Hurgada, where to dive?

Got a trip (and boat) lined up with a bunch of divers looking
to do Hurgada. Checked out the usual websites, but what's good
and what's best left alone.

Group is AOW/Sport min with the other half senior
divers/Instructors, so intermediate to advanced levels, but
need to keep everybody happy (if poss).

Any ideas as to an ideal itinary. Have a 10 dive 5 day package
booked as a starter.


TerryH

Hi Terry,
Not quite sure if you are on a liveaboard out of Hurghada or dayboating. If its a liveaboard, I would probably advise going south, but assuming you mean dayboating... Clearly you can choose to go north or south. If it's the first time out of Hurghada and you haven't done this before from Sharm for instance, I would definitely advise going north. My favourite northern Hurghada site is Sha'ab Abu Nuhas. There are four wrecks lined up like cars in Tescos car park here and there is something for everyone. IMO the best two are the Carnatic and the Ghiannis D with the latter being the best because you can easily go inside and see the engine room which is really beautiful. None of the wrecks is in more than 30m. I've taken REALLY experienced divers to this site as well as newbies and they all come up smiling. You could spend days on this site as quite apart from the 4 wrecks, there are two really good reefs. It can be choppy up there (!) so generally the boat will more in the lee of the reef and take you in by rib.

Sha'ab El Erg: This is a huge horseshoe shaped reef not often dived by the day boats but we have dived it quite often on liveaboards and what makes it very special is that there is a pod of about 20+ dolphins here and they are very friendly and clearly want to play. Obviously, they may move about, but we've always been lucky - great for a second dive - it's quite shallow.

Generally, the further away you get from Hurghada, the better the diving will be. The visibility closeby is low and the reefs tend to be very overdived and damaged - hopefully this will improve since the permanent moorings went down.

If you have any really experienced mixed gas divers with you, then there are some brilliant deep dives around Giftun Island and of course there is the wreck of the Cologna IV not far outside Hurghada in 70ish metres. It's not often you have the experience of diving a wreck you once holidayed on :) but I can claim that one.

There are some big walls on Big Giftun island with great coral and of course you can do them in any depth really to suit the diver's experience.

And back on land, take the group off to the desert for some quad biking - we had a huge lot of fun doing that.

All the best

Allie