Sahl Hasheesh - First Trip to Abu Hasheesh

Marine Life at Abu Hasheesh

There’s a small island 1.5km off Sahl Hasheesh, called Abu Hasheesh. Abu means Father, which is a bit ironic since the island is tiny; you’d expect the Father to be bigger than any of its offspring! Sahl, by the way, means Easy; I don’t believe that there’s a Mother Hasheesh (I would be most upset if Mother Hasheesh were easy, ha ha).

Anyway, one afternoon I was on the beach, as usual, when Ann said that she and Brigitte had booked a boat to take them to Abu Hasheesh for snorkelling and she asked whether I would like to join them. Since I haven’t yet done a snorkelling trip and, consequently, haven’t experienced some of the amazing sights that are just waiting for me, I gratefully accepted.

We had a bit of a problem getting there, because the Pyramisa hotel, where the boat was booked, is very protective of their grounds, so we were initially turned away when we arrived. In retrospect, I wish I’d tried out some of my Arabic as I know the words for “reserve” and “boat”. However, the boat guy came over and saved us before I’d managed to get a sentence together in my head. To my surprise, we had to leave our flip-flops at the booking place before getting on board the boat.

I’d decided to wear jeans as I thought the the boat ride could be chilly; as it turned out, the motorboat had rubber sides, so you had to get in via the water and my jeans were a hindrance rather than a help. Anyway, I took my jeans off before striding into the water to get in, so it wasn’t a huge trauma.

It was a short journey over to the island. Some of you may have heard me debating whether I could perhaps swim over to the island from Sahl Hasheesh, since 1.5km is quite manageable. However, now that I’ve been there, I can see that it won’t be possible (even ignoring any boat traffic or the difficulty of finding the shortest route or any currents that may sweep me aside), because there are cliffs of coral all along the shore and it would be impossible to get onto the island (unless there’s an entrance point somewhere else).

Anyway, I’m not quite sure what I was expecting, but the boat suddenly stopped and, after putting some magic stuff in our snorkel masks that prevented them from misting up, the driver told us to jump in. I think I'd imagined we'd have a ladder of some kind, or we would go to the island itself and then just swim out from there. I was a bit dubious about jumping in as I was worried that I'd plunge so low that I would touch the coral. I slid myself over the rubber side in the hope that I would not dip too far down. Once in, Ann turned to me and said that she wasn’t too sure how we would get back onto the boat. Oh oh, I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I decided to go with Ann’s philosophy, which was that the boatperson had the responsibility of getting us back on somehow.

The coral was amazing, like a weird landscape in another world, falling down in a huge cliff. I started off snorkelling in the shallower bit, but got a bit scared of scraping against it; especially since I encountered problems with my snorkel letting in water through my mouth. I kept on having to tread water in an emergency to adjust it. I even began to wonder whether my snorkel had a leak. It must have taken at least ten minutes before I finally got it to work properly, but after that it was fine!

In any case, my move from the shallower area to the coral cliff was a good decision as most of the fish swam by the edge; sometimes whole shoals of them and often many different types of fish all at once.

Initially, I was alarmed by all the little white jellyfish floating about all around me. After a while I relaxed as it became clear that I couldn't feel their stings. Nevertheless, when possible, I avoided them, but they had a tendency to appear out of nowhere.

A local boat came past and snorkelling was unpleasant for a few minutes afterwards, which led me to wonder what it must be like for the fish; they must surely be even more sensitive. The resort isn’t so well known at the moment, but they will have to think at some stage about how to regulate traffic to the island and perhaps see if they can make a ruling that only electric-powered boats (do they exist?) can go to the area. 

Sahl Hasheesh is supposed to be developing as a sustainable resort, so I hope they succeed and keep the corals free of pollution and plastics. They currently allow only electric-powered vehicles to drive along by the waterfront, so they've done their bit there. Ann said the coral has increased substantially around Sahl Hasheesh over the last few years, so obviously all is well just now, but they will need to be mindful of the future.

I need to buy myself a book so that I can identify the fish as I’m unable to report back what I saw. The guy in the boat followed us round as we snorkelled and then blew a whistle when our time was up. Brigitte somehow managed to leap back onto the boat in no time, but Ann and I were both a bit incompetent (sorry, Ann, if you’re reading!) and needed to be yanked on board. I have absolutely no idea how Brigitte managed it. For me, it looked like a completely impossible challenge.

The water had been starting to feel a little cold towards the end and then, on the journey back, in the wind, we got colder again. I’d brought my jeans and a jumper in preparation, but my planning had been complete rubbish as my swimming costume was too wet for me to put any clothes on over it and the journey too short to allow me to dry out. Live and learn! I huddled my towel round me. Unfortunately, as we all manically grasped for our towels, my sunglasses (which really I could have left behind, so I'm not joking when I say my planning was a complete shambles) somehow managed to get thrown overboard and are now living somewhere at the bottom of the Red Sea. And I'm normally so picky about pollution!

We arrived, picked up our flip-flops, and collapsed happily onto the beach afterwards. All in all, it was a brilliant experience, and I continue to feel so very lucky to be living here.