St. John's Reefs (8 Days / 7 Nights - 21 Dives)
Trip highlights: dolphins, manta rays, dugongs/manatees, turtles, schooling fish & big pelagics
Diving environment: advanced divers, caverns, drift diving, healthy reefs, very popular, wall diving
Dive sites and activities: St. John's Reefs (Gota Kebir, Gota Soraya), Fury Shoals Reef System (Sha'ab Claude, Abu Galawa Soraya), Abu Dabab, Sha'ab Sharm, Elphinstone
Day 1
After passing through customs and collecting your luggage at Hurghada Airport you will be met outside the arrivals hall by a representative of Seven Seas. Take a seat in the air-conditioned van that will take you to Port Ghalib where the liveaboard is moored. The journey takes about 3 hours, or just 10 minutes if you have landed at Marsa Alam Airport. The crew will welcome you on board, show you your cabin and provide a detailed boat briefing that will help you on familiarizing with your new home for the duration of the trip. Dinner inside the dedicated dining area will be a great moment for getting to know the other divers that, like you, have chosen this amazing safari for their vacation in the Red Sea. The boat will leave port early morning while everyone gets ready to dive.
Core Days
The dive sites at St. John's Reefs are very close to each other so it is easy to cruise from one site to the next. You will surely have fun while diving drop-offs, pinnacles, tunnels and amazing hard-coral reefs, huge gorgonians and colourful soft corals that are home for rays, sharks, octopus, lionfish, nudibranchs, frogfish, large schools of fish: an underwater photographer’s dream! Lots of curious turtles, Napoleon wrasse and whitetip reef sharks will be common encounters, while dugongs are more difficult creatures to find. Mantas, grey reef and silvertip sharks can often be seen in the blue.
The Fury Shoals is a vast reef system. Sha'ab Claude is a classic dive with its famous swim-throughs and huge porites corals, Malahi with its mazes and friendly turtles, and Abu Galawa Soraya with its fantastic coral garden and a wreck of a private sailing boat smothered with glassfish. Sataya, with its resident spinner dolphin population, is a must for snorkelling between dives, as well as having some good underwater offerings. You can also explore less well known sites such as Sha'ab Hamam (Stairway to Heaven), Abu Galawa Kebir with the Tien Hsing wreck, and Habili Sameh that will blow you away! On the penultimate day of the tour the boat will head back to Port Ghalib, after 2 morning dives.
All meals are freshly prepared by a professional chef and served buffet style. At breakfast you will find eggs cooked to order, toast and preserves, falafel, cereals, fresh fruit and yoghurt. Tea, coffee or hot chocolate, soft drinks, as well as snacks, are available at all times in the dining area. A variety of meat, chicken, fish, pasta, rice and vegetable dishes, served with a choice of salads, will satisfy your hunger at lunch time, while dinner options might include cream of tomato soup with croutons, goulash with cheese, roast beef with mushroom gravy, macaroni with tomato sauce, basmati rice and sautéed vegetables.
Day 8
Disembarkation starts after a final breakfast on the boat. You can arrange with the crew to be transported back to the airport or to a local hotel.
[Information is best estimate in ideal circumstances and subject to changes beyond our control. The itinerary is a guide only and may be adapted to best suit the weather, tides, currents, availability and other prevailing events. Price is for the cruise, not for an exact number of dives].