Dive Review of Aggressor in
Red Sea/Southern Itenerary

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Aggressor: "March Cold, Great Beauty", Mar, 2019, by Alexander Armintor, AL, US ( Sr. Reviewer 10 reports with 10 Helpful votes). Report 10989 has 3 Helpful votes.
No photos available at this time
Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Accommodations		Food
Service and Attitude		Environmental Sensitivity	N/A
Dive Operation		Shore Diving	N/A
Snorkeling	N/A
Overall Rating
Value for $$
Beginners
Advanced
Comments	Czech Airlines red eye from Prague direct to a Marsa Alam 07:30 arrival. Dockside at the Aggressor by probably 08:30, to find a problem. Our T.A. talked us out of getting a day room, because it would be a waste of money, because someone said we could board the Aggressor early (boarding normally starts at 3:00 pm). Turns out no one told the crew, so to make a fat story thin, we couldn’t get a room with money, nothing opens before 11:00 am and there’s not much shade in Port Ghalib, no sir, not much at all. They finally let us on the boat about 2:00 as a hardship. The boat doesn’t actually leave until the next am, so we threw our gear on the Aggressor and sprang for an ATV ride in the desert, which we found to our surprise, included a visit to an authentic Bedouin village with not only shopping opportunities, but also a camel ride in the desert. Well, the camel ride consisted of an authentic Bedouin, dressed in authentic Bedouin clothes leading us around the camel lot in a circle while he played with his cell phone with one hand. Getting off the camel was a lot more interesting than getting on the camel and after getting off the camel, I felt like I knew a thing or two about camel’s that I didn’t know before. All I can say about the village is it did have a restroom and it was about exactly what I would have imagined it would be, had I imagined such a thing. The ATV ride into the desert and along the shore was great fun and lasted well over an hour. We got back to the Aggressor after dark, but just in time for a passable Egyptian wine and dinner, grinning and covered in dust, probably looked like a couple of coal miners with the abnormally white eyes, teeth and all. It was a good end to a long, strange day. A lot has been said about the Red Sea Aggressor southern itinerary, so we’ll just confirm the boat, service and food were excellent. The value received for dollar spent is comparable to Indonesia, which is saying a lot. The Red Sea at the end of March and was colder than advertised. Both our computers registered 67 – 69F over the course of the week. We figured out the first dive to stay in the top 30 feet of the water column and our 3mm weren’t much good for that. The good thing was, we were totally entertained in the top 30 feet, a wonderland of coral and aquarium fish. Not the most fantastical or exhilarating place we’ve dived, but it will compete with any of them for beauty. We did our own thing, away from the herd, no questions asked. No currents to speak of, the southern route is a great place for people that are relatively new to diving. Tons of aquarium species, but didn’t see any fish of any size to speak of, maybe they went to Miami for the winter, I could relate. Highlights: A pod of 30-40 dolphins swim past me within touching distance, close enough to look’em in the eye. The problem is, the reason they rushed past me is because there must have been at least a dozen other liveaboard’s in the bay, each with a full complement of divers in the water, also trying to get a good look at dolphins. Each liveaboard had a couple of ribs picking up divers and dropping them off in front of the pod, cutting off their escape at every turn. While the people didn’t mean them any harm, I’m not sure the dolphins understood it. Once I realized the dolphins were just trying to escape, I had to get out of the water, but that few seconds of close interaction was big magic. I doubt I’ll forget. Something else I’ll never forget was having a ring side seat to a fairly large bait ball of silvery fish getting slammed by barracuda above, jacks from all sides, and a different type of barracuda fish striking from below. We were both absolutely mesmerized to the point of being enveloped by the ball and I realized the bait fish were using us to hide, sometimes you almost couldn’t see, but there wasn’t much to be done about it, beyond having a fish eye view of the slaughter. It was like being inside a wildlife documentary and seemed to last for several minutes, until the bait fish apparently realized their survival strategy wasn’t working and swam off. Probably never see anything like that again, a real wild kingdom education. Topped it all off with 10 days on the Nile, antiquities, etc… All I can say is: going to Egypt and not seeing the antiquities, is like going to a coral reef and not getting in the water. I’d recommend the dawn balloon ride in Luxor, even though we came down in some farmer’s back yard and squashed his corn, which seemed to make him profoundly unhappy, at any rate I suffered no harm and didn’t have to shell out any extra money, so it was all good. All in all, this was a vacation I’ll remember about as long as I’ll remember anything. I gave the advanced rating 3 stars, but if all I’d seen was the Caribbean, I’d give it 5 stars. Bottom line: Worth every penny. Security: People ask if I felt safe in Egypt and I tell them that other than the occasional pissed-off farmer, of course it’s safe: there are soldiers with machine guns on every street corner and army roadblocks every couple of miles to keep a lid on things. We estimated going through metal detectors, emptying pockets and purses around 23 times during the trip. The only time I felt unsafe was at the Cairo airport the last day, arriving at 0:dark30 to the chants of hundreds if not thousands of young men in front of the departure terminal, jumping up and down, punching their fists in the air, chanting in Arabic. The kind of volume you hear at a football game. Sweetie’s fingernails were cutting into my arm and I was getting a sinking feeling in my stomach, wondering why the driver kept going forward, but we were already into the crowd and as we stopped, the driver looked back at me with a sly smile and said over the roar of the crowd “Don’t worry, it’s only a soccer rally”.
Reporter and Travel
Dive Experience	251-500 dives
Where else diving	Southern US, Bahamas, T&C, Roatan, Cozumel, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Polynesia, Red Sea
Closest Airport	Marsa Alam	Getting There	Flew AA to Heathrow, then British Airways to Prague for 2 days, which looked like the cheapest, easiest way to get to Marsa Alam (we weren’t the only ones on the Aggressor trip to go through Prague). B.A. lost our luggage, which showed up at the hotel, literally while we were waiting in the lobby for the taxi to take us to the airport, but a win is a win and I couldn’t have been happier if I’d just won the lottery. Prague has been on my list for some time and didn’t disappoint. Beautiful city.
Dive Conditions
Weather	sunny, windy, dry	Seas	calm, choppy, no currents
Water Temp	67-69°F / 19-21°C	Wetsuit Thickness	3
Water Visibility	40-90 Ft/ 12-27 M
Dive Policy
Dive own profile	yes
Enforced diving restrictions
Liveaboard?	yes	Nitrox Available?	yes
What I Saw
Sharks	None	Mantas	None
Dolphins	Schools	Whale Sharks	None
Turtles	None	Whales	None
Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):
Corals		Tropical Fish
Small Critters		Large Fish
Large Pelagics
Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Subject Matter	N/A	Boat Facilities	N/A
Overall rating for UWP's	N/A	Shore Facilities	N/A
UW Photo Comments	[None]

Report currently has 3 Helpful votes

Subscriber's Comments

By Manuel Campano in GA, US at Oct 17, 2019 11:53 EST

Thank you for your review, by far the most helpful. We are planning a trip for late March and our liveaboard leaves from Marsa Alam. We are flying from Atlanta and finding flights to Marsa Alam has been a bit of a challenge.

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Dive Review of Aggressor in Red Sea/Southern Itenerary

Aggressor: "March Cold, Great Beauty", Mar, 2019,

Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Overall Rating

Reporter and Travel

Dive Conditions

Dive Policy

What I Saw

Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):

Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Subscriber's Comments

Dive Review of Aggressor in
Red Sea/Southern Itenerary