The treasure of Aqaba Reef

We loved our new daily routine: waking up early, eating breakfast, waiting for Nabeel to pick us up, taking us to the best Arabic coffee and falafel place in town and then diving.

No matter how early we came to the center, Graham was always there, waiting dressed in his wet suit.

The first dive after the AOWD we did in the Cable Valley. Again, we prepared our equipment and put it in the truck. By now the truck got his own name - The Divemobil. It was quite an adventure driving around with the Divemobil. One day, the transmission didn´t work, the next day the battery was low, then it didn´t start at all and we had to push it...

The dive in the Cable Valley was also a deep dive. We reached the depth of 32 m that day and there we saw a 1,25 m long beautiful napoleon fish just swimming around.

Next dive was in the Japanese garden, which was full of sea life. It was a shallow dive - up to 8 m. We saw sea worm, red frog fish, blow fish, porcupine fish, shrimp, lion fish and buffer fish.

As we came out of the water, the driver was already waiting for us. There he took a picture of us, which can sum up our vacation.

On the last day of our diving we went to Tarmac 5. There was another wreck - barch, where we saw a four color chromodoris. Our maximum depth that we reached on this dive was 27 m.

The last dive we did in King Abdullah Reef. We saw a lot of Red Sea banner, which is very typical for this area. We also saw gray moray and spotted eagle ray.

After our last dive it was time to say goodbye to Graham. We had a lot of fun with him and we know, we always say this, but he was the best instructor we ever had.

Greetings from Aqaba,

Jerneja & Boris

Back to civilization and AOWD

As we arrived back to the visitor´s center, we were approached by an Italian couple. They asked us, where we were heading and if we were willing to share a taxi with them to lower our costs. We gladly accepted the offer, because none of us wanted to deal with those people anymore.

The drive towards Aqaba was short. We made it even shorter by exchanging each-other´s travelling experiences. Soon we saw the sea and we knew we finally arrived - back to the civilization.



First we found the hotel and took a long shower. Now it was time to find a diving club. We began by visiting the one´s around our hotel, but we weren´t happy with what we found. Either the instructors didn´t speak English well enough, or the diving was too expensive. We decided to go back to the hotel and ask the clerk at the reception. He recommended a friend and we decided to give him a chance. He came to our hotel, where we talked about what we wanted. We were planning to stay in Aqaba for 8 days, so we had enough time for Jerneja to do her Advance Open Water Diver´s license and for some additional recreational dives. He has an English diving instructor and he gave us a good price, so we decided to dive with Jordan diving center.

The very next day Nabeel (the manager of the diving club) picked us up at 9 o´clock at our hotel and took us to the diving center, which is located about 5 km to the south of the city. There we met our diving instructor, 54 year old Graham Skelly and some other local guys, who help around the center.

Before we dived in to the water, we talked to Graham, what we wanted. AOWD class demands 5 dives and we agreed upon the following: Peak Performance Buoyancy, Wreck Dive, Deep Dive, Navigation and Night Dive. Boris joined all these dives as Jerneja´s buddy. Additionally to AOWD dives we took 5 more recreational dives, also with Graham as our instructor.

We got our equipment ready and put it in to the truck and Graham drove us to the Rainbow reef, where we had our first dive after a very long time. The purpose of Peak Performance Buoyancy dive was to refresh our knowledge.

After lunch we went to the Cedar´s pride. This is a 75 m long ship wreck, which was put in to the water by King Abdullah II, so he could do a wreck dive. 20 years later, the wreck became a home for a lot of sea animals and is as rich with sea life as any other reef.

The next morning, Nabeel picked us up again, took us to the best falafel place in Aqaba, where we bought our lunch and got us some real Arabic coffee. He was really spoiling us.

As we arrived to the diving center, Graham was already there, waiting for us. After we prepared the equipment, he took us to the Eel garden, where we did the Deep Dive. We went 30 m under the sea level. To estimate diver´s abilities and influence on the diver at such dept, Jerneja had to solve two exercises - one in the center and one at 30 m depth. Result: in the center she needed 1 second to find the correct result and under the water it took her 6 seconds.

After lunch we went to another diving place. We were particularly excited about this one, because we went to the Seven sisters and underwater tank. Jerneja passed her Navigation Dive there. With compass in her hand, she had to find the tank and shape a square while swimming.

On a third day, we did the last dive to complete AOWD. It was the Night Dive. But we wanted to do a recreational dive before the night, so Graham took us to the Gorgonian, where we saw stone fish, lion fish, blow fish, gray moray and huge see fan.

We were waiting in the diving center for night to fall. They have a pool, which was a lot of fun.

As the night fell, Graham took the truck and went to pick up a military navy clerk. According to Jordan regulations, there has to be a military navy clerk present during a night dive, because of vicinity of Syrian boarder. As they came back, we went back to diving sight, we already knew - Seven Sisters and the Tank. It is always a good idea to do a night dive at the place you know. It was pitch black, so we had torches. The military clerk stayed at the beach as we dived in to the water. It was most definitely the most memorable dive, we ever did. The sea looks completely different at night. Other animals come out during the night and the visibility is a lot worse. We saw red octopus, sleeping stingray, squid, shrimp and star fish.

With the night dive the AOWD was complete.

Greetings from Aqaba,

Jerneja & Boris

Off the beaten track: Wadi Rum

We moved on to the desert, more precisely Wadi Rum.



We organized transport from Petra to Wadi Rum at our hotel in Petra. On the way to Wadi Rum a friendly driver called Ahmed wanted to sell us some arrangements in Wadi Rum, including sleeping in the desert and all the activities. By now we were very skeptical about these special offers made by taxi drivers. The first strange thing: we wouldn't sleep inside the desert area but somewhere outside. The second strange thing: Ahmed also showed us notes written by other tourists who were all extremely satisfied with what he offered and among these notes there was not even one negative comment. The third strange thing: we read in Lonely Planet that everyone who visit Wadi Rum need to register by authorities at the entrance to the area. So we decided to not to accept Ahmed's offer. Suddenly his friendliness stopped. Ahmed literally threw us out of the car and some other guy pick us up. These guy was constantly arguing with someone on the mobile phone. Even though the argue was in Arabic language we knew it is about us not accepting Ahmed's offer. Fortunately we arrived to the entrance of Wadi Rum. As soon as we got out of the car two "Bedouins" came to us and explain to us what they were offering. Actually it was not really an explanation but more showing prices of tours and sleeping places. We agreed to do the six hours desert activities on the first day, oversleep in the desert and do one hour camel riding on the next day.

We changed car to more desert appropriate vehicle.

And off we go to the first sight - The King Lawrence Springs. The rocky mountain with water near to the top.

We just went up and down while driver was waiting for us in the vehicle. During the drive he was quiet and he was nothing more than just a driver. We were on our own. Luckily there were some other people on the sights, so we know where to go and what to see. Anyway our next stop was the sand dune.

After some pictures in the hot sand we proceed to the next stop: wall inscriptions. With all the other tourists the driver was also a guide. That's why we simply joined one group to see all the pictures and inscriptions in the wall. We heard that nobody really knows who did this inscriptions and how old they are.

The next two stops were well known small rocky bridge and large rocky bridge.

The small rocky bridge

The small rocky bridge

The large rocky bridge

The large rocky bridge

Both bridges included some climbing experience. Nevertheless we saw all 5 sights as we arranged at the entrance to the area. But it was far less than promised six hours tour. If we remove first part where we were searching gasoline for an hour the tour was 2 hours long. That's way we came to the camp far before expected. Being first in the camp had an advantage. We could choose out tent.

It was too hot to do some activities so we were just relaxing in the shadow and drinking tea.

Finally sunset!

And the dig for the dinner called Zarb has started.

After delicious meal we found some nightlife...

... and eventually fell asleep.

After sunrise and breakfast we went for a camel ride.

After 15 minutes of camel riding we arrived back to the entrance of the area. We tried to take some more photos of camels but the owner was in a hurry.

Anyhow this was the worst experience so far. It started with Ahmed and just continued with all Wadi Rum experience. Wadi Rum is very nice and it offers a lot but somehow we had bad luck. If you plan to travel to Wadi Rum, try to book everything in advance.

Greetings from the desert,

Boris & Jerneja