The sun, relentless sentinel of the desert, was already peeking over the horizon when we woke up in our hotel in Hurghada; a halo of heat already enveloped the city, as if the air itself had decided to fall asleep during the night and was now awakening, ready to pour its torrid heat onto the weary population of the eastern town. We rose slowly, feeling every muscle sore from the previous day's journey. Opening the window, the outside world flooded my senses: the distant call of the muezzin, the pungent aroma of spices lingering in the air, and the chatter of the inhabitants already up and about, pursuing their survival.
The sky was a blinding blue, without a cloud to temper the sun's fury. Hurghada's streets were dusty and crowded, a bustling anthill of life. Barefoot children ran among the stalls, laughing and playing with an energy that seemed to defy the surrounding poverty. Veiled women, with proud and reserved gazes, moved agilely through the markets, deftly negotiating each purchase.
Our first contact with the local population was a display of hospitality, generosity, and curious vertical organization of labor. Our day was planned to include a cautious initial encounter with the Red Sea in the relatively protected waters off Hurghada; when one hasn't dived in a while, or when diving in an unknown location under unfamiliar conditions, it's common safety procedure to do a test dive to check the correctness of the weight, the condition of the equipment, and to refresh procedures. To do this, we had decided to rely on Steve, an Englishman who had settled in Hurghada to run a local diving center. Steve had kindly agreed to pick us up at the hotel at 7 in the morning to take us to his boat's dock. With a quarter of an hour to go before 7, we thought we would ask the hotel staff to prepare us a coffee, confident that the request wasn't too demanding, given the time and the simplicity of the task. The entire on-duty staff sprang into action with evident enthusiasm and generosity. Four people started working on the coffee machine, reassuring us minute by minute that our invigorating beverage would be ready in time to meet Steve, who was waiting for us outside the hotel. However, the timeline of the project proved too challenging for the local staff, who only managed to produce a hot drink after 20 minutes. Meanwhile, I decided to go out to meet Steve and reassure him, assuming that his British origins would lead him to have a different perception of time and schedule organization than the locals. Thus, I had the pleasure of meeting this imposing piece of Englishman, as imposing as he was jovial; he was the kind of person you'd cast as the burly sidekick in an action buddy movie. Steve, informed of the unexpected complexities in the culinary endeavor, rolled his eyes and declared himself unsurprised, bursting into a baritone laugh. While verbally expressing his detachment from such a relaxed and ineffective culture, his body language conveyed the languor of someone who, after a life spent conforming to schedules and the wear and tear of working as a bodyguard for a large multinational, had found his serenity here, where it mattered little if making a coffee took 20 minutes of work by four people. A seductive sense of oblivion began to take hold of me, and the deadlines and stress of work already seemed so far away.
When the coffee, or what according to local interpretation was supposed to be such, was finally ready, we set off in the direction of our object of desire: the Red Sea.
The quick trip through the city confirmed the first impression perceived the previous night: dilapidated buildings in the city center, colors scorched by sand and sun, a profusion of heavily armed law enforcement officers and checkpoints, an infinity of indecipherable signs promoting the products sold by countless little shops with faded windows.
Steve escorted us to the dock of his diving boat, a somewhat dated barge where numerous Egyptian workers were already diligently loading everything needed to serve the load of divers they were about to host.
If Egypt hadn't presented itself with the best image of professionalism and progress, at least in the hospitality sector, the diving industry is certainly a sector where Egypt excels.
Let’s be clear… neither Steve's boat nor the many other diving barges moored alongside and ready to depart gave the impression of being in their prime; the rust crusting every visible joint gave the impression that any of those boats could break apart at any moment under the unexpected stress of a slightly more intense wave, and the sight of numerous wrecks protruding from the waters along the coast was no more reassuring than it gave the impression of a dynamic salvage activity of even more rusted and encrusted wrecks. But the onboard staff and marine guides gave, at first glance, the impression of having done that job for a long time and knowing how to do it well; it was probably just the investment in fixed capital that left something to be desired. After all, I don't believe any sura of the Quran imposes the immediate removal of wrecks from the coast, and a new wreck means a new dive spot, so…
We stayed on the dock for a long time, waiting for the boat to be set up, watching the sea surface whipped by a tense and scorching wind, with our spirits in turmoil from conflicting feelings: the excitement of finally experiencing the wonder of a tropical sea, with all the colors and teeming life we had only seen through mediated images, and the fear of facing challenging dives, potentially very different from a dive at Cerboli or Argentario.
Then came the time to cast off, and after a short navigation, we docked on the El Fanadir reef. We diligently attended the briefing, and after a preparation carried out mechanically and in a state of excitement, it was time to take the giant stride and plunge into that intensely blue water...
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