Dangerous reef is the most southerly of the St. John’s reefs dived from Egypt. This is one of the few dive sites in the Southern Red Sea that offer a reasonably shallow flat bottom. This makes it good for an overnight anchorage and night diving. This is a medium sized, diamond shape reef. The hard coral wall drops down to around 18 meters where there is a gently sloping sandy bottom with small coral heads. A family of napoleon wrasse and free-swimming morays are common in this area. The topography here makes for great swim-throughs. There are many breaks in the reef shallows that allow easy and safe penetration.

Gregor Butala
PADI MSDT #938480

The Umbria was scuttled by it’s Italian Captain one hour before Italy entered into WWII. This kept the English from capturing its 6,000 bombs, 36,000 detonators, rifle ammo and 3 Fiat Lungas. Oh yeah, and several thousand bottles of wine.

About the auction:
· You may make your bid for 2 people on the Cassiopeia page of Facebook.
· Simply add your bid to the page.
· Always check the previous highest bid which you can continuously follow on the page.
· Bid only if you can participate in the safari!

What you are bidding on:
· A one-week diving safari at the price you want to go.
· Safari date: September 8 – 15, 2010
· Safari itinerary: Brother Islands
· Vessel: the 5-star luxury liveaboard M/Y Cassiopeia
· The price includes: 7 nights full-board accommodations onboard, transfers between Hurghada airport and the boat, diving, 12l tanks and weights, taxes and shisha/water pipe onboard.

Details of the auction:
· Last bid: August 26, 2010, 20:00 ET
· Starting bid: EUR300 / person (maximum 2 people)
· Minimum bid increment: EUR10 / person
· Auction date: August 12 – 26, 2010
· The winner will be notified by e-mail.

Important:
· The prize is not transferable to a person other than the bidder and it cannot be exchanged for money.
· Guests already registered and booked for the same safari are not eligible to enter the auction.
· Additional expenses apply: Egyptian visa (USD15 / person); Brothers Marine Park fee (EUR40 / person); alcoholic beverages, Nitrox, equipment rental, Satellite phone use, T-shirt purchases onboard and other expenses not included in the price.

Another Monday morning in December, another trip to the office. This does not sound too upbeat but it helps a lot that it is 29C outside, that three baby monkeys are playing with abandon in front of the door of my room, that I work on Thailand’s most beautiful island and that I have to dive for my salary. The walk to my work (Scuba Marine Diving Base) takes fifteen minutes which I could improve by only a jog or by taking the bike as no motorised vehicles are allowed on the Island of Phi Phi.

Maurizio, my student for the day, arrives a bit late, eyes somewhat closed, his walk gently wobbly despite my dutiful warning as his instructor at the beginning of the diving course against the local sources of danger highlighting the lethal nature of the stonefish and the Mekong whiskey. Poor chap was probably done in by the latter the night before. After a speedy first-aid we agree that it is in our best interest to start the dive in the afternoon and in the morning we will go over the theoretical portion of the course and he will practise navigation with compass in hand but strictly on land.

In the afternoon Mother Nature does the unthinkable – the weather is even more beautiful than in the morning and the two cotton ball clouds were obviously tossed to the horizon for show only. Strangely elongated boats line the beach swaying like hollowed-out bananas in the annoyingly blue sea. These are the local “longtail” boats. The hulls are ok but the engine constructions affixed to the stern with sugarcane twines and size 100 nails look more like something out of the imagination of a Mad Max special effects designer. Our captain, Nui’s boat is probably the only contraption in the area equipped with the most extras. He welded together a complete steering wheel from a Zsuk wheel, a spear and ripple slate. This way, unlike his fellow boaters navigating with a long stick, he proudly steers his make-shift wheel.

Nui is my age but no one would believe him as he looks more like his own grandfather. He carries the tanks with callused hands, puts them into the decaying stalls than smiles at me, showing all of his four teeth from which about one and a half are his own. A few yanks on the engine (self-starter? – come on…) and we are chugging towards our destination. I am trying, for the umpteenth time, to take in the sight of the hundreds of metres deep steep cliffs ripping through the still water but to this day I have an inkling that a small army of magicians work behind the scenes on this illusion. Such beauty can exist only in the movies. No wonder this island served as the location for the movie “The Beach”.

At last we arrive at the dive site and after a few minutes of wrestling with our equipment, Maurizio and I fight our way into the sea. Beneath us an every-day wonder à la Thailand: 25-metre visibility, swarming schools of fish, a variety of corals, steep walls covered with glassfish curtains. Shall I go on? I shall.

At 15 metres, stunned and staring at each other in the eye with a metre-long turtle, a feeling overwhelms me – this is exactly where I want to live. The turtle must read my mind because it shakes its head as if saying “It’s not gonna work, dude, unless you grow gills” and peacefully begins to chew on some coral. I slowly turn from my old armoured friend and look ahead from where two sharks are coming at me really fast. Really-really fast. If I was not in a trans anyway, I would surely panic but I just wait until they steer clear of me. And these bastards wait for the very last minute and miss me by two metres, one to the left and the other to the right. Thankfully my eye balls find their way back to their sockets quite fast, so by the time I turn around to look at my mate, no more shock is showing on my face. And I cannot believe my eyes – Maurizio is giving his full attention to a sea cucumber while the shark odyssey has just passed him by.

From here on our dive is quite normal. The two murenas jammed into a crevice do seem interesting but nothing mind-blowing and I am getting used to the fact that visibility is reduced because I cannot see through the thick schools of fish. For those who feel there is no more space left on the rush-hour bus at 8 o’clock in the morning, I recommend the glassfish swarming at the Bida Nai cliff. Finally, after almost an hour of wandering about, we ascend.

- So? – I ask Maurizio. So?! Sooo?! How was it??
- Not bad but there were more sharks on the Maldives. And visibility wasn’t that good either.
- Screw you! – I answer but luckily in Hungarian and to myself only. Visibility is not that good? Well, dear Maurizio, visit the mining lake at Nyékládháza or Dorog in Hungary and take a hard look at the two freshwater crabs you will find at 5 metres because you will not find any another living thing around the lake. Except perhaps for the fish keeper.

After work I felt like watching a pirated Hollywood movie – they showed the “Lord of the Ring 2” in the smallest Thai cafes 2 weeks before it hit Los Angeles. Of course the quality is usually like a Metallica concert broadcasted over an ancient Zenith radio and the subtitles rarely match the timing of the dialogues but it did not bother anyone too much. So, I spread myself out comfortably in a restaurant and while on the widescreen TV Mr. Fodo and his friends were getting into blood chilling escapades,

I was trying to catch the eye of the sleepy waitress. Soon there she was:
- Helloooo. Naaj deej! (I think she said “Nice day”.)
- Sawat di khrap! (I figured I would start with the local greeting to steal her heart.) One coke, please.

- Bangkok? (Pulled-up eyebrows, it is obvious my order did not go through the first time.)
- Oooneee cookeee. Yees. (Saying it slowly, elongating my words hoping to be luckier than before.)
- Baaaangkoook?? (It is obvious her thoughts are around the capital and have nothing to do with the restaurant.)
- Coke. Cola. Coca. Coke. One. COKE. Please. (Then I point at the fridge where the red cans are lined up.)
- Aaaaah, an kok! (Her eyes were saying “Then why didn’t you say so?!” and she takes off but I wanted to ask something else too.)
- And one vanilla-ice shake, please. (As soon as I said that I know I went overboard. There was no way she would understand that.)
- What? (She changed strategy. She did not even try to repeat it after me, she was just looking at me wondering.)
- Aaa vannillaa—-iiiiccceee—shaaaakkeee! (This would be faster for me to show with charades but here I need to talk.)
- Mahha jaii ja amiee ahi kai jai khaa! (I do not know if she was encouraging me or sending me to hell but I have decided not to give up.)
- Vanilla. Ice. Shake. SHAKE!
- Sheeehh? (And yes, there was the sparkle of understanding in her eyes!)
- Sheehh! Ice! Vanilla!
- Valla-aaaj-sheeeeh?
- Yees!
- Sorry, no have.
And with that, she walked back towards the kitchen exuding curry smells.

Translated by Anita Riberdy, based on the original short story “A retusált Édenkert” by András Szepesházi

The log book is essential for every diver as it lists your diving experiences including your number of dives, information that is requested in diving centres and onboard diving vessels before starting your dives.

Furthermore it can prove to be useful in cases of insurance matters because if you record the details of your dives accurately, you can provide information on who your buddy was and that you had adhered to all diving regulations.

And of course, every log book provides for wonderful memories as with every dive you gain more experience! There is lots of space to record all your diving adventures! Surely, this simple little tool will just add to your memories in the future!

What does a diving instructor do when he happens to be on vacation? The specimen with a normal working brain goes to the Tatra mountains to map out the feeding habits of mountain goats. The truly twisted one goes diving. He goes diving and enjoys that his time underwater is not spent with emptying masks and with the demonstration of how to rise above emergency situations but rather with careless floating. Naturally, there are some mean ones among these twisted specimens for whom the off-duty (incognito) dives hide further enjoyment – the tormentation of their on-duty counterparts.

When our skinny, smiling Egyptian dive guide, Salaka, blessed with a healthy dose of optimism, asked us on the first day of our South safari how much experience and how many dives we had, I answered with no hesitation:

- I had my OWD exam two years ago in a Hungarian lake. Unfortunately I haven’t been diving since.
- Then how many dives do you have actually? – asked Salaka, still smiling but the first faint sign of worry had begun to appear in his eyes.
- Well, four. I haven’t been diving in the sea before and to be honest, I’m a bit scared. But I’m sure everything will be ok…

Salaka’s smile broke into tiny pieces and fell onto the boat’s deck like porcelan tiles. He mumbled something in his mother tongue and I seemed to hear the name of Allah at least four times but fortunately most of his speech was foreign to me. I could really relate. We signed up for a week-long Deep South safari and we looked forward to dives full of drop-offs, currents, sharks and mantas. He, however was standing in front of a poor beginner whose life he had to guard. I felt sorry for him for a minute and I almost revelaed my disguise but then I remembered my own experiences. Like when I was guiding a safari for a week in the most beautiful part of the Adriatic Sea and my beloved boss shared with me two small details about the trip only a few minutes before our departure:

- the boat was overbooked, so I did not have a cabin and
- there were two 12-year-old diver newbies onboard who were not permitted to dive deeper than 12 metres and I was to take care of them.

That trip was great – I was chewing on sea grass like a well-behaved lamantine at a depth of 10 metres and on every dive I was desperately trying to find some new kind of moss for the kids to show. As we were wandering on the uninteresting reef tops, the adults’ equipment let out long strands of bubbles from the deep and burst on the surface just like my own illusions fed by the beautiful life of a diving instructor. In the evenings the boat was loud of adult conversation and bets of who saw the most crawfish, eel and murena. And there was the unmistaken message in the kids’ eyes that I must have been the worst instructor in the world since I had not been able to show them any of these things during the week. I tried to improve my reputation with an octopus but to my demise, that day at 35 metres the others found a metre-long catshark. And who cares about the octopus when you can have a catshark?

So, I was even more determined to stick to my original plan and be a beginner diver or at least until the first dive. There were problems already when putting my equipment together: I put the INT stage on the tank backwards, my BCD was not secured to the tank, I put on my suit the wrong way and I was just standing there looking like a sock turned inside out and filled with wet cotton balls. To Salaka’s credit, the smile returned to his face and he kindly corrected my mistakes.

The only time his lower lip trembled slightly is when I put the breathing apparatus in my mouth incorrectly but he gathered up his strength, smiled again and showed me the correct way. My friends in the back were rolling on the floor laughing and were trying not to be noticed and not to blow the cover off my satanic plan. My friend Tibor Fazekas who had introduced me to the world of instructors years before, bringing shame to Lothar Matthaus’s coaching qualities, was hissing from the back: „Make your knees tremble, let him see you’re scared!” Now looking seriously worried, Salaka made me say again the golden rule: „Never hold your breath under the water!”, then with a gentle push, he helped me in the water.

Once in the water – I am almost ashamed to admit –, I gave it my all, everything I had seen from my beginner strudents during my 3-year instructor odessy. My mask was filled with water, my breathing was heavy, I used my hands instead of my flippers, I turned onto my back and I was staring at Salaka with my eyes wide open: „Now what?”

Salaka fought a heroic fight to calm me down on the sand bench at 5 metres deep because every time he turned away, I let the air out through my spare regulator and after 10 minutes, I managed to get below 100 bars. Salaka could not believe his eyes and was staring at my pressure gauge then into my eyes. The latter he could not see much of as my mask was half filled with water and the other half fogged up. I do not think he was ever this close in his dive guide carreer to whip out his knife and put an end to both of our miseries. I felt I should not push it any more and anyway, my dark side was getting further in the back and I actually wanted to enjoy the dive. So, I emptied my mask, took my floating position and asked Salaka to guide me.

Salaka was looking at me with growing satisfaction but not without suspicion. Slowly he let go of the tap of my tank which up until then he had been holding on to by both hands to prevent me from doing anything stupid. He kept showing me the „OK” sign with a growing smile on his face and I saw hope slowly returning into him. It was time to give the final blow. I removed my mask, reached into the pocket of my BCD, took out the sunglasses I had put there before the dive, placed it on my nose with a cool move, showed him an „OK” and tried to continue diving with a straight face. Then it hit him what actually had been happening until then. Unfortunately I was not able to see his face without my mask but my friends, watching us from close, later on the boat told me of our guide’s reaction.

After a couple of minutes I put my mask back on and finally we were able to dive without a worry, though Salaka was giving me signs under the water I had not seen until then and if I figured them correctly, he wanted me to initiate sexual relations with one (or more) goats. Later he slowly cooled off, just laughed and shooked his head and we began circling the wreck of an unfortunate fishing boat at 15 metres deep.

Visibility was approaching infinity, bending the sandy sea bottom which was dotted with bold coral-covered towers looking like gingerbread houses. The ship, resting on her side, – the captain must not have been navigating to the best of his availabilities if he had not noticed the reef peeking out of the water – provided a cozy home for numerous coral and fish species. In front of the cabin a team of hesitant masked butterfly fish gathered just like ladies bound for the opera at the foot of the velvet-clad stairway – I could actually hear as the orchestra was practising inside. The prima donna, a 2-metre-long murena, was looking out of the cabin nonchalantly, practising her scales while preparing for her performace. Below him a few prawns were scramming like the orchestra’s feather-brained strings who mixed up their sheet music and of them just realised that he had brought to the permier his favourite recipe collection instead.

The ancipitation was growing. As was the school of butterfly fish holding their council meeting. The gaping of the murena and the mad dash of crabs was speeding up. And the conductor arrived at last – an eagle ray swam over the wreck out of nowehere, its tux elegantly floating around it. The usher, a titan triggerfish with an especially mean stare, made everyone aware with aggressive sand digging antics and bulging eyes that getting into the audience before the show can only be done over his body.

After the performance we carried on swimming by the wreck, back towards our boat. Though my computer said there was still plenty of time, the air wasted at the beginning of the dive took its revenge, so soon we had to return to the surface. Under the boat a giant Napoleon fish with a typical nonchalant attitude checked us out from the corner of its eye then swam away. Its bulging forehead could have easily stood for enormous intellectual assets but those who are familiar with the undewater world know these species hardly go beyond the „eat – look to the side – empty” thought process. Perhaps some will go as fas as wondering „does that diver have some boiled eggs, my favourite snack?” and when the answer is affirmative, they devour them not thinking this action could cost them their lives. On the other hand, in the midst of these thoughts, they seemed quite satisfied unlike some of our fellow city dwellers who live their unhappy lives mulling over much more complicated problems. As I was looking at the close-to-two-tonne body slowly swimming away, all of a sudden I was not able to determine who actually got the best of evolution.

We slowly ascended and I tried to leave the water quickly before my kind dive guide could take his matching revenge on me on land. Helping hands stretched towards me on the ladder and Mahmoud, one of the handy guys on the boat yelled in my face using all his English knowledge with a toothless grin: „Everything OK?”. Later we found out, he freely used this phrase not only after dives but also in place of saying good-bye, saying hello and the weather report. I answered with the manditory „Everything OK” and got myself onto the deck.

There Salaka, forgetting about his tank still on his back and the weights on his waist, wobbled towards me.
- You… you.. you! You know, you are a… you are a… – repeated his opinion about me.

Then with a wide grin he patted me on the back and I gave thanks that he got to be only 60 kilograms during his active diving years. During the next few days I often got these back pats along with various hints about in which historical era should people like me, blessed with this kind of „humour”, have been liquidated. But every time I could see the relief in his eyes that he did not have to suffer through the week with me.

And me? I had a peaceful and sound sleep every night, probably with a smile on my face. Who said the bad always get what comes to them?

Translated by Anita Riberdy, based on the original short story “Az oktató sötét oldala” by András Szepesházi

There were 37 photos sent to us in total that met the contest rules.

Thank you for your photos, your interest and your participation in our contest!

Due to the big demand and the number of interested contestants, we have decided to draw 2 winners tonight who can take part in the safari and may also bring 1 guest each with them!

The draw was performed using the Google Docs Spreadsheet random function. In the event the winners are unable to attend the safari for any reason, we are going to draw a new winner!

Our lucky winners are:

- Kata Tüske
- Robbert Vrouwe

The winners will be notified via a Facebook message. In the event they will not be able to join the safari, the new winners’ names will be published on Facebook as well!

How to enter the game?

Upload your picture about M/Y Cassiopeia or M/Y Andromeda into our Facebook Cassiopeiasafari Group and win a free stay onboard Cassiopeia from 04th until 11th August, 2010 (including transfers between Hurghada airport and boat, 7 nights fullboard accomodation onboard, diving, taxes and sisha/waterpipe onboard). The winner can be anyone who uploads a picture of either of the 2 boats. You can upload more than one picture, but it will count as one participant in the game.

The winner will be notified by e-mail until 31st of July.
The deadline for submitting  your photos is 31st of July 2010 20:00 pm

Remarks:
- The price is not transferable to another person and can not be exchanged for money.
- Who is already registered and booked for the same safari is not eligible to enter the game.

Small Gota is a small circular shaped reef. Deep walls drop away vertically on all sides into the abyss and the upper reef is absolutely covered in colourful soft coral. Long pink and red whip corals stretch out into the blue and there are some magnificent gorgonian fan corals between 20 and 30m. The upper 20 metres of this reef is teeming with small marine life of all descriptions and tuna and trevallie cruise past, looking for any opportunity of a meal.

Large shoals of blue lunar fusiliers venture cautiously away from the reef only to dart back in tight formation at the first sign of danger. A whole family of humphead napoleon wrasse swim majestically around the reef perimeter. Current normally runs from north to south so if your dive boat is equipped with a zodiac or RIB the best option by far is to get dropped at the northern most tip of the reef and then spend up to an hour cruising with any current or gently swimming back to your boat mooring on the south side.

Finishing the dive in the top few meters of water, there are small fissures in the reef which are well worth exploring during your safety stops.