The weather was fantastic. Sunny skies the whole week and hot!! The temperature got up to 43 deg C (Ok, we were in the middle of a dessert!).
We did a check dive and 2 other dives at Taba Heights which were really great. I was amazed by how many fish there were. We saw loads of moray eels (Grey, Yellowmouth and Giant) and Lionfish, an octopus, a turtle and various other interesting fish... no sharks unfortunately... sigh! We also did 2 day trips to Israel.
On the Saturday we left our hotel at the unearthly hour of 3:30am. We travelled by coach across the boarder into Israel (where we changed coach) and north to the Dead Sea. We did the floating thing (really strange sensation) and after breakfast headed west to Jerusalem. Jerusalem was not quite what I was expecting and yet I'm not really sure exactly what my expectations were. We had a fantastic tour guide (with a great sense of humour) who was very knowledgeable and informative. We did loads of walking around Jerusalem, passing by a lot of places, both historical and 'traditional' including the Western Wall, Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Upper Room... I have loads of photos of I don't know what. We had lunch in Jerusalem and then left for the airport to fly to Eilat and back to the border by coach. We arrived at our hotel sometime after 10pm. A very long exhausting day!
The border crossings were quite an experience. The Israeli border was very efficient and organised... standard questions..."Do you have any guns... Do you have anything that looks like a gun... Do you have any ammunition..." and then there was the Egyptian border control where chaos appeared to rule.
On the Sunday we went by coach to Eilat (15min across the Israeli border) where we stopped at the Underwater Observatory Marine Park to look at sharks and rays and other exciting fishies and then on to Dolphin Reef where we had the opportunity to dive with Dolphins (Definitely the highlight of our holiday!) followed by lunch. We then headed into town to check out the mall before heading back to Egypt and our hotel.
Monday was spent relaxing before heading to the airport to fly back to London in the evening.
We were glad to have the following week off work to ease back into things.
