24 Dives in 6 Days with 11 Buddies

After taking my OWD (Open Water Dive Certificate) on Koh Lanta in February 2024, I was starting to panic when my days on Lanta for the season 2024 were coming to an end. Because I was definitely not ready to wait for 10 months to be able to dive again. You can’t imagine how incredibly happy it made me when two days before I got on the plane back to Austria, a friend of mine told me that she was going with the dive club Dive Austria on a diving trip to Egypt, at the Coral Garden Resort and the Orca Dive Club.

Becoming part of the family

Little did I know that signing up for a random diving trip in Egypt with people I had never met before, would make me become part of a lovely diving family 🥰.

Being added to a What’s App group

After telling me about the trip to Egypt she asked if I wanted to join. I didn’t know when, I didn’t know with whom, and I didn’t know about the costs, but I also didn’t even really have to think about it. There was just one possible answer: “Hell, yes”.

Just a couple of days later the trip was confirmed, the payment was on its way and I was added to a WhatsApp App group called “Coral Garden 7-14.9.2024”. Still not knowing anyone in the group except for my friend I started, as always, asking tons of questions about what to take with me, how to prepare, and what else I should know about the trip. All my questions have been answered immediately in detail and with a lot of patience. And that was exactly the moment when I realized that the trip would be freaking amazing.

Stammfisch

The members of the dive club meet from time to time at a so-called “Stammfisch”. So I was happy to join one of them during the summer to meet at least a couple of people who would be joining the trip to Egypt. And also to grab the equipment, that they so kindly were willing to lend me for the trip. The stammfisch was really nice and it was great to meet all the members and chat about the upcoming adventure.

My 1st diving vacation

Talking about the perfect vacation!

Taking me to an all-inclusive hotel for a week to spend all day on the beach doing nothing – that is the definition of hell – at least for me.

Taking me on a one-week diving trip, waking up every day at 5 am, and going to bed at 9 pm being super exhausted – that on the other hand is what I call the perfect vacation.

8 days in Egypt – 6 days to dive

After arriving at the Coral Garden Resort, we had 30 min to check in and put our stuff into the room, before we met “at the bar” for our first pre-planning meeting. Little did I know that those words would be the ones that would be said the most during our stay: “let’s meet at the bar” / “see you at the bar” / “at the bar in 5”.

We checked into our rooms, unpacked what needed unpacking, and met at the bar, to check in at the dive club “Orca Dive Club” and plan our first dive – the check dive – for the next day. After the briefing, we brought all of our equipment into the dive base and took over our designated space where our first tank was already waiting for us.

First day of diving – Check Dive

We started the next day by gearing up each at his/her designated spot for our check dive at around 7 am, guided by Tom the owner of the dive club. This check dive included a short check of the most important skills: clear your mask, find your regulator, and share air with your buddy using your Octopus. After we all passed, Tom went back to base and we continued with our first dive on the beautiful Coral Garden reef.

The breakfast

After 35 min of diving, we finished our first dive, got out of the water, and everyone was eager to get to breakfast and fuel up for the next 3 dives of the day.

It became another routine to do the early morning dive, go to breakfast, and then meet “at the bar” to wait for the next dive which most of the days would be between 9 am and 10 am.

The breakfast was not a high-end luxury breakfast, but to be honest it had everything that one might need. Always some warm food, especially very nice if you just came out of the water and tend to be cold after a dive. There have always been some pancakes and mini-croissants (my downfall). And obviously some fruits, some yogurt, cheese and meat. And of course some freshly made omelet with everything your heart might desire.

2nd, 3rd, 4th dive of the 1st day

The next dives on our first day were with Sigi, the owner of the Dive Austria Club. Most of the time it was just the three of us, Marta, Sigi, and I. But during the next few days, others joined our dives and paired up with some of us as buddies.

The Dinner

After the first day and 4 dives I was so eager to get under the shower, wash off all the salt water, and also grab some delicious food for dinner.

Unfortunately, the dinner was super late starting at 7 pm, which, who knows me is way past my eating time. But also having had our first night dive on our first day I didn’t care because my stomach was literally screaming and demanding food.

To sum up the first day as being exhausting but also exciting would be an understatement. The things that we saw, the feelings that I had, from scary to super excited, and the moments that I hope to remember were just the start of a week full of amazing adventures.

Things to note: I definitely still have my issues with my ears. Going down is annoying, because while everyone else is already at ~5 m I am still trying to equalize my ears while drifting somewhere between 1.5 m and 3 m, watching everyone else from atop.

The Diving Routine

After the first day of diving, I could already see a routine emerging (pun intended ;-)):

• get to your spot at the dive club
• squeeze your ass into your wetsuit and put on your shoes
• open your tank
• gear up with all the things you have prepared after your last dive
• enter yourself and your buddy/buddies into the checklist (time and buddy team)
• go diving & enjoy
• get out of the water
• enter the dive base through the water basin for your sandy feet/shoes
• let the staff take your used tank
• move to your spot and take off your jacket
• dip your gear – mask, regulator & Octopus, dive computer, torch, fins, wetsuit, shoes – into the tank for cleaning
• check your Nitrox % on the already prepared tank and put it in the list with the number of your tank and the Nitrox amount
• set up your jacket on the new tank
• take out your wetsuit and the shoes and hang them to dry
• assemble your regulator, first stage, and gauge
• open your tank and check it by breathing through the regulator & octopus
• turn off your tank
• prep your fins, mask, torch, and dive comp
• wait for your next dive at the bar 😉

Day 2 – Day 6 of Diving

I love schedules and being able to have a pretty decent schedule for the next 5 days was one of the things that I loved the most. Well except for the diving itself, the amazing people I was able to get to know, and the food.

My Diving schedule in Egypt

Talking about schedules, this is what mine looked like during the week at the Coral Garden Resort in Egypt.

My struggles while diving

Imagine you go diving and you can enjoy a perfect dive without having pain in your ears because you struggle with equalizing them. You do not have any issues with water filling up your mask, because you have that under control. You don’t have any troubles with your buoyancy and glide through the ocean like you would have been born for that.

Well, that sounds definitely too good to be true 😉

Out of those three things, at least only two have been driving me just a tiny little bit nuts. My ears and the pain that occurred although I was equalizing the shit out of it and a mask that was filling up with water no matter what I did to prevent that from happening.

Pain in my ears

Up until the fourth day, I was struggling with my ears. Trying to go down very slowly, which to be fair is pretty easy when you are entering by shore, seemed to not be working for me. It was a struggle to go deeper than 3 m. While everyone was descending properly, I was drifting on top going down, checking my dive computer, going up again, trying to equalize some more, and then repeating the procedure for at least 20 times.

During several dives I was monitoring my descent and the time it took me to get to the level of everyone else: 15 fucking minutes. It took me 15 minutes to get my ears under control and descend to the depth where everyone else was patiently waiting for me. The thing is that as soon as I got down to 10 m everything below (tested down to 31m) was not an issue at all.

Shout out to all my buddies who soooo patienly waited for me until I finished my very boring game of descending!  

But on the second to last day, Christian, one of our fellow divers mentioned that for him going down slowly is worse. So I tried a different approach. I tried to go down as fast as possible to at least 3 m while equalizing as often as possible while descending. And it worked. During the last two days I had only troubles with my ears during 2 out of 8 dives. I call that a success.

Mask full of water

Although I am pretty good at getting rid of water in my mask and I mastered this skill pretty fast during the OWD, I was really struggling during the first couple of days. In total I tried out 4 different masks and the ones that were the best were the Atomic Aquatics Subframe and the Zeagle Scope Mono Mask. What I learned during my test drive with four masks:

• Don’t make them too tight while descending, because it might make your ear problems worse.
• Don’t have them too lose, while being deeper, because water might get in easier.
• Press them several times to your face while diving to secure them.

So my final approach was to have it not too tight while descending, and then press it to my face several times during the dive to make it stick better to my face.

Vibrating mask

On my deep dive, where we went further than 30m while ascending my mask started vibrating like shit. I ended up holding the mask with my left hand to my face because I was too afraid that it would just fall off. I have no clue what the reason for that was, but at some point it stopped. Jonas said that it might have been me trying to breathe through my nose. I don’t believe that I was doing that, but who knows.

Night dives

Three times during the week we managed to do night dives. This basically means that 2 torches become unnegotiable parts of your equipment. One torch for diving and a second one as a backup, because tbh if your first torch breaks you are absolutely screwed.

Preparing yourself for a dive, when it is getting dark outside has a special mood setting that comes automatically. You enter the water from shore while the sun sets and as soon as you dive under, you need your torch because otherwise you honestly don’t see a thing.

Diving during the night is a totally different experience than diving during the day. You first of all rely absolutely on the light from your torch. And second of all staying close to your buddy becomes even more important than during the day. And all of you who have ever dived with me, know that sticking super close to my buddy is not really my thing. Don’t get me wrong, if necessary I will stick to you like super glue, but I am an explorer at heart 😉

I also have to admit that the things, fish, and colors you experience are absolutely worth it. Although I sometimes had some scarry thoughts like looking to the left at the beautiful corals and then moving my head to the right and dreading the moment that out of nowhere two eyes would be looking back at me. Thankfully I did not experience anything like that. Just the probably relative typical realisation that wherever you do not point your torchlight at, everything is pitch-black. And by pitch-black I mean “The Blairwitch Project” kind of black.

The staff at the Orca Dive Club

Everyone who knows me knows about my back issues. I had troubles with my back since at least 2018, having had 7 disk prolapses and a back surgery in 2020. My biggest concern was that I wouldn’t be able to carry my own tank into and out of the water. In Thailand, we had already an established routine. But it was different because I was always getting into the water from a boat. The Thai routine looked like that: I jumped into the water first with my mask and fins, the boat crew frew (more likely gently dropped) my jacket including the tank into the water and I mounted the jacket and tank while floating on my back in the ocean.

In Egypt, we only went diving by entering the water through shore. So I needed somehow to get my tank from the dive base into the water and then back again. And that’s where the amazing staff from Orca Club were just incredibly sweet, helpful, and mind-blowing. I told Tom, the owner at the beginning that I had back issues and wouldn’t be able to carry my jacket and tank. And that was it. From that moment onwards I didn’t have to mention it once again. Every time someone was already waiting for me to bring my equipment to the ocean. And every single time after we finished our dive and emerged someone was already waiting for me on the beach to grab my tank and jacket to bring it back to the base. I think they had kind of a bet going on, because every time they came out to grab my tank from me after a dive, they seemed to be getting deeper and deeper into the water. At some point I was thinking they would go diving with us 😉 I felt so bad for not having to carry anything but my fins I ended up grabbing all the fins that I could get my hand on to at least be a bit helpful to my buddies.

Without this service, I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy or even survive this diving trip – so once again I want to mention how amazing all the people working at the Orca Dive Club have been.

The Photo Shoots

Thankfully we had a lot of divers with us who were equipped with underwater cameras and willing to take amazing pictures. So we not only ended up having great underwater pictures of all the marine life and beautiful coral reefs. But we also ended up taking some beautiful sunrise pictures.

The not-so-sexy photoshoots

When you break the water surface while ascending you might think of some beautiful blond ladies, who flip their hair back and look just gorgeous. Like a typical Bond Girl emerging out of the ocean. Hally Berry in “Die another Day” comes to my mind. Well, the truth looks a bit different – thanks to Sigi I now can always remind myself that the worst bad-hair-day can never be worse than the mess I encountered after every single dive 😉

Btw. if you are looking for some cool product for your hair to keep it safe from the sun and all the salt water, I tried out the Watersports Hair Care Efficient hair product for watersports Lilé and although I don’t really like the smell of it (it’s not that bad), I am positively surprised with the result after 6 days of diving.

The trip in a nutshell

Let’s sum up my first-ever diving trip to Egypt: I did 24 dives in 6 days, finished my night dive, deep dive, and nitrox course, and got to know amazing people from the Dive Austria Club as well as from the Orca Dive Club.

The additional equipment

In addition to all the typical diving equipment that you need to go diving, it seems that there are some things that are not so obvious.

In order to be a real diver, at least when you are part of the Dive Austria Club, there is equipment that might not be on every typical dive equipment list. Apparently, you need to have a log book and even more important some cool fish stickers for the log book. After coming back home I also ordered a dive log book stamp – obviously!

The amazing Orca Dive Club

In addition to the help that I was receiving with my tank and jacket, the staff at the Orca Dive Club has been amazing. Everyone was always smiling, super friendly, and extremely helpful. Thanks to the whole staff for making this trip such a wonderful experience.

The Coral Garden Resort

The Coral Garden resort was great. The rooms were super clean and very spacious, which means that even with all the diving equipment you had more than enough space. The staff was super nice and helpful and was never too tired to smile at you. And the food. Don’t even let me get started on the food. We were lucky to be able to join a BBQ once and an Egyptian night another time and both dinners have been super delicious.

And the best thing about the hotel was that it was directly next to the Orca Dive Club or better way to put it, the dive club was literally on the grounds of the hotel. So you spent your whole day either in your bikini, your wet suit, or a sarong wrapped around yourself, while waiting for the next dive. The longest walk I had to take was from my room to the dive club – which took me probably 3 min.

My new Diving Family

After a week of diving and spending every single minute – except for our beauty sleeps – together I can definitely say that I found my perfect diving family. Everyone was amazingly nice, and welcomed me without any doubts and issues. Thank you all for making this trip so extremely great. I am so much looking forward to our next adventure together.

My favorite picture(s)

Thanks to all the underwater photographers there have been tons of pictures taken during those 6 days. Here is my absolute favorite one. Thank you, Sigi for being my personal photographer.

What’s next?

After being home for one week I already can’t wait to have to squeeze my ass into the wetsuit, grab my fins, torch, mask, dive computer and go diving again.

Diving in Thailand

So the plan is to go to Thailand at the beginning of 2025, do further courses, become a Dive Master/Guide, and think about becoming an instructor.

Diving in Croatia

After Thailand, the plan is to survive the rest of the year by joining the Dive Austria team on another diving vacation to Crest in July 2025.

Diving Computer

Right now I am also trying to figure out which diving computer I should get. For now, the choices are:

• Garmin MK3
• Garmin Descent G1
• Garmin Fēnix 8

What to bring on your diving trip?

Because this post is already way too long I decided to create an additional post on everything I will take on my next trip. Hopefully, it will be a bit shorter than this one.