Remembering Dahab part 2, and chao Egypt!
Nemaste people!! Liteally meaning “I salute the God within you” in nepalese. Just for the record and for those who were thouthful, I’m now much better from my cold, I’ve recovered my super powers back and I’m almost ready to rock the Himalayas 🙂
But before all that, let us go back in time a couple of days, precisely to the 8th of November, the day I entered the waters of the Red Sea into the exciting, rusty and dull world of Thistlegorm, my first ship wreck adventure.
This is gonna be a “bit” longer post than normal, but belive me there’s no way of making it shorter and it’s worth reading until the end, trust me.
Thistlegorm, a 126m long british battle ship, was sunk by the germans during world war two back in 1941. The ship was carrying all types of armaments, including motorbikes, trucks and guns.
This ship wreck is known as one of the best one there is to dive in the world, and being in the Red Sea and having my diving advanced course just finished, I couldn’t let go of this opportunity.
We started the trip the night before with a 2 hours drive to Sharm El Sheikh. There we stayed overnight in a boat, were we managed to get two cabins. I say we, cause Greg, Camilo and Miro were with me.
At 3 am the boat set off the marina, and by 06:30 we were having a big breakfast.
Camilo had been my buddy for the last week diving, so we continued like this for this dive. Knowing your buddy before hand, is something very important that can save your life if something goes wrong while diving. Greg was stucked wih the divemaster, who wasn’t really the best choise. We were gonna be diving at 30m deep and around the wreck for the first time. Then we would dive again inside the wreck.
We had rented a camera so we could have some more memories from the dives and Camilo was having it the first time.
We jumped in the water and the adventure began. I was always close to my buddy and we descended normally. Camilo was all excited taking pictures at the guns and the boat, and I wa glad we were gonna have good pictures from them. After 15 minutes diving, I checked my SVG, the thing that tells you how much air pressure you have left (200 bar = full, 50 bar = you should be doing your ascend or safety stop) and I had 90 bar. Camilo had consumed more air in every dive we had done before, so I asked him how much he had. And that’s when everything started…
Camilo had not checked his pressure and was only thinking of taking pictures of the boat, this including swimming up and down and against the current, wich makes you breath way more air than normal. I saw in his face that something was wrong and then he tells me that he has only 20 bar left!!
For those who are not familiar with diving here’s a short 101 class. When diving, large quantities of nitrogen go into your blood, wich is no problem. The problem is that you have to get that nitrogen out of your system, and you have to ascend slowly so the gas goes freely out of your body and doesn’t forms bubbles in your veins, wich would blocked your circulation. If you get it in your arm you won’t die, but what if you get it in your brain?? Also the deeper you dive the more nitrogen your body takes, and 30 meters is cosidered a deep dive, and you must make a safety stop for at least 3 minutes at 5 meters to release this nitrogen or you are in troubles.
Camilo paniced and made me the sign of emergency air sharing, but he did not wait for me to give him the second regulator, but he grabed my own from my mouth!! Thank God I was calm and I was thinking clearly, and I was able to get the second one, and then exchange it with Camilo. We approach the dive master, told him and we swam to the rope of ascend. We started ascending as slowly as possible, as I knew our life were in danger, and I sign to Camilo to stop for he safety stop. Belive me when I tell you that those 3 minutes were the longest minutes in my life. I was holding the rope with one hand, and with the other one I was checking the time, the depth and the air pressure remaining in my tank. I could see the needle going down at almost every breath we were taking. When the time was up for the safety stop, the air was as well. I had the very last breath of air 15 cm before the surface. I had no more air in my tank.
AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!
Back at the surface I was glad of being able to breath freely, and Camilo thanked me. Then I saw Greg, or at least half of his face, his mask was filled with blood!!, he had had some problems as well as you can read carefully on his blog.
After relaxing for a while on the boat and eating a very nice lunch. We went for the second dive, this time inside Thistlegorm. The dive was flawless for both of us, I was carrying the camera this time, and I enjoyed it as much as I could. It’s amazing to see motorbikes, trucks and normal stuff as boots under water. It gives them a sureal aspect, and you can’t less than be in awe.
Motorbikes
Then a third dive in Ras Muhamed, a natural park, with an amazing reef full of fish, coral and magic.
I’m very thankful for this expirience, it showed me that you have to be really careful when doing anything that puts your life in danger, and sometimes we don’t notice aknowlege it.
Now, to finished this very long post, two days after the adventures, I was gonna take the 08:30 bus back to Cairo, but one or two extra beers at the bye-bye party, made me miss the bus. Fortunately I managed to get the next one at 12:30 with Greg, and after changing buses because we were choking in smog from the first one, and a few normal egiptian delays, I made it to the airport, paid the taxi with my very last egiptian pounds, and got in my plane to Bombay, India.
Easy right?
That’s why I travel, just to relax!
Now some pictures and videos! Sorry if some pics are a bit out of focus or a bit blured. Belive me, it’s not an easy task to take the picture, check on your air, depht, and besides that try not to get cut with some rusty edge, oh yeah everything at the same time.
(if by any chance you are not able to see the video, click on the sentence coloured in blue underneath it)
This is the first video, it’s descending to the ship wreck, you can see a bit from the wreck as well.
To see video thru link click here!!
Here you’ll see the capitan’s cabin, one of the best place from the wreck.
To see video thru link click here!!
Tags: diving, Egypt, Travel
simonuribe@yahoo.com
Hallo mein Freund.
Tolle Fotos!Man könnte euch Tauchern neidisch sein und man seiht,dass du es in Ägypten richtig genossen hast.Nicht jeder hat das Glück.Mach’s gut.Gott beschütze dich auf deinen Reisen.
Simon!!!ESPECTACULAR el viaje …difruta y pasa rico!! dejame saber cuando vienes a HK o si vas por Vietnam…nrnrcuidate mucho!! besos!!!Chedes
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Mi Amigo,
Awesome story and pics..! That was quite a messy dive, but here we sit alive and blogging about it, thats all that matters in the end. 🙂
Que te vaya bien!
G
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