challenging for a diving medal at the Olympics though.

That evening back at camp saw the celebration booze come out. I had a bottle of red wine reserved for the dolphin celebration and several of us shared it out. I also brought out the gin again and added the whiskey I’d bought too… Several of us went to bed with slightly befuddled heads that night…

Read on: Day seven - Scuba diving lesson and Sharon gets the tummy bug
Go Back: Day five - Lost in the desert!

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