There isn’t a huge choice of hotels either. We stayed at the Hilton.

Flights can be either to Sharm or to Taba. I flew from Manchester to Taba through Longwoods.

The evening entertainment

The diving’s very easy, with little in the way of currents, and the sea’s only ruffled when the fast ferry runs past.� Unfortunately, this can stir up the viz a bit.

You can dive at almost any time, although when we were there, there was a ban on night diving (government imposed) for security reasons. This was a real shame, as I think that this could be a really good location for a night dive.

Let’s be clear. Nuweiba is never going to be able to handle the sheer volume of divers Sharm can – and the proximity of a big city means that lots of fish are eaten, for a start. But it does have its own charm and character.

The diving often reminded me more of my Indonesia trip than – for example – Jackson Reef. Even though I didn’t see a frogfish (Gilbert saw one the day I flew out). The highlight is actually the house reef – named Abou Lou Lou (from the nearby restaurant). It’s not very big, but it’s crammed with life – from lionfish, emperors, cardinalfish right down to the “Sexy shrimp” (Thor amboiensis) and pyjama nudibranch. We saw a couple of octopus, as well. The main problem is that the viz kicks up really easily.

To keep it like this, Jim – the centre manager – has to regularly chase off boats that try to scoop up the fish. On one of the dives, I found what I thought was an old fishing line. Jim started reeling it up, and – when we found him again a few minutes later – he had his heels dug in to the sand. On the other end of the line was a Bedouin fisherman – first disappointed that he hadn’t caught lunch for a week, then discovering that what he had caught was an annoyed Jim.
Diving some of the other sites leaves you in no doubt, though, that without this sort of “gardening”, the reef would be pillaged in about a week.

Jane Morgan wrote a feature in Dive magazine that introduces the dive sites. I only dived “Sinkers” on my last day, and it was super. We had a day out at Ras Mamlach – a nice change, with a sea moth right at the end.

Ahh … the beach bar … the all-inc deal does include ice cream between 1pm and 4:30pm, so getting there before “closing time” became a bit of a compulsion for us!
Getting back to Abou Lou Lou (and I’d love to) – there are actually a number of different habitats as well as the pinnacles. As well as the sand, there’s a patch of seagrass and (although, again, we only tried it on the last day) it’s worth a look under the jetty, with a few different lionfish lurking. I was still finding things on my last dive – most notably a pixie hawkfish.

Disappointingly, the check-in desk at Taba airport hadn’t heard about the 10kg Divers allowance Jet2 had agreed, so I got stung for a bit of excess baggage.