The first thing we found out the next morning was that Sharon had emulated Phil & Martin’s trick. After getting her shower stuff, she’d locked herself out and left the key in the wrong side of the door. This time she made it REALLY tough for the staff as she hadn’t left any windows open, so it took them an hour to get her back in to the hut. The second thing we found out was that it was even windier than the previous day!

We’d arranged with Ruth the day before that she would be coming up from Nakari with a truck again and she’d be bringing the new arrival, Maja, with her. She wasn’t due to arrive until 9:30am, so we had a much more civilised waking-up time than the day before and breakfast was even a bit more adventurous with the inclusion of some sort of sausage, if memory serves me correctly! We still had the natural yoghurt & honey and other stuff too, mind you…

Ruth & Maja arrived along with a swiss chap called Francois and we piled into the truck again for the trip north of Marsa Shagra to the Dugong Bay. Apparently there is only the one know Dugong left in the area now and he lives in this bay along with a lot of fish, several turtles and lots of tourists. The trip was meant to take 25minutes but we were there in only 15.

We set up a temporary camp near an old fishing boat and had an entertaining few minutes trying to make sure everything didn’t get blown away by the ferocious wind. Large rocks and drinks cases were used to pin down the mats and big rug we were using as a base and this just about did the trick. Suncream was applied in liberal doses to try and stave off any more sunburn (apparently you shouldn’t leap into the sea straight after putting on sun cream as a) it takes half an hour to carry out the chemical reaction with your skin that it needs and b) it contains female hormones that can make reef fish sterile. Well, you live and learn, eh?)

Me, Ruth, Phil, Martin, Francois & Maja then set off on a hunt for the dugong. It didn’t actually take too long and, after a brief pitstop whilst I fixed Phil’s broken flipper while bobbing in the waves, we found that Francois had spotted the dugong. Straight away a turtle was also spotted and Francois and Maja disappeared in pursuit. This left Ruth to swim back to shore to collect the others whilst me, Phil & Frankie stayed with the Dugong as a marker for the others to swim back to. Ruth threatened dire consequences if we didn’t stick to him like glue! It was ok at first – he pottered about with his bright yellow pilot fish friend in close attendance, occasionally coming up to the surface for a few deep breaths then diving back down the 20ft or so again. He was pretty impressive to be honest. About 8ft long, fairly thickly built (a bit like a sealion, I suppose) with a deeply scarred and pitted skin (no idea what caused all the marks? Italians?). He also had a permanent smiley face and a big whiffly nose that he used to rummage about in the seagrass with.

After a few minutes, he decided to set off a bit further out, then a bit to the left, then back in towards shore… it was all getting a bit exhausting keeping up in the waves and I can see why other people in Ruth’s parties had given up in the past! Whilst following him around the bay, we came across another turtle, which I briefly chased to take some pictures of, then returned to closely tailing the Dugong. Just as the others seemed to be getting closer to us, having been stealthily alerted to the presence of the Dugong so as not to cause an avalanche of snorkellers in the water, the little rascal decided that the seagrass would be greener on the other side of the bay and proceeded to cover about 200 yards in a minute whilst we frantically finned to try and keep up. Eventually we discovered that only Sharon had made it out with Ruth – the others had given up after the waves got a bit choppy for them. Ruth & Sharon reached us just as the Dugong was about to come up for air again, so Ruth pointed him out to Sharon so she could watch… “Wassat?” she said, pointing at the Dugong, that Ruth had just gone all the way back to the beach to drag her out for… *sigh* Anyhow – it gave us all a new catchphrase for the holiday!

Making our way back to the shore for lunch, we came across a guitar fish/ray/shark whatever you want to call it – most unusual. I was just about to take a picture of it when Ruth dived down and poked it into life, whereupon it shot off leaving behind nothing but a cloud of sand in the water. When we reached the beach, Sharon exclaimed excitedly that she’d “just seen the billabong!” much to our further amusement… I tell you, the girl’s worth the entrance fee on her own… Lunch was an interesting combination of gouda & goats cheese slices, chunks of green pepper and big chunks of juicy tomato. The idea was to wedge the concoction into a pitta bread pocket, but this was hard to do until we hacked everything into slightly smaller lumps. The toilet facilities were entertaining… take your pick: wade into the sea or cross the main road and hide in the scraggy bushes…

After lunch, most of us had a snorkel along the side of the reef, where we came across several new fish we hadn’t seen before. There were also patches of extremely cold water dotted around along the edge of the reef… at least it made the warm bits nicer when you found them again. When we decided to knock it on the head for the day and I was taking off my wetsuit standing next to Sharon near to the truck with my back to the road, an Egyptian lorrydriver pulled over and beeped his horn. Ruth said that he was beeping in appreciation of Sharon’s bum… I reckon it was mine, to be honest, especially when I saw him kissing & hugging his mate later!

The trip back was uneventful, but when we arrived back in the camp again, all hell broke loose. Ruth had indicated that she wanted all of the party together in Nakari, where the dolphin trip boats set off from, rather than up at Shagra with the long truck rides inbetween and it seemed as though this was going to happen. Val and I were due to be moving into a chalet from our hut that night anyway, so were expecting a move of some sort, but following Ruth’s, erm, spirited discussion with the camp staff that morning, it appeared as though we were all going to get our stuff and get on the truck along with Francois and Maja and head to Nakari that night.

Some of us went to the reception area to recover stuff from the safe (and witness another dressing down for one of the staff from Ruth!) and the others went off to pack. By the time I got back to the hut, Val had pretty much packed everything so all I had to do was drag the suitcase back over the sand to the waiting truck. Soon afterwards, everyone else had arrived at the truck with their luggage and we set off.

Due to one of those husband & wife misunderstandings, Val & I had only brought one bottle of suncream and so we detoured briefly past a local hotel to pick up a spare bottle. Poor old Sharon had been hitting the bottle (only water!) and was starting to wish she hadn’t drunk quite so much just before a long & bumpy truck ride. The stop at the hotel gave her the opportunity to check out the toilets, anyway… 45 minutes later as we crawled into the Nakari camp, she was rather ready to go again… of course we were all thoroughly sympathetic and didn’t continually discuss the subject with the poor girl to the point of desperation… oh no, not us…

Nakari is a much smaller version of the Shagra Ecolodge and had a far more cosy and intimate feeling to it – far fewer people there, for a start! We were welcomed by “Poppa Dive” himself – Mahmoud, the son of an Egyptian diplomat who’d spent several years in England, who was extremely laid back and relaxed about his dealings with life, but was exceedingly helpful in getting us installed into our new accommodation.

The chalet that Val & I moved into was great – it was nice to have the en-suite facilities after the traipsing to the toilet/shower block the previous two nights and we had great views out of the front & back doors. We got ourselves showered & changed and went down to meet the others for drinks & evening meal. The food was much the same as at Shagra and we had the usual fare of lentils/beans/bread/cheese/salad/soup/rice/chicken and some kind of beef stew.

I’d brought down the gin I’d bought at Gatwick airport for a few tipples before, during & after dinner and we were enthusiastically joined by Ruth in the gin drinking! It was during this night at dinner that Maja pronounced me to have a voice that she found difficult to understand, but in some way entrancing to her ears! “Resonant” I think she described it as, if memory serves… hmmm… not quite sure about that myself! (Later the next day she announced that it reminded her of Mel Gibson, but without the Australian accent, obviously!). The really odd thing was that she hadn’t even been drinking at this point!

The travelling around (and probably the gin as well) led to us having a fairly early night again. Ruth staggered off towards her tent around 9pm and we retired for the night shortly afterwards crossing our fingers for a bit less wind the next day as we were due to head back out to the dolphins again!

Read on: Day four - Tummy troubles & Dolphins
Go Back: Day two - Marsa Shagra Ecolodge & first Dolphin House Reef trip

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