Trip Report Amelia

TRIP REPORT

Amelia Discovery

Brothers, Daedalus, Elphinstone – Egypt

5 – 12 May 2018

Saturday 5th of May 2018

Vinkeveen, Holland. Some call it the Lakes of Amsterdam. Alarm clock sounds 4.50. Sunrise is beautiful. Weather forecast for the whole week is fantastic. Of course! Normally we would not go in May but as this is a national holiday week I only had to turn in 3 days for the whole trip.

6.00 Bas drives us to Schiphol. This early we’re way ahead of holiday crowds. Trouble with the TUI luggage self-service but security check is fast and so is passport control.

We’re on our way to Egypt to do a liveaboard trip to Brothers/Daedalus/Elphinstone. We’ll board the Amelia Discovery, a 32m long vessel with 10 double cabins to accommodate 20 people. The Amelia is part of Discovery Divers Liveaboards. We had never heard of them but reviews were good and they quickly responded to all my questions.

We haven’t been to Egypt since 2003. Why go now? Well short story of our lives.

We started diving in Egypt in 2000. We did a liveaboard trip (our first ever!) to the Deep South and Saint Johns reef with the al Farouk 1 from Hurghada. What a great experience that was. We loved it. But I’ll never forgot the horrible bus ride in the dark from Hurghada down to Marsa Alam and I will never do this again!

In 2001 we went on the al Farouk 2 also Deep South and Saint Johns reef but we flew Marsa Alam.

2002 we did a Brothers/Daedalus/Elphinstone trip on the brand new Excellence in and out Hurghada. In 2004 we were supposed to go dive Rocky and Zabargab. We got our plane tickets on Thursday and Friday I broke my leg wakeboarding. So the next Friday I was in a cast and not on the plane. We skipped diving 2004 but made up for it in 2005 with a 2 week Maldives trip doing the south and the north tour. After that life just got hectic and we never made it back to Egypt. Now we kind of just got back from our second Maldives trip in February 2018 (see trip report Sharktastic on the Emperor Atoll and Deep South on the Sheena). We were a bit disappointed to see all the corals were gone. People advised us to go to Egypt if we wanted to see beautiful corals.

So here we are, on a fully loaded holiday flight. Kids screaming at the top of their lungs. No entertainment system. And all one is served is a candy at the end of the flight. Well hurray for Albert Hein Supermarket at Schiphol. If you’re not Dutch and do your shopping there, ask for Bonus (= discount).

I love Marsa Alam airport. It is very small. Buy your visa at the window (euro/dollar both accepted) and walk thru customs. Next it’s only 5 steps to the luggage claim. If you want, this is also the place to buy your phonecard, but many liveaboard offer Wi-Fi service these days. Outside our pickup awaits. It’s only a short 5 minutes ride to Port Ghalib. A lot has changed since we last were here in 2001. Now we see a big hospital. Back then the hospital could not even give our cook some aspirins for his headache.

In the harbour many liveaboard safari boats await. We board the Amelia Discovery. We’re happily pleased to get assigned one of the 4 upper cabins. All room have A/C and and en-suite bathroom. We unpack the bags and set up the dive gear on the dive deck. Only few fellow passengers are present at dinner. The other guests need to come down from Hurghada. We take a stroll and walk along all the safari boats. I recognize many names from the reviews I read on internet. We have a look at the many shops. Have a drink. Pretty relaxed place here.