Dive guide: Taba, Red Sea, Egypt

Photo: Jane Morgan Photo: Jane Morgan Photo: Alamy

TABA land of borders

Located in the far north of the Sinai peninsula, Taba is the gateway to Eilat and her shores overlook Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia across the Gulf of Aqaba. The location of this border town has made it an important crossing place throughout history.

Taba can be divided into three areas. Taba village is located close to the border crossing to Israel. Drive south for approximately 20 minutes and you will find the Taba Heights complex of hotels, and further south still, you will find an area referred to as the Taba Coast.

Thirty minutes from the airport, the village is the ideal place to stay if you fancy nights out in Eilat. It is also home to Aquasport dive centre.

Taba Heights is a purpose-built complex of five-star hotels, and ‘downtown Taba Heights’ includes several shops, a pharmacy and an English pub. No need to miss the football here as the Pub Tandoor plays all the important matches as you sit back and watch with a chilled beer and an Indian meal. Red Sea Waterworld dive centre is also based at Taba Heights and offers a comprehensive range of watersports in addition to diving. There is also a marina, so popping over to Jordan on your day off is easy, and if you prefer to stay on terra firma, an 18-hole golf course will help you improve your handicap.

Along the Taba coast, the Radisson and Sonesta hotels also have their own dive centres on site.

TABA DIVE SPOTS

The beauty of Taba is that there are still very few dive boats and you can pretty much guarantee the dive sites to yourself. You won’t find the exhilarating currents of Tiran or the drop-offs of Ras Mohammed, but there is still plenty of quality diving to be found.

Taba has become popular with photographers over the years as you can find an interesting array of marine life that you wouldn’t spot on a dayboat out of Sharm. The most famous residents must be the strange-looking frogfish. Taba has been dubbed the frogfish capital of the Red Sea and, together with sea wasps and ghost pipefish, there are plenty of subjects to keep most snappers happy.

THE CANYON

The Taba Hilton offers three great shore dives, the Canyon being the furthest away from the dive centre – a full five-minute walk with your trolley. When you first enter the water in a shallow 5m there is a large coral bommie with frogfish hiding among the corals. The sandy bottom is full of critters such as stonefish buried in the sand, and sea wasps scurrying about their business. A split in the reef takes you through to deeper water sloping down to 30m. The reef wall on your left is home to a myriad of creatures including more frogfish, ghost pipefish and octopus. If you are lucky the resident turtle may also put in an appearance.

BLACK CORAL

The second of the Hilton’s shore dives, sandwiched between the house reef and the Canyon, is Black Coral. A five-minute swim out across the sandy bottom to the seagrass and down the slope takes you to the dive site situated between 18 and 26m. This site is fairly small, but an amazing amount of marine life gathers around the array of small coral heads. The sandy sea bed is the perfect habitat for schooling glassfish. It hosts a cleaning station for coral groupers, and you find hunting lionfish and more peppered morays than you can shake a stick at – in fact, some of the corals can be likened to the Medusa with the amount of morays peering out at you.

THE AQUARIUM

Best reached by boat, the Aquarium is a gentle drift dive over a beautiful coral garden. As the name suggests, there is a plethora of marine life including glassfish around the cleaning stations, as well as schools of fusiliers and anthias.

THE FJORD

Another boat dive, the Fjord is an unusual site featuring a huge well in the reef. This is lined with soft corals and two of the most stunning red anemones, complete with several anemonefish and large shrimps. Outside the well, pristine hard corals decorate the sloping reef. For your safety stop, you couldn’t find a better place than the large coral bommie that is surrounded by glassfish, with all the larger predating fish that they attract.

FARA’UN ISLAND

This SITE offers plenty to see, with stunning coral heads smothered by soft corals where frogfish like to hide. On the sandy bottom, crocodile fish and blue-spotted rays are common and the elusive sea horse sometimes makes an appearance.

CRUISE AND STAY

Aquasport HAS recently launched a cruise-and-stay option where you can spend four days on a safari boat and finish the week in a hotel. This is a great, relaxing way to sample the best of the diving in Taba.

TOPSIDE ATTRACTIONS

AS TABA is located in the very north of the Sinai, trips can be arranged into both Israel and Jordan. Day trips to the sandstone city of Petra are very popular, as is a float in the Dead Sea. To ensure easy access into Israel, it is advisable to avoid having visa stamps from countries such as the Sudan or Indonesia in your passport. If you wish to stay within Egypt, you can enjoy a trip to St Catherine’s monastery and into the Sinai desert.

GETTING THERE

Taba is serviced by its own airport some 800m up in the mountains. Direct charter flights are offered from both Gatwick and Manchester and take just five hours. Visas are not required for British citizens and a Sinai pass is issued free of charge upon arrival.

TABA DIVE CENTRES

Aqua Sport International
00 97 28 6334404
www.aqua-sport.com

Sinai Divers
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www.sinaidivers.com

Waterworld
00 20 69 3580099
www.redseawaterworld.com

Werner Lau
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www.wernerlau.com



TOUR OPERATORS

Crusader Travel
020 8744 0474
www.crusadertravel.co.uk

DIVE Channel
0870 880 2848
www.divechannel.co.uk

Geo-dive 020 8755 6873
www.geo-dive.com

Goldenjoy Dive
0871 226 8701
www.goldenjoydive.com

Longwood Holidays
020 8418 2570
www.longwoodholidays.co.uk

Oonasdivers
01323 648924
www.oonasdivers.com

Peltours
0870 774 3000
www.peltours.com

Regal Dive
0870 220 1777
www.regal-diving.co.uk

Werner Lau
  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
www.wernerlau.com