Dahab

Time for some sun and warm water diving before the Scottish winter takes complete hold... It must be time for another trip to Red Sea Relax in Dahab.

	Beers on arrival night.
	First dive - descending into Canyon.
	Bubbles stream up from divers in Canyon.
	A Crocodilefish trying to hide.
	Pretty corals!
	Anemonefish (almost universally known as Nemo thanks to Disney)
	Can you see the (very poisonous) Scotpionfish?
	Ruth surrounded by fish.
	Butterflyfish, almost always seen in pairs.
	Filtering the water for food particles.
	Ruth photograming more anemonefish.
	Sunset over the Sinai mountains.
	Time to load the kit into the pick-up and the divers into the jeep...
	...but not before a little rest!
	Heading back to town.
	Spectacular sandy mountains.
	Dahab bay by night.
	This cat wandered through the bar and out onto a neighbouring roof, from which kittens promptly emerged.
	More pretty corals.
	A giant clam - the delicate soft mantle has wonderful patterning.
	A small grouper.hiding in the coral.
	I love the colours and shapes of these.
	The fish are brightly coloured too.
	Unearthly shapes.
	Good camouflage - unless someone with a big camera flash comes along!
	Ruth signals "OK"
	Tiny green fish lurking in a coral head.
	Ruth in the jeep, waiting to head home.
	Dahab is right at the foot of the mountains on a small coastal plain.
	Red Sea Relax
	The only starfish I saw all week, very different from UK diving.
	Resting on a rock.
	A Blue Spotted Ray, disturbed by me taking photos of it. Sorry!
	Ruth resting a lunchtime.
	Rob, one of the other divers in our group.
	Another fairly well hidden Scorpionfish.
	Freckled Hawkfish, often found resting on the rocks. Lazy fish...
	A tiny pipefish tries to blend into the background.
	Ruth has excellent bouyancy and just hange there looking at me...
	A hermit crab - you don't see a lot of crabs here either, unlike the UK.
	Ruth with a boat in the background!
	A Unicornfish, so called because of the horn!
	Ahmed hangs out at a site called Caves
	Another lazy fish...
	...and another...
	...and another.
	This fish may be small, but at least it's bothered to get up!
	Parrotfish have beaks to peck chunks out of the coral. They then digest the nutricious bits, excreting the hard skeleton crushed into sand.
	A Klunzingers Wrasse, complete with outlandish pink colour scheme.
	Another type of butterflyfish. It comes with it's own barcode ready to be scanned at the checkout once caught...
	Coral comes in all sorts of odd structures.
	More anemonefish - there are nearly always two in each anemone.
	Coral gardens are areas of sandy bottom with occasional coral outcrops like this.
	Fish everywhere again!
	Churchills Bar at Red Sea Relax
	The last divers of the day coming out of the water.
	Sand blown into the sky during the day makes sunset spectacular...
	...as do ramshackle water towers!
	Ruth descends the crack in the reef at El Bells.
	Here you descend through clouds of bubbles from other divers.
	Lionfish. Another venomous predator that divers need to treat with respect!
	Not predatory at all - Ruth gestures at the clouds of little fish.
	A moray eel - if you look really closely...
	...you can see hes surrounded by cleaner shrimp and cleaner wrasse, even in his mouth!
	Another giant clam - photographs just can't do justice to the intense blue of the mantle.
	An octopus - only the third one I've ever seen. They are WIERD but bery cool to watch.
	A large trunkfish resting on the coral.
	Another grouper trying to look inconspicuous in the shadows.
	Our guide for the last day, Jon.
	A tiny nudibranch - think slug and you're not far off.
	A porcupinefish.
	Tiny crabs in a coral head.
	Pipefish.
	A flatfish tries to blend in.
	Another pipefish, not blending in at all.
	The seabed can get so busy that the fish have to stack on top of each other...
	Anemonefish. Again. I love photographing these cheeky wee characters.
	A moray shares it's hole with some boxer shrimps - with big stripy claws that look as outsized as a boxers gloves!
	A juvenile lionfish - they are so wispy!
	The first seahorse I've seen - we did this dive (unusually a third in one day!) specially in the hope of seeing them.
	Goatfish have tongue-like feelers to probe the seabed for tasty morsels.
	A juvenile grey moray - tiny - only the thickness of my finger.
	Me!
	Ruth says goodbye to Dahab.
	The seafront promenade.
	It's idyllic here.
	A kite-surfer jumps right out of the water. Dahab is occupied mainly by divers, windsurfers and kite surfers.
	The view from Red Sea Relax.
	The Sinai mountains on the way back to the airport... Until next time!