At the beginning of November last year I went on my first ever dive trip – which hopefully won’t be the last. The decision is easy: I wanted to go to Egypt! First I wanted to stay in one place and book daily dives from there. However, I quickly found out that like this you are not guaranteed getting to dive the best dive spots – either they are too far off the coast for a day trip or there is a minimum number of participants required to sign up. I just can’t rely on that happening as a solo traveller! Also, the dive packages (hotel + xxx dives) were not even that cheap. At one point I realized that liveaboards offer a much better value for the price you pay. In addition, there is a (almost) guaranteed itinerary, same dive groups every day, full board etc. After some research I found Emperor Divers, one of the few companies that does not have a surcharge for single travellers. Top!! 🙂 In the end I decided for the route „Famous Five“, which started in Hurghada.

On the boat I was first a bit surprised by the composition of our group: I had counted on many couples, but was confronted with a big Spanish group as well as a few groups of men – mainly around 50-70 y/o. I was the only solo traveller. Hmmm, interesting! 😉

It ended up being better than I thought though and I found two great dive buddies – Rob and Jason. Thanks to Rob I have some underwater pictures to show here on my blog – somehow it is nice to have some pics as memories!

The daily routine was simple and was repeated every day in almost the same way: Wake-up time was between 6am and 7am, first dive briefing, dive. Breakfast, second briefing, second dive. Relaxing for a bit, lunch, briefing, third dive. Sometimes there was an additional night dive, so in the end there were between 2-4 dives every day. Otherwise, not much else was happening! 😉 I have to say that I also enjoyed taking an organized vacation for once. The boat was really nice – big enough, a cabin just for myself without single traveller surcharge, great sun deck, and extremely delicious, abundant meals!! 🙂

The diving itself was of course also not too bad 😉 First I was a bit skeptical about the route since there were a lot of wrecks included which I’m usually not so fond of…ahhmm…WAS. In hindsight it was two wreck dives which I will remember as the top dive spots f the week: The famous Thistlegorm (simply…WOW), as well as the lesser known Carnatic. The latter is gorgeously overgrown by coral and you can dive through the skeleton of the ship inside and out again in a fun way. A truly picturesque wreck!

The two animal highlights of the week were clearly the oceanic white-tip sharks at the Brother Islands and a group of dolphins which surprised us during our safety stop on the way up to the surface after a great dive at Thistlegorm. Suddenly they were there – out of the blue! 🙂

Overall I spent an awesome week with Emperor Divers. Everything was super organized – from the dives to the food, all staff was friendly and super helpful and the excellent dives themselves obviously contributed to the great week as well! 😉 I now know that I will definitely go on a liveaboard holiday again and probably again with Emperor Divers! Click here to see my (and Rob’s UW) pics of the week.