Diving into 2021 at Marsa Shagra

Warning: there's a lot of pictures of tents in this post.

"Every person has two homes - where they come from and Egypt", quipped Adil, our dive guide as we bobbed in the Red Sea waiting for the boat to pick us up after an afternoon dive, watching a beautiful golden sun set in the desert.

Perhaps he's right.

I always associate New Year's celebrations with sunshine and seaside and a dive in Blue Bay and being home stuffing myself with food. Even last year, when a cyclone battered Mauritius so hard that the airport closed on New Year's Eve, I hopped onto the next available flight even though it meant a holiday of only three days. But a New Year during a pandemic is different... for the first time, I would not be going home to Mauritius. But I was craving the sea so the next best option (the only option, really) was ... Egypt.

So, I kicked off 2021 with a spontaneous trip back to Egypt. After two days in Cairo, I made my way south, to Marsa Alam, which is a haven for divers and ocean lovers for now (until it's taken over by grotesque all-inclusive resorts).

I've never understood people who return to the same holiday destination but I surprised myself by returning to a place I'd visited in September - the Red Sea Diving Safari's Marsa Shagra village. Here I was again, after an initial whirlwind trip in September. A lot of people that you will meet here are repeat visitors - and soon you understand why.

Marsa Shagra is a protected nook in the southern part of Egypt, close to Marsa Alam, with a rather spectacular house reef. It’s actually one of three “villages” that the Red Sea Diving Safari Resort owns in the deep south of Egypt - the other two being Marsa Nakari and Wadi Lahami (that I'm keen to visit). In the 1990s, the founder of the Red Sea Safari Resort decided to create a perfect little paradise for ocean lovers and divers. Instead of plonking yet another monstrous concrete building with 200 rooms on the beach, he decided to serve the diving community by setting up an eco-resort, with a big emphasis on protecting the house reef.

I mean, it's hard not to want to protect beauty like this:

There was even a baby whale shark in the house reef recently! And dolphins and turtles frequently come to play in the healthy coral.

^Video from the resort.

Rather than going commercial, it seems that the Red Sea Diving Safari resort thrives on word-of-mouth recommendations, passed from one diver to the other. And it's an organic operation, so a lot of people that you meet here have been loyally coming for years and years, and have seen it expand. It's almost like a family retreat.

Marsa Shagra is truly a hidden gem. The first impression you have when you arrive is - quiet. And space.

The whole place is well thought out, and whether it was intentionally designed so, the place feels almost deserted. It's a real treat when you want to esape the noise and bustle of a crowded city like Addis Ababa.

If you prefer your private space, you can opt for one of the little earth-coloured chalets that blend into the landscape. But the real attraction is the little tents and huts, spaced out on the beach like scattered marshmallows.

After the dumpsterfire that 2020 has been, I needed a retreat - a place where I could be on my own, detox from my own thoughts and work, and set the tone for 2021 for myself. Shagra seemed to be the perfect location. Last time, I’d been in one of the earth-coloured chalets. On this trip, I wanted to be as close to the sea as possible so the staff very helpfully put me up in one of the tents on the shore. It was utterly quiet, except for the sound of the wind and waves, giving me the impression of being completely alone in the world, marooned on a deserted island.

At every moment of the day , you are struck by the windswept beauty of this place. Mornings are when the wind picks up and the sunrise casts a soft pink glow on the tents and white sand. It is a picture of blissful stillness.

Sunset brings you a palette of breathtaking golden colours.

At night, the little tents light up like lanterns against an ink coloured sky dotted with thousands of bright stars. It looks very special, especially when the moon rises from the sea. My phone doesn’t do this justice. No matter how many times I saw this sight, I was in awe.

^ watching a red-hued half moon rise from the sea.

You fall asleep and wake up, lulled by the sound of the waves a few metres away from you, until every noise and worry has been swept away from your brain.

Most days begin quite early with optional dive excursions planned around 7am. The main activity at Shagra is – the clue’s in the name – diving. I was amazed by how you go about it: you can take a diving package, and hire out the gear, and dive as many times as you wish to if you have a buddy (or a self-reliant certification). And you can supplement the daily reef dives with excursions to some of the spots nearby. The dive shed is the “noisiest place” at Shagra and is always a hive of activity with divers coming in and out, setting up their gear or washing it off, and the divemasters running a briefing or going over the details of dive courses with their students again.

On my first day, the dive excursion was to Sha’ab Samadai – the dolphin house. Of course I was in! We first drove to Marsa Nakari – the second of Red Sea Diving Safari’s eco-villages – to take the boat. Marsa Nakari was closed at the time – January is already a fallow period because of winter, but COVID-19 had further affected tourist footfall. The feeling of being on a deserted island intensified.

We sped off in our boat very early in the morning. Before long, we saw hundreds of dolphins on our way to the dive sites. We slipped in the water.

There were several pods. I just bobbed in the water and watched them from a distance, and it appears they were in a very playful mood as they kept swimming past me. I swear my life peaked when a dolphin started circling me out of curiosity – he seemed to be amused by the sound of my laughter. (After 30 seconds of the dolphin circling me I did wonder if this was predatory behaviour and if he would start bashing me on the head like they normally do with his tail or something.)

I absolutely loved the fact that we let the dolphins come to us rather than intrude in their space.

We very reluctantly got onto the boat to head to our dive sites which were incredible in their richness and beauty. I’m horribly claustrophobic and tend to avoid diving in any closed or semi-closed space. But after the high of seeing the dolphins... I pushed myself to venture into a cavern where gaps and openings in the rock and coral formation allow light to shimmer through in the most mesmerising display.

Outside the caverns, thousands of orange anthias fishes, typical of the Red Sea, hover near reefs like confetti or underwater butterflies.

Shivering slightly, we head back to Nakari to get the bus back to Shagra. I briefly wondered if I could just stay here, marooned in my own slice of paradise. I certainly did try!

^Just look at that crystal water. All for me!

^Of course, on a deserted island one is bound to find treasure!

^Seashells are mermaid treasure.

Post-dive time is obviously FOOD time. Every day, the cooks prepare an array of salads and a mix of warm Egyptian and non-Egyptian food at lunch, breakfast and dinner. Desserts are often incredible – especially the Egyptian ones like the basbousa sweet cake. While it’s not Michelin-level food or fine dining by any stretch of imagination, it’s all very varied and the Egyptian options are always interesting, and I suppose being out at sea all day makes you ravenously hungry and everything ends up tasting great. You have your food in the restaurant overlooking the bay, watching the sea sparkle turquoise and blue.

^Ten million different types of salad.

I felt incredibly spoilt and privileged being here.

After lunch, you can opt to go for more dives, or simply chill in one of the many areas around the site, or go for yoga or a massage.

At night, there’s more of that food to be had, and more conversations with fellow divers – “did you see that turtle?” “wasn’t that stonefish huge?” “how did your dive go?”. It’s a very friendly, familial atmosphere.

Post-dinner, you usually feel the sense of peace and mellow relaxedness that comes from spending a day by the sea. More often than not, you will pass out in an incredibly restful sleep, lulled by the sound of the waves. If you’re not sleeping, you can hop over to the Bedouin tent for shisha, coffee or tea, and more conversations. I have yet to meet a person I didn’t find interesting (hello Ines and Sandra!) Heck, I even bumped into people who shared my weird musical taste (hey there Kareem and Asser!)

^Making friends.

Very often you'll get to interact with the staff and I suppose they make the experience better. Cheeky Andy who makes you laugh, smiley Kareem who makes you believe in yourself or lovely, lovely Ondine who has one of the most beautiful voices and an accent I could listen to for hours. All the dive guides are stars (one of them rescued a woman from a shark attack and had her back to shore from Elphinstone and into the hospital in less than 10 minutes a few weeks ago), as are the front staff. I really hope that the tourism sector picks up again soon, as I'm sure this gundamned pandemic has hit this slice of the world really hard and the other two eco-villages, Nakari and Wadi Lahami, are more or less closed.

You just melt from one moment to the other. I thought I’d find five days here to be a tad bit long but in the end they went by so fast, too fast. Some mornings you wake up and snorkel in water clear as glass, and often find a pod of dolphin come up to play. On other days you might attempt a challenging dive at the world class site of Elphinstone, or a more relaxed one playing in a colourful site like Long Canyon. Or you can just chill with a book and a glass of mango juice. Somehow, you're never bored. Being here feels like a reset - and you leave rebooted, purged of stress from the inside out.

^Feeling completely serene

With its obstinate emphasis on sustainability, Marsa Shagra is a defiant middle finger in the face of corporate greed, tasteless expansion and mass consumerism. It embraces the sea in a way that feels simple and authentic. Are there more options like this in Egypt or Africa?