What to expect.

Its your first time on a Red Sea dive safari boat and you don’t know what to expect so here is a guide to the basics

The First Night

Shoes

The first thing that is going to happen is you are going to be asked to take your shoes off. For the next six days you will be barefoot unless you have dive booties and fins on. Your boat is probably quite nice and the staff don’t want you running around with dirty boots on messing up the place. Your guides will either ask you to store them in a cupboard in your cabin (if you are on a boat with lots of storage space) or they’ll take them all and stick them in a big bag somewhere until the end of the week.

Passports

Don’t panic. They are not going to sell them. They are asking for your passport for a reason. There is a bureaucracy in Egypt and it demands to know who is going where and when. The crew will need your passports to get the permission for the boat to leave. It may be that you are given your passport back the next morning or maybe at the end of the trip. Some guides, myself included, like to keep them so they can flick through them each day trying to get to match names to faces. You think its easy learning 20+ names each week ?

Marine Park Fees

Depending on the travel agent you made you booking through you may or may not have prepaid your marine park fees. If you haven’t you should have been informed how much the fee will be (it varies depending on route). Be ready to hand this over with your passport.

Briefing

This will probably be the longest one of the week, and yes, we know you are tired from traveling but there are certain things you need to know about your boat. Please listen.

Particularly to the bit about the toilets.

The Toilets

If you forget everything else this is the most important rule :

If you did not eat it or did not drink it, it does not go in the toilet.

Toilet paper and sanitary products go in the bin provided. This bin will be emptied daily.

Apparently the problem is not that the boats plumbing is made from small pipes which block easily its more to do with Egyptian toilet paper which refuses to disintegrate and wraps itself around non return values holding them open.

This brings us to the 2nd rule regarding the toilet :

If you block it be prepared to unblock it. 

We find rule 2 helps our guests remember rule 1

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