Sahl Hasheesh - Return to Snorkeling

Turtle!

Most people I know who have spent some time at El Andalous have remarked on how easy it is to get lazy – you have the whole of Sahl Hasheesh, but you can’t be bothered going any further than your own private beach. It’s so close, you can pop back into your flat if you need something, there’s no time taken up with getting there and back. Before you know it, you’ve been in Egypt for months on end and you’ve not gone any further than your own beach. It sounds terrible, but it’s just so easy to do!

Anyway, I finally got round to picking up snorkeling again. Although our beach has some small isolated bits of coral, or there’s the Sunken City, there’s not so much. Also, the same fish tend to hang out at the same spots at the same time each day, so they soon become your friends (you should all buy 25 New Year’s Resolutions – For Fish to read about my friend Finn!), but you lack the novelty value.

That’s not to say that there isn’t the occasional surprise. I was hovering over one a patch of coral at El Andalous watching the fish (this was before I came back to Egypt this time round), turned around to swim back and realized that two bulky porcupine fish were bombing towards me. I foolishly grabbed my camera and just floated there trying to get a photo whilst thinking that maybe this wasn’t the best idea.

I’d never seen these fish before and they looked fairly solid and rather bizarre. And they were flying through the water with determination right at me. I don’t know if they mistook me for a big lump of coral, but they suddenly halted (phew!) and then swam nonchalantly in another direction, as if pretending they hadn’t made a mistake at all.

Meanwhile, just a foot or two away, people were standing and chatting in the water, oblivious to the amazing creatures just next to them. It’s often the way – you’ve got your attention in one place, when actually all the real action is going on just behind you. There was another time when I saw two or three people snorkeling and behind them a whole shoal of fish was leaping out of the water in unison!

I’d heard that the Baron hotel had a good reef, so I decided to try swimming from one of my normal places (called “the ramp”, because there’s an unfinished hotel there with what looks like a large ramp heading down towards the sea) to the reef at the Baron. I’d forgotten that in the summer months, swimming from these more isolated places in Sahl Hasheesh has its own difficulty. Although you usually have the whole stretch of beach to yourself, there’s no shade, and no loungers, so it’s not so easy to sit and relax; it becomes more of a functional snorkeling trip.

The excitement of seeing fish I’d never seen before refired my enthusiasm. I managed to see a coral grouper for the first time (red fish with blue spots), a red starfish (weirdly, also with blue spots) for the first time, and I was just looking at some fish I knew already when I remembered that sometimes more exciting things are happening behind you, or maybe I sensed something, so I turned around and a Manta Ray was gliding past me flapping its sides together in a graceful movement. I was too surprised and astonished to take a photograph in time, but it was amazing to see it right beside me.

What I really like about looking at the fish is that you get so close that you can even see their eyelids opening and closing; when you see them this near to you, they seem to have distinct personalities and you really start to feel like you are one of them.

Sometimes they appear to be attracted to me and I’m not sure if they think I’m going to feed them, whether they are just curious (they strike me as curious by nature), or maybe they are trying to chase me away while I’m thinking they are trying to say hello. I never tire of seeing so many different types of fish, so many colours, the beauty of the coral and the clams, and the utter privilege of being able to visit them in their home. They always look as if they might actually bite or nudge me – they don’t have any sense of personal space – but they always just narrowly avoid me (apart from today when a cleaner fish decided to nip my arm; it was quite sharp, to my surprise, as it’s just a little fish!). It really is like swimming in an aquarium.

I finally made it to the Baron and went out a bit deeper before swimming (rather than snorkeling) back to where I’d started. A rock seemed to be below me, so I stuck my head in the water to take a look and, after my eyes had focused, I realized that the rock was a huge turtle! It started to swim when it realized I was there, but it’s the only thing I’ve seen in the sea that looks as if it swims more slowly than I do. It looked so ancient; it was like watching a prehistoric creature. Maybe its slow swimming speed made it seem older, like someone who can no longer really walk very well. I’ve wanted to see a turtle for ages, so it made my day. I’d always imagined I’d see a small, young turtle rather than a huge, lumbering item of the species, but that didn’t make it any less special.

Another strange thing about snorkeling here was that there are quite a few sandbanks. At one point, I was having to tread water, and just a metre or two away were two people standing on the other side of the coral with the water just round their knees. It made me feel like I was a child and ridiculously small.

Then, when I tried to get out of the water, the closer I walked to the shore, the deeper the water got. I like to see where I’m putting my feet as I walk to shore (it’s easy to tread on a stingray hidden in the sand or a stone or lion fish taking a nap), so when the water kept getting deeper, I kept on having to look up to double-check that I wasn’t walking in the wrong direction. It’s quite worrying when you start off with the water knee-high and then you find yourself up to your shoulders in water. It just doesn’t compute.

Anyway, my enthusiasm for snorkeling has well and truly returned!