Well Sometimes I Go Out, By Myself, And I Look Across The Water...

From: RudiS95@zonnet.nl
Sent: 12 October 1999 21:26:46
To: Paul230T@xtra.co.nz

Dear Paul,

I've just got back from Egypt where I spent a week diving at a place called Da’hab by the Red Sea just an hour from Sharm El Sheik. Well what an amazing week!! Obviously not long enough, but it felt like a month anyway!

Where do I start? At the beginning I guess.

Well I went with a guy called Tony De Vries he’s a 'Saarf Efrikaan' who works here in Holland and with whom I have become friendly as we frequent the same bars in Amsterdam and regularly bump into one another on a Friday night. Often we deliberately meet up in a larger group with other expats of mutual acquaintance for a night out. Anyway, he told me a while ago that he was planning to go to the Red Sea because his brother works as a Diving Instructor there. So, as it has long been an ambition of mine to dive in the Red Sea, I expressed an interest in going with him and before I knew it everything had been arranged and I found myself together with him on a plane to Egypt.

Anyway we arrived at about midnight, having suffered a five-hour non-smoking charter flight from Schiphol, with seats made for extremely skinny people with really short legs. Then after the mad chaos and general confusion of immigration and customs we enjoyed a 1-hour taxi ride with a crazy Arab, his constant veering and swerving from side to side making it impossible to decide exactly which side of the road he was meant to be driving on.

Upon arrival in Da'hab Tony’s brother Phil and his girlfriend Sarah (also a Diving Instructor) met us, and I was shown to my stable. I say stable because that is exactly what it was. No window, a tin roof with a wooden door, gravel floor with rugs over it and a couple of mattresses, in a block of about four others all the same. It was actually pretty good though for $1.5 U.S. a night. As you can imagine however, at 40 degrees C desert heat daytime and 32 degrees C night-time it actually doubled up as a sauna. Good for me though, as I must’ve sweated off at least 20 lbs. I took a hammock with me which I managed to hang diagonally across the room and slept in that which was maybe slightly cooler than the floor.

Next day Phil introduced me to his fellow Diving instructors and got me an excellent deal on a Rescue Diver Course plus four FREE recreational dives of my choice. Which means that now I’m a qualified Rescue Diver and the next stage takes me onto Divemaster where I can actually earn money taking people on guided dives…roll on Thailand

Anyway I digress… the Diving there is fantastic some of the best and most colourful reefs in the world with some of the most amazing fish-life anywhere. Over several dives we saw some amazing fish and sea-life. The Napoleon (or Humphead) Wrasse we came across was of considerable size and an awesome sight. It must’ve been at least a meter in length; it followed us for most of the dive on my second day there. Also there were many Blue Spotted Rays and Surgeonfish in the sandy stretches at 15 metres depth and in amongst the beautifully exquisite, delicate corals we saw Striped Butterfly Fish; beautiful yellow Angelfish, bright red Coral Grouper and a Spanish Dancer Nudibranch.

Whilst diving in what is called the Eel Garden, we came across a striking scarlet Hurghada Starfish as well as intricate Anemones and Urchins. Sometimes the small stuff is much more interesting than the big stuff and it’s great to just hang out of the current, behind a rocky outcrop or coral clump observing the smallest of shrimp going about its daily routine.

By far the best recreational dive I did was called The Blue Hole.
You enter it via a rock formation called The Bells which is essentially a vertical chute down to a little archway at about 30 meters. So, you jump into this chute and dive headfirst towards this archway, kicking hard with your fins all the while. I was descending so fast I could feel the water rushing past my mask and face. Then just as you approach the 30 meters mark you level out and go under the archway, the momentum you’ve gained makes you swoop back up again in a wide arc and you come out on the other side of the archway feeling a little like a human log flume. Once you have gained your composure you see why it’s called The Blue Hole as you look about you, suspended in complete nothingness all you see is blue ocean and behind you a sheer vertical wall of rock going on for about 800 meters below you and all around you. There isn’t any sea life or anything else visible just solid blue emptiness fading into the distance. The rest of the dive is spent drifting slowly back up this sheer rock face towards the surface. As you come up to around 15 meters there is enough light for life to thrive and only then do you start to see creatures in amongst the nooks and crannies of the coral. This was by far the best dive I did because of the exhilaration from the fast descent and the incredible seascape at the start. What an amazing experience that was dude!

The dive training I did was also great fun. The Rescue Diver course is hard work but also very enjoyable. I had a great instructor called Rob; he’s from Adelaide in Australia. He was an excellent diver and I learned so much from him.

During my recreational dives I met Valerie a 30+ year old tall busty brunette French girl who is taking a year off work to do some travelling. Obviously I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to practise my French so I started chatting to her and also helped translate some of the Dive Briefing for her. Well Paul, I’m not joking, she would not leave me alone afterwards. Every time I saw her she said “Rudi come have dinner with me” or “come have some breakfast”. In the evenings it was “I’ll buy you a drink if you come and talk to me for a while in French”. I think she was grateful to have someone who could speak to her in her own language, because her English really wasn’t that good. She also volunteered to help me on my Rescue Diver course where I needed a 'victim' in the rescue scenarios (you have to rescue an 'unconscious' diver and carry them to the beach where you perform simulated mouth to mouth and CPR on them). “I would love to do that for you Rudi” she said in her sexy French accent, and she did. Actually I think she enjoyed it a little too much!

That evening I’m walking along the beach and I notice this bar that I had walked past many times before and was always attracted by the music. Always mellow Blues, Jazz, Folk, Reggae or Ambient dance music. I had never entered before because despite the excellent music it was always empty. Anyway as I stroll past smiling to myself because they are playing John Martyn’s ‘Solid Air’, I notice Valerie inside talking to another woman (a Senegalese woman who turns out to be the owners wife). So I yell “Hi” from the beach and wave. Valerie looks up and says “Hi” and calls me over, asking me as usual if I’d like to join her. Well of course I do and we get chatting and I tell her that I’ve always wanted to visit this bar coz every time I walk past the music is so good. She say’s that that is exactly why she’s there, and that she’s leaving the following night to carry on travelling round the Middle East and Africa. So this was her last chance to visit this bar where she has always loved the music. I tell her I knew she was a woman after my own heart because of that, and the fact that she laughs at all of my jokes. Anyway, we have quite a few drinks and talk for hours about everything under the sun. Well to cut a very long story short we ended up on the roof that night under the stars in the big desert sky and got very cosy under my blanket together. It was a very romantic setting and the atmosphere, the alcohol and the conviviality all conspired to create a quite lovely conclusion. I’ll leave you to imagine what that was! ;?))

Anyway before she left the next day she insisted on giving me her phone number and her address in Paris. But alas, I don’t think I’ll be contacting her. Don’t get me wrong she was a lovely girl and very attractive and everything, we had a fantastic evening together and I thoroughly enjoyed her company and conversation. It’s just that the whole evening was so perfect and it felt like it was just supposed to happen that one time, a unique experience. If we were to meet up again we’d never be able to better the circumstances or ambience of that one evening together. So I’ve decided to leave it there in Egypt, under the desert stars forever, as a perfect memory. Besides, I’m mature enough now to know that holiday romances never work out in reality. Humdrum day-to-day existence can never be as good as the fantasy created in the mysterious lands of faraway places.

It was handy that I made some other friends anyhow as Tony was mostly busy enjoying 'family time' with his bro. I felt a bit like a 'bacon sandwich at a Bar Mitzvah' a lot of the time around them. Tony's only just qualified as a diver so we couldn't dive much together anyway, he's limited to much shallower depths than I'm qualified for. I did manage to squeeze in one shore dive with Tony and his bro though and we actually had a great time together. On the plane home Tony told me about all his brothers exploits as a diving instructor, you wouldn't believe what goes on, really.

So, buddy as you can see I had a very relaxed but full and interesting holiday in Egypt. I hope things are still going well for you in New Zealand and I’m looking forward to hearing all your news by return.

All the best,

Rudi

Whale Shark!

It’s April 2001, I’m sitting in a beach bar on a small Thai island in the Gulf of Siam. The sun is setting and the sky is a mosaic of colours: reds, blues, purples, oranges and yellows. The atmospheric conditions round here often conspire to paint such breathtaking sunsets, the like of which I’ve never seen anywhere else in the world.

I’m travelling with my friend Bruce enroute to see our mutual friend Paul in Auckland, New Zealand. It was my idea to make a short stop-over on Koh Tao; this will be my third visit to this little known ‘gemstone set in a sapphire sea’ since first discovering it in 1993. A true diver’s paradise, it is where I first learnt the veritable art of SCUBA and qualified for my PADI Open Water certification. We’d had to make a stop-over in Bangkok anyway and I really wanted Bruce to experience the delights that Koh Tao has to offer, plus I’d get to do some serious diving in one of my most favourite spots in the whole world. All this with the added bonus that now I had risen in the ranks and become a qualified Rescue Diver.

Problem is I hadn’t figured on Bruce putting his back out on our first night here. There we were sitting on the balcony outside his room, smoking the local Thai weed. We were sitting on the cheap sort of molded plastic garden chairs that are seemingly ubiquitous now. Bruce leans back on his chair to put his feet up on the balcony rail and then BANG! The back feet of the chair slip forward on the glossy tiled flooring and Bruce is lying flat on his back groaning in pain and can’t get up. Well, as soon as I’d stopped laughing hysterically (I’m sorry but I suffer terribly from schadenfreude!). I pulled him up and managed to get him onto the bed in his room.

The next day Bruce couldn’t walk because of his back pain, so I arranged for the local doctor to visit him and then get a masseuse sent to his room. I also had to put my own plans for diving on hold as I didn’t think it was fair for me to disappear all day whilst Bruce was in so much pain. This continued for the next few days and each day that passed my opportunities for diving grew less and less likely.

So now here I am sitting in a beach bar the evening before the day I have to leave this island, admiring the sunset. Tomorrow is my last chance to dive and, as Bruce is getting better and walking around fairly well now, I’ve booked a dive trip for the morning to Chumporn Pinnacle. I’m drinking beer with some of the people I’ll be diving with tomorrow and generally having pleasant conversation. ‘D’you know!’ I announce to the assembled divers ‘I have a feeling in my gut we’ll see a Whale Shark tomorrow’. ‘Yeah, yeah’ comes back the chortled retort from the skeptics amassed before me‘…and we’ll be ducking the flying pigs!’ ‘Nevertheless’ I say ‘you mark my words, my instincts are rarely wrong. Who wants another drink?’

Next morning we board the boat to take us out to Chumporn Pinnacle. It will be my third time diving at that particular spot over the years. Basically it’s a kind of underwater mountain with a very pointed top which lies a couple of metres below the surface. On the slopes of the mountain are coral gardens and beautiful underwater seascapes with multitudinous varieties and species of fish. It’s a beautiful day, the sun is shining, and I listen intently to the dive briefing with the wind whistling past my face as we scud over the waves.

As soon as the boat comes to rest about 20 minutes later my ‘buddy’, for this dive only, (diving etiquette requires that you always dive as one of a pair so that you can watch over one another- you pair up together as ‘buddies’) Malcolm and I are already kitted up and keen to be the first in the water. Another boat has since arrived at the site and those divers are already starting to enter the water.

Malcolm takes a ‘giant stride’ off the boat holding his mask tightly in place with one hand and holding his gauges, second stage regulator and dangling straps tightly to his chest with the other. I follow, in exactly the same fashion, as soon as he’s clear of the boat. As I rise back towards the surface of the water after my plunge, surrounded by tiny air bubbles there is a shout from some of the divers already in the water from the second boat. ‘Whale Shark...WHALE SHARK!’

Malcolm looks at me and grins behind his mask, I grin inanely back from behind mine. I give the ‘thumbs down’ hand signal that we should descend. He signals ‘OK’ back with his first finger and thumb forming a circle and the other three fingers erect above it. We press the deflator button attached to our BCD (buoyancy control device) jackets and descend rapidly fins first. Visibility below the surface is great. About 20 meters before everything merges into a deep blue haze. To our left we see a group of four divers swimming rapidly towards a very large black shape still blurring in the blue haze. We head in that direction and the shape emerges from amongst the blue background, sharpening in focus gradually. My breathing quickens with the excitement and I consciously try to calm down to preserve my air and thus lengthen my dive. We swim closer to the Whale Shark and it comes into very sharp focus…

Wow! It’s magnificent! It’s really only a baby but still incredibly awesome to see at this proximity. We are no more than 2 meters away from it and can clearly see the Remora fish hitching a ride on its underside. It glides slowly past us, all 7 meters of it and then we are looking at its huge but slow and elegantly pumping tail. As I said: it’s a baby, these things are reputed to grow to about 18 meters in length. We chase it for a while surrounded by other divers who have also come to realize that this could be one of their greatest dives ever. I head it off as it turns gracefully following the contours of the underwater pinnacle and get a look at its huge mouth; almost 1 metre wide and specifically designed for filter feeding (krill etc.). I marvel at the near perfect matrix of white spots on its back, giving this ‘largest fish in the ocean’ its most distinctive markings. I reel off many, many photographs, some of which will come to grace the wall of my bathroom later and then after what seems like only a few minutes into the dive I glance at my air gauge. Shit! I’m down to about 50 bars already; I’ve been down here 25 minutes already. Moreover, all the excitement has made me use up my air much more quickly. I signal to Malcolm to check his air too. He signals back that he’s on 50 bars also….we really should have started heading for the surface 20 bars ago. I signal the ‘thumbs up’ to tell him we should ascend and he give’s me an ‘OK’ sign in affirmation.

We hang around for the required safety stop for 3 minutes at 5 meters depth and whilst I’m suspended there watching the other divers from 20 metres above, chasing the whale shark and snapping pictures, I start to grin to myself. I wish I could explain this to Malcolm right now but it’ll have to wait until we surface. I have this sudden notion of seeing things from the Whale Shark's viewpoint. Here he is surrounded by divers in awe of his size and power and strength and just the sheer spectacle of seeing an almost prehistoric creature up close and personal and they’re all thinking…Wow amazing. A real live Whale Shark!...and he’s thinking...Fuck me! Will you look at all those underwater swimming monkeys!