Competition Winner Lynne Shares Her Trip Report!

"... a fantastic Egyptian holiday, thank you so much for everything Regaldive!"

Lynne, the lucky winner of our terrific 7 night All-Inclusive Regaldive holiday at the Sunrise Marina Resort Port Ghalib is back in the UK and keen to share her wonderful experience with her fellow Regaldivers:

"To win a diving holiday with Regaldive was such a surprise, what an amazing Christmas present!  We've been diving in Egypt before so knew a little of what to expect, but this was our first time to Port Ghalib and it was great to experience somewhere new.

The booking process was really easy and before we knew it we were landing at the airport where we were swiftly driven the short 10 minute transfer the hotel by Ramadan, our Regaldive representative.  Ramadan was amazing and through his (extensive!) contacts at the hotel, managed to get us not just a room upgrade to a sea-view suite, but also full VIP wrist bands!

The Sunrise Marina Resort is a lovely hotel based right next to the marina edge, with a souk market and bars to explore.  Our suite was gigantic!  The all-inclusive food buffet always had an amazing selection of food, both Arabian and European, and we were blown away by the wonderful Egyptian hospitability.

We were diving with Emperor Divers, just across the marina.  After a very professional briefing, we enjoyed five days of excellent local diving on the reefs around Port Ghalib, and taking relaxing surface intervals in the Egyptian sunshine.  The locals all thought it was very cold and wintery, but we were basking in the 25 degree warmth and sunshine like we hadn’t seen blue sky in months!  (Which was true).

We dived every day on the house reefs, short boat rides away from the base in Port Ghalib.  The variety of fish and sea life and corals was stunning.  They even have a resident Dugong which we were lucky enough to dive with!  One day we tried to go to Elphinstone but the waves were too choppy for the journey, which was actually incredibly lucky as instead we dived my favourite dive of the holiday… we found seven turtles on one dive!  

I run a blog about reducing plastic waste (www.theplasticsoup.com) and I was determined to do my bit in the fight against plastic in the ocean by doing every dive as a Dive Against Debris for Project AWARE.  We were actually really impressed with the reefs that we dived – they are obviously well looked after!  On the first four days we only found one or two pieces of plastic we could safely remove.  Interestingly, on the last day of diving we were near an inlet where a river flowed into the sea.  Here we did find a lot of plastic being washed into the sea, and during one surface interval I managed to collect over 30 pieces of plastic from the surface alone.  It was mainly plastic bags, packaging, bottles and little water cups.  It was really interesting to see how concentrated the plastic was in one small area.

On our last day we didn’t dive, and enjoyed the beach and snorkelling on the beautiful house reef at the marina.  Our brilliant rep Ramadan had arranged an excursion for us to visit a Bedouin village in the desert, complete with a camel ride.  It was the perfect way to end a fantastic Egyptian holiday, thank you so much for everything Regaldive! 

Lynne Medlock"

Thank you so much for your wonderful feedback, Lynne. All of us at Regaldive are delighted you both had such a great time. Please call us when you are planning your next diving trip.