At the end of September and beginning of October we went for a freediving trip I was the whole year looking forward to. We spent a week on a liveaboard in the northern part of Egyptian Red Sea. Freediving (or diving in general) in the warm tropical sea full of life is quite different from diving in almost dead Maltese waters where the fishermen don't hesitate to fish even in the areas where fishing is forbidden, e.g. on wrecks scuttled for divers…
Since it was an Freediving Instructors International trip organised by Martin from Pimp Your Life academy and Honza from iDive.cz, I was looking forward even more. Why? Because these two guys always put together such amazing people who make these trips even better. And what was it all about? Coral reefs full of marine life. Wrecks which turned into artificial reefs. Big marine animals. Deep freediving with a sled. Bit of scuba diving. And last but not least, meeting new friends. My journey started here in Malta. I took a flight to Vienna, there I jumped on a bus to Prague. There I met Tom Ka, we picked up Tomo at the main train station and headed to the Prague airport where we met the rest. The flight was scheduled for 1:50 am so we all were excited that we would start diving soon after the arrival. How silly we were, hahaha. Egypt is currently undergoing massive changes in relation to diving. Because of an increase of diving accidents (mostly caused by divers themselves), Egyptian government started to regulate diving industry more and more. Which brings more and more bureaucracy. So regardless we boarded the liveaboard (which was actually different from the one we booked because - we don't know why - there was a risk that we even might not have set off in the booked boat due to bureaucracy) on Saturday at 8 am, we were waiting for a single stamp. At the end of the day, we spent the night, pretty frustrated, on the boat in Hurghada port and set off on Sunday morning.
First dive of the trip was on the reef called Small Giftun. It was just warm up dive where I actually didn't take my camera since I gave my UW housing to Petra who took it to scuba to check possible leaking. Last time in Egypt I flooded the housing and destroyed the camera so I wanted to be sure it was my mistake and not faulty housing. In didn't leak. So I really was the idiot. Confirmed. Great. Next two dives we carried out at Umm Gammar. This reef is full of small caves and caverns which are very often blocked by lionfish which don't want to give you way. In the first dive here, when we reached the reef, I realized that I had forgotten all my weights on the boat. Yes, I really had… So I went back to get it and then everything was OK. At the end of the day, everyone was happy. Good start of the adventure.
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