Photos from Egypt

[Greg (E.Tn)]

Sorry it took me so long to get these out. I can only post a few at a time, so here goes:


Here's a shot of a Mosque I saw as we were taking the bus from the hotel to the Cairo Museum. I wish I had been able to compose the photo better, but it was taken from a bus traveling about 30 miles an hour:

[attachment 212217 mosque.jpg]


This shot of the pyramids doesn't do them justice. One factor that takes away from them is that they are located literally at the edge of the nastiness of the city--there was a lot of plastic garbage lying around that blows in from the city:

[attachment 212218 pyramidsa.jpg]


The Sphinx was equally impressive. One sad note is that the Brits currently have the beard of the Sphinx. I figured it would be a great gesture for them to return it to the Egyptians, but I don't know the whole story.........

[attachment 212219 Sphinx.jpg]

After visiting the Pyramids and Sphinx at Giza, we embarked on an hour long flight to Hurghada, where I took this next shot of the ocean front resort area at night--without a tripod mind you, which accounts for the blurriness:

[attachment 212220 Hurghada.jpg]

Here's a shot of one of the dive sites. There were small "islands" which were actually the top of seamounts covered with hard and soft coral. You could do any sort of reef exploration from snorkeling in just a few feet of water to wall dives at +100 feet or more:

[attachment 212221 divea.jpg]

At one of these little "Islands" they let us go on shore and up into a small but really neat lighthouse. Here's a shot of our dive boat from the window of the lighthouse:

[attachment 212222 boatfromlighthouse.jpg]


As I mentioned in my earlier post, we had a great time meeting the Egyptian people, not to mention the other divers who hailed from Germany, Poland, Netherlands, and Russia. Meeting good people the world over keeps up my hope that people are pretty much the same wherever you go.

 

[George-CT]

Thats and awesome trip for sure.... Never thought of it as a dive site.... Like you I find it strange that a lot of the nice sites to see are next to pretty nasty areas, the world over.... One would think they would clean the area up, relocate the bad areas and make them better for both parties to attract even more tourist.

Did you do your camel ride into the desert?

Again, great shots...super clear....

George-CT

 

[Greg (E.Tn)]

....do the camel ride. I could have, but somebody told me the camels had fleas, and wimpy me let that scare me away..........

And to comment further, when we were at the pyramids, a couple of us saw this little Egyptian kid standing near an ancient temple drinking a soft drink in a can. When he finished it, he just threw it down and walked off.

To add, I talked to a buddy of mine in the military who was stationed both in Iraq and Afghanistan in the recent past. From what he said, it makes me think such action is a common denominator in the region.

One thing we did not get to do (because of time constraints mostly) was to actually spend some time rubbing elbows with the local people and talking to them. Of course, we did this somewhat with the Egyptian crewmembers on the dive boat, but I would have liked to, say, stopped in at a little coffee shop in Cairo, taken a seat, and spent some time just sipping on coffee among all of the local people.

But, there wasn't really enough time for that...........we were shuffled from point A to B to C and so forth before and after the dive part of the trip.

I'll post some more photos here and there.

Again, thanks for the kind words.

 

[Micheal_R]

Why, and how, did the Brits get the beard?? And as you said, a good gesture would be to return it. There would be a lot of goodwill from that.

How much variation is there in the tides Greg? Would there have been much current? How was the visibility? I remember dives I went to Cobb and Bowie seamounts... off the west coast here.. The tops started at about sixty or so feet.... and then went down to the abyssal plain... about 18,000 feet or so.. : But cold and very stormy.. waves of 3 to 5 feet on the most calm of days.

Looking forward to some more shots if you have the time

calm seas

Micheal

 

[Greg (E.Tn)]

I don't know how the Brits got the beard....I would assume it happened during their occupation of Egypt back in the day, but I don't know.

As to the currents during the diving, yes, there were issues with the currents, and the divemaster on the boat was always very careful to brief us on current directions, and control our ascent in the proper place.

In some places, we would have to enter the water and get down to depth as quickly as possible; at others we were directed to ascend close to the reef, deploy an orange surface marker buoy, and wait for the Zodiac to pick us up.

Visibility was easily +100 feet. Seas were moderate or less. Didn't see much variation in the tides, but I'm sure there was some.

Incidentally the top of the sea mounts were fossilized coral, and several of them protruded from the water several feet, which goes to show that at one time, live coral was once growing many, many feet above current sea levels................thanks to global warming.

 

[Wayne in BC]

the trip of a lifetime no question. Thank you again for taking the time to post this Greg
Been too busy with my own forum and obviously missed a bunch of posts here.

Wayne

 

[Micheal_R]

Been as busy as the proverbial one armed paper hanger.

However, it did not prevent me from shooting our moose this year.... it is a bigun.. and will dress out at around 650-700 pounds.

fair winds

Micheal

 

[Cupajo]

Greg,

As someone who has had the opportunity to travel in the military during quieter times I can agree with you that people are much the some world wide.

Some cultures are harder to fathom, but one on one people have much the same wants and needs.

Thanks for your fine photos and wonderful insights Friend,

CJ

 

[bdahunter]

n/t