report

Day1:
Having an amazingly quiet sea, we started our trip with the Sambukh at may 1st.
Onboard, our experienced and friendly crew, including our cook and magician andHaile,
our guide and former navy diver.

With excitement and anticipation, we study the map again and our route, leading us to known and totally new dive spots as well.

We were heading for the most far spots of our tour, always escorted by dolphin schools,
seeming to welcome us in the solitariness of this part of the Red Sea. Our first dives were great to get used to diving again,
providing depths around 7 meters. We explored beautiful coral gardens, met giant and grey morays, big barracudas and turtles.

Some of us decided to do a night dive at our second location, diving alongside a seam reef. During bottom time, the rest of the group already checked out a fine, sandy beach, a nice place to spend the night under the clear firmament!

Our crew took care for us in every belonging: A big sheet and mattresses on the ground, pasta dinner at the beach, a petroleum lamp in the middle. We were talking about the dive adventures of the day, reflecting about this and that, and some took a walk around the small island, looking at the bright stars above.
What else do you need?

Day 2:

We wake up in the early morning, dew on the plants around us, temperature 28C.
When e drove back with our small boat to enter the mother ship, a great smell of freshly baked bread surrounded us,
and we hab breakfast. jam, honey, sausage, cheese, coffee, tea..delicious!

While taking our breakfast, we continue our trip and head for the next spots Durr Gham and Duur Ghela.
2 coral islands in deep waters, getting deep very fastly around.

We dive in a depth of around 17 meters.

We saw grey reef sharks at each of the islands, turtles, makerel schools
and all the abundant life forms typical for coral reefs.
Some swarms are so big that you feel like enshrouded in a cloud.
In the evening, we arrive at Nokra, fomrely used as a prison from Italians and Ethiopians.
The ruins of different buildings are remainders of busier times on the island.
Some of us do an exploration dive in the channel wher we anchor, before we have our dinner with rice and grilled fish at the beach.

Day3:
Wreck day! While driving to the Dahlak bay, we pass by at the old russian military bay, 2 sunken cannon boats, a sunken tanker who once carried oil from Assab to supply the base.

Our first divespot is the old giant dry dock who once was installed to lift large battleships.
It looks more like a sunken city!
Stairways,gangways, street lamps, conning bridges, small houses make diving to an extraordinary adventure!
giant groupers, king makerels and other reeflife made this steel monster to their home.
After the surface interval and breakfast, we visit the "Grande Dame", the Urania. Nobody elso beside us is seen around,
we are alone in the large bay, when we descended at the stern of the 148m-ship.
This time, we choose the deck side of the ship and don't surround it. Dreamy illuminations,

lots of fish and relics of long-gone glam is astonishing.
Our AOWD students have hard-to-top location for their adventure dive, resulting in great talks on deck afterwards.
After a longer desaturation break, we anchored at the coast of Dahlak Kebir. Very excited, we entered the land to start our exploration of the ancient "city of the dead". We cross deep chasms, results of earthquake activity, walk over the hot savannah. We see camels, wild goats, ospreys and antelopes, observing us curiously.
The ground is covered with fossile coral and shells.

All of a sudden there are countless graves everywhere in front of us, some beautifully engraved by an old scripture.
We discover the remainders of houses, archways, urns, some bones are lying around, excavated from the surface graves.

365, more than 4-5 meters deep, there are bellied, large cisterns in the ground, one for every day.
If you fall inside, it would be impossible to climb out again, and there is absolutely nobody to hear you...
After coming hone at the ship and a hot trip in the hot sun, we take a refreshing bath. Great to make a 3m-jump from the upper deck of the ship!
In the late evening, we experience a stunnig night dive! A giant hammerhead parrotfish sleeps on the ground,
2 Grey Morays are embraced in a love bite, 2 turtles sleep on the ground and a huge leatherback turtle passes by.
Coral Crabs work at the reef and we see a strange, long, thin sea cucumber.
And, and, and...

Day 4:
We still have our mouths full of breakfast, when 2 "sea-vacuum-cleaners", cut the surface.

Let's go drift diving! We just go with th flow across the rocky ground for about 2 kilometers and sea eagle rays, mantas, giant groupers, barracudas, a leatherback turtle.
During the surface interval, many molas (eritrean name for manta ray), feed around our ship,
and we snorkel with them for more than 1 hour, then we had to leave this phantastic scenario.

We went to Enteara, where we visited beautiful coral gardens. Turtles again and a lot of reef life.

The ship brought us towards Dessei, where we stopped by at the island of Sheyl.
The undersea granite formations are so great,
and there is dense fish life, especially swarms of snappers and wrasses.
The evening brought an extraordinary experience. We were invited by the fishermen of Dessei ,
who prepared a delicious dinner for us.

This might has been the first time that these friendly people, living in elementariness and far away from civilisation,
ever hosted travellers from Europe. It is a declared goal of Eritreadivers to integrate and let them participate from tourism
in a soft way, as in the meeting of two totally different ways of life and culture.

Some divers spent the night at the beach, some on deck of Amel (our ship's name), anchoring in the bay.
Day 5:
The next morning, we went to the dropping-off northern side of Dessei, where we reached depths of up to 36 metres.
There is not as much coral life in these depths, but we saw 2 hunting barracudas, choosing makerels as their prey.
On the last dive there was a giant grouper above the 100kg's to be seen here!
Later, after a wonderful lunch, we strated to another unknown, unexplored divespot we decided to check.
An elevation in the middle of the blue, what will be around us? Sharks? Tuna? Dropoffs? We surrounded the spot half way, to find some appropriate entry points, then we decided to go to Madote to have some more relaxing time.

Wir see 3 turtles along the reef wall, have a look at the different soft corals and stone corals.
Every square centimeter seems to pulsate from life, how could diving ever become boring when you learn to
always look with different eyes?
In the late afternoon, we started our way back to Massawa, and in the way the dolphins convoyed us out, they seem to lead us home and say a goodbye. Until next time!

What a week!!!