Sahl Hasheesh - First Snorkelling

Egyptian Pillar in the Sunken City

Fish at Palm Beach Plaza

 

I waited until I got my confidence up with my swimming before snorkelling. However, I was now swimming at least 1km a day, my arm didn’t even hurt any more as I swam, and my arm was able to move more freely, so I decided to give it a go.

There were several potential dangers with snorkelling – firstly, it’s easy to get absorbed in it and not see what’s coming up ahead of you. This means that you make sudden movements as you frantically try to avoid someone or something at the last minute. Sudden movements generally entail me stretching my arm out in a direction it is not yet able to go, resulting in severe pain and maybe a delayed recovery.

Secondly, if there is a good snorkelling area, there are likely to be several people around. This increases the chance of my arm getting knocked unintentionally by a fellow snorkeler, as they too will be fully absorbed in looking at the fish. This too might cause my arm to take up a bad position – it can be just a subtle shade of difference to be very painful – and adversely affect the healing process.

Thirdly, I wanted to add an extra layer of difficulty (reminiscent of planning a party as I was moving) in that I also wished to attempt underwater photography with my new camera. Unsure how this would work, I suspected it may place extra pressure on my arm as it had to hold the camera in place and keep me afloat. But I wouldn’t know until I tried.

It was with some trepidation that I began and it didn’t help that I originally put the snorkelling equipment together wrongly. Nevertheless, drinking seawater doesn’t seem to have done me any harm.

I began in a small novice area at Palm Beach Plaza, only just out of my depth, and where I didn’t have to snorkel too long a distance. The snorkelling itself ended up being fine. Inevitably, a few times, I swam along only to bang straight into the rope that marked off the next hotel’s section of the water. Shocked, I scrambled to disentangle myself from the rope, my arm twinged, but it was bearable. It wasn’t the searing pain I’d experienced when I tried to grab a falling object whilst moving house. I was suitably encouraged.

The underwater photography was a different matter. I couldn’t see anything on the screen, so I blindly pointed the camera in the general direction and crossed my fingers that I would capture something. When I got home, all the photographs were either blurs or depicted an empty mass of water. Oh dear.

I tried again the next day in the same place. I made a more concentrated effort actually to aim for what I wanted to photograph instead of randomly snapping in the general direction each time I got over-excited at spotting something. This time, although I could make out the shape of some fish on my photographs, they were quite blurry. I decided my next learning was to hold the camera bit steadier, if I could. Since it’s always a bit wavy, and the fish move in any case, I wasn’t sure if this was entirely possible.

The third time in the same place and I finally had the best success yet. Over half of the photographs had fish in them and a number of them were in focus. I decided I could graduate to the “adult” playground of the Sunken City. This is an area in Sahl Hasheesh where they have sunk Egyptian pillars into the sea bed, along with large boxes, and I guess they are hoping this is where coral will grow and it is to be a place expressly for divers and snorkelers.

I took a walk first to see where my point of entry to the water would be. I remembered it as being quite rocky, but this time it was a gentle, sandy slope into the water. I couldn’t think why I thought it was rocky before.

The next morning, off I went and then I realised my mistake. The tide was out in the morning, so the sea only started where the rocks were. When the tide was in, the sea lapped gently on the sandy slope, some way above the rocks. Consequently, I decided to return in the late afternoon.

The sunken city was a larger area, so more difficult to explore, as you had to discover the best spots first. I saw some swordfish and took a few photographs, but without much optimism since they blended into the blue of the sea. I did get a few acceptable photographs of them on a later date, but the degradation of the picture quality when posted here makes the swordfish disappear too much into the background. As a result, I've shown a different photograph.

I finally found a superb spot with many fish and I paddled slowly up to them. I was just taking a photograph when I suddenly realised that they were all swimming round a huge, evil-looking, bloated, brown eel-like fish that was poking its head out of a cavern, like a dragon looking for its prey. I have no idea what it was, and it was probably perfectly benign, but it scared me, so I swam for shore!

I looked at my photos and they were all blurred. I needed to calm down a bit!

To save time looking for where to snorkel, I decided to swim round the Sunken City (the bits sticking out of the water, anyway) and look out for the promising places while I was unhampered by snorkelling gear and my camera. It only occurred to me towards the end to focus my search on areas near the shore because they would be best for photography (the water was less deep there and I would be closer to the fish). It ended up being quite a long swim and I’d overdone it a bit for my arm.

Finally, the next day, I went back to snorkel in the areas I’d identified. I snapped away quite happily, feeling I'd got some great shots, and I was just about to go home when I realised that I’d forgotten to put the camera on underwater mode. Aaargh! Still, it was a good way to experiment what the pictures would be like on automatic mode. I went back for half an hour to take a few more pictures using underwater mode. That way, I could at least compare the two camera modes.

I eagerly downloaded my pictures when I got back and, to my surprise, the automatic mode pictures were just as good, if not better, than the ones taken in underwater mode. I’d also managed to get a fair few pictures that had fish in them and were in focus! I was definitely getting there.

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I am leading a fairly quiet life just now, staying within the resort, working in the morning and swimming in the afternoon (I’ve recently been finishing off the day with a cup of coffee, as we’ve even had a bit of white cloud here and there and temperatures below 30 degrees). So, it’s unlikely I will be posting that much over the next week as there’s not much to tell. If you don’t want to keep on checking back, you can always subscribe by email by filling out the field on the right-hand side of this page. I don’t get to see who has subscribed (or unsubscribed), so it’s really totally anonymous (and I think you may even fall off the “page count” count). I will definitely be posting before 10th November as I need to get my visa before then and I have no doubt that I will have something to tell about that! I should also be going to an event on Thursday, so will be writing about that by next weekend, all going well. So, if you want to just keep checking, please do, and those two bits of information should give you some timelines as to when to expect the next posts. Thank you to everyone for reading – it’s a great encouragement to continue!