Ali Baba Hotel

Diving

by MalenaN

There are many diving centres in Dahab and I chose Nesima as it had a good reputation and I saw on their website everyone who hadn’t done a dive for six months had to do a check-out dive.
A very good thing with Nesima is that they never dive in big groups, five divers are the maximum. And the equipment is good and the staff nice. The diving centre is situated in Nesima Resort, and as a diver you can use their pool for free. If you are coming back for lunch they have a nice club sandwich (a club sandwich and a fresh orange juice was 32 pounds). Ten dives at Nesima cost 210 Euro. The diving in Dahab is made from the shore.

There are some very good dive sites around Dahab. The Blue Hole is amazing. I started the dive north of the Blue Hole, descending through a shaft with three walls and on the forth side the open blue sea full of small fishes. The coral wall we swam along towards the Blue Hole was beautiful and rich of life, there were even small wrasses going into the ears. In the end we swam over the Blue Hole.
Other good dive sites are the Canyon, Islands, and Golden Blocks etc.
Lighthouse can be a very crowded dive site, both during the day and at night dives.

Dahab

by leffe3

Dhahab is hardly the most attractive of places, but it's all about location. It's essentially a town in two halves - the original Bedouin village of Assalah merged with the small, modern Israeli built town of Dhahab. With the exception of the hotels fringing the area, most people head for the fairly chaotic Bedouin village and the cafes and bars that fringe the bay. Dhahab has also developed as one of the key (albeit low-key) diving areas for the Red Sea - the famed Blue Hole is only about 5 miles from the town.

Simplicity is the order of the day in Dhahab - little more than the cafes, bars, a few markets selling traditional (and not-so-traditional) wares aimed squarely at the tourist market. The town beach is pretty grotty and pebbly - but just head out of the town in either sea fronted direction and you'll see why people believed that crreation started in Sinai.

Dhahab is approximately 2 hours from the Israeli border if travelling from Eilat and the north - a not-so-comfortable suspensionless taxi ride from the Egyptian side of the border. It's becoming more and more accessible to trippers from Sharm-el-Sheikh, which is about 30-40 minutes to the south.