Here to stay – a true story

© Chad Clark 13-11-01

England, February, 1996. Cold, wet, grey, miserable - and that was just the tea ! A brief respite in somewhere sunny was just the ticket to lift me out of those winter blues and prepare me for the British summer, expected for a few days somewhere around August.

bluezone coverSo, I packed my bags and headed for a weeks liveaboard diving holiday in Sharm El Sheikh. Oh joy was me upon arrival. Well, not exactly upon arrival since it took a while to extricate myself from the airport after queuing at passport control, being re-directed to a queue at the visa window, then requeuing at passport control, finally being released onto a dirt track that was apparently the main road to Sharm. After a long debate with the driver of what purported to be a taxi, in a language sounding similar to a camel suffering from a smokers cough and meaning absolutely nothing to me, I headed into town in search of the dive club. After handing over a bundle of banknotes with the consistency of used toilet paper, I found myself on the doorstep of my chosen dive operator and was promptly checked in and bundled onto my floating home for the next week.

Sun, sea, crystal clear warm waters and excellent unspoiled diving, it was everything I had hoped for. In fact, it was so good that I enquired about the possibility of extending my return ticket for another week. Unfortunately a week was not possible, however a month was…………………..

After giving this possibility my considered opinion for all of 10 seconds I accepted the month, waved my companions of the previous week a tearful farewell and retired to the beach to ponder my options. I could spend the next weeks diving, or I could go diving, or, if all else failed, I could go diving. There wasn’t much else to do in those pre-McDonald days. Returning to the dive club I respectfully offered my services as tank carrier, jeep driver or whatever else might be required in return for which I’d like to go diving – please.

As luck would have it, a second dive guide was required on the same boat for the following weeks safari. Excellent. No hotel to pay for, no food to buy, just diving, diving and diving. After this week of fast track career change, learning how to tie ropes to hunks of rusting metal in mid-channel and down vast quantities of whiskey of an evening without falling down the stairs, I was informed that I had reached the peak of this rather steep learning curve and was now considered to be an experienced Red Sea dive guide. I would even be welcomed to continue as such, especially since the regular guy had just resigned, heading for de-tox and suffering from alcohol poisoning I suspect. Well, I still had another 10 days here so why not. I should have known then really, I’d been bitten by the Sharm bug.

When the day arrived for me to leave for the second time, yet another hurdle was put in my way. I was offered the safari dive guide job permanently ! Decisions, decisions. Well, the UK was still cold wet and miserable, I didn’t have so much work to do there, so maybe another couple of months of being paid to go diving wasn’t such a bad option. Just until May or June of course. I continued safari guiding for the whole of that summer, seeing nothing but the Red Sea, it’s exotic inhabitants and a continual supply of white tourists turning pink, until the fateful day when the skipper of another safari boat invited me to a party ‘ on the hill’. That evening I discovered that I wasn’t as alone as I’d imagined, and there was a residential area up above the marina, full of Europeans working in the diving industry. I walked through the door and my eyes fell upon a room full of tanned continental girls wearing halter tops and mini skirts. I decided that the time had arrived for me to become shore based.

That was six years ago. Since those first heady six months in the summer of ’96, I’ve moved ashore, live ‘on the hill’, and married a tanned continental girl in a halter top and mini skirt with whom I have a 2 year old son. Now he’s going to spend his first formative years living life in a way the vast majority of my countrymen can only dream about. Sun, sea and the great outdoor lifestyle of the Sinai Peninsula, at one with nature

Sharm’s changed a lot in these past five years, but then so have I. No more M25, rained off barbeques and VAT returns for me. Most evenings I sit on my terrace and watch the sun slowly set behind the Sinai mountains with a cold G & T in my hand.

Guess what I do to relax on weekends ..…………yep, I go diving in the crystal clear warm waters of the Red Sea and come home to a barbeque – guaranteed !

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