The Red Sea is one of my favourite diving destinations to dive in. Surrounded by Deserts, crystal clear warm waters and sunny all year round, together with the Arabic culture and foods, makes the area one of my top places for diving.
I’ve already been to Egypt for diving around 8 times and also in Sudan, Jordan and Djibouti, but I’ve always wants to visit Saudi Arabia. When I researched the area online a while back, I found diving was possible but not well established or well known for non-locals. Entering Saudi Arabia was also much more difficult. But since the introduction of the new E-Visas, diving and visiting the country is becoming much more popular in recent years.
I had actually booked a liveaboard dive trip to Saudi Arabia in 2020, but this was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The company actually went bankrupt. A few years later, other companies started to advertise liveaboards in Saudi Arabia, and at the beginning of this year, I decided to go for it.
As per usual, Istanbul is the airport I choose for my flight to Jeddah. A short 3.5 hr flight from Malaga, takes me to the hub of all international flights in the world. Almost all my flights to the Red Sea have been from Istanbul.
I am pleasantly surprised after landing in Jeddah, seeing a huge aquarium with even sharks in them, right in the middle of the public airport area. A meeting point was given by the tour operator, and shortly after everyone gathered around, we were taken to a bus which took 3 hours to reach the Marina at Al Lith, where our yacht “Almonda” was berthed, waiting for us.
I spent 6 days diving in Saudi Arabia. Although I had already dived in the Red Sea before, there was a few differences I quickly noticed. The sea temperature was much warmer, than in other parts I had dived in before. 31’c mostly in all sites! Most of the reefs were all deep wall dives with plateaus, sometimes with strong currents present.
One afternoon, we visited a small isolated Island made up of beautiful white sands and some vegetation. Turtle tracks could be seen, where Green turtles had come up to lay their eggs. Crabs also inhabited the area, and there were some species of birds I had never seen before flying around!
A unique Marine organism, which I had never seen before, were these different coloured sponges/corals which had the shape of tripping down candle wax from gorgonians hanging of the reef walls.
It was a different type of diving to what I was expecting, I preferred more relaxed shallow reef dives to view the different marine life in the area, to that of swimming in deep reef walls against currents to try find some sharks! I don’t mind that sort of diving for a few dives but not for a whole trip of it!
After the dives, I travelled back to Jeddah, where the rest of the group flew home, but I stayed for some extra days of land excursions, to explore the country and culture!
Below is a small video I've put together, of my dive trip to the Farasan Banks in Saudi Arabia:
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