Saudi diving – Live & let dive
Just off the coast of Jeddah are some of the world’s last virgin coral reefs. Voyager discovers a secret underwater kingdom
ERIC MASON STANDS on the stern of his brand new boat and lets out an uproarious laugh. “You probably told your mother you were coming here and she said ‘Oooh, don’t go, it’s dangerous!’”
Mason, an entrepreneur who runs a successful diving business, may have been laughing but he was also right. Saudi Arabia isn’t the first choice a travel agent pushes at you.Yet here I am, standing on a dock looking out over the beautiful, shimmering Red Sea as shoals of exotic-looking fish feverishly jostle for position below.
It could be any number of popular luxury Red Sea resorts: Sharm Al Sheikh, Aqaba or even Eilat.Yet this is a few hours drive south of the stunning coastal city of Jeddah, where 800-year-old edifices, made from slabs of coral dragged from the sea, bend towards the sun like dying sunflowers; where women pass by chatting on the latest mobile phones; and where African ladies, their heads tightly wrapped in tall, immaculately constructed cloth headdresses, sell kola nuts off hastily arranged blankets on street corners.
This wasn’t the Saudi I was told to expect. Then again, I was here to discover something else few people knew about the Kingdom: the country’s Red Sea coastline. This boasts the world’s last great virgin coral reefs and some of the finest diving you’ll find anywhere on the planet. Eric Mason, owner of Dream Divers, who has been operating here for the past 36 years, wanted to show me a side of Saudi few had seen.
After landing at Jeddah’s King Abdul Aziz International Airport, our bus began the two and half hour journey south. We passed mile after mile of unbroken coastline before reaching the town of Al Lith, which seems to consist of only three types of building: mosques, modest housing and football pitches. It was here that Mason’s boat was moored in the port’s pristine waters and within another couple of hours we had reached what is regarded as one of the most dangerous shipping lanes in the world, where pirates buoyed by the anarchy in Sudan and Somalia operate with impunity. But we pass through it safely and eventually arrive at the Farasan banks, a vast archipelago of tiny islands, huge unbroken reefs and perpetual sun.
French ecologist and explorer Jacques Cousteau, considered the Jeddah coastline nothing short of an underwater miracle. “Life abounds in bank after bank of exuberant coral structures,” he said after visiting Saudi Arabia in the 1950s to film his seminal, Oscarwinning documentary The Silent World. “It’s second only to those of the Great Barrier Reef in extent and exceeding it perhaps in splendour.” Yet Saudi citizens have only just begun to take advantage of their stunning natural wealth. The Arabic phrase that you’ll hear most here is shway shway – which means ‘slowly’ or, in the right context, ‘step by step’ – and sums up the Saudi zeitgeist perfectly.
“The Saudi government now want to change people’s perceptions and make this a place to be visited,” explains Mason.
“There are hundreds of us Brits here,” he tells me as we go ashore. “Jeddah is a melting pot and the seas are unique. There are only two boats working 1,800km of coastline.You get everything here in greater numbers than anywhere else in the Red Sea: mantas, hammerhead sharks, humphead parrot fish, white tip and black tip sharks.”
The Farasan banks live up to their billing. The water is almost jade and each tiny island is coated in fine white sand. The lack of human interference means that each speck of land, from a seemingly infinite number that spread out towards Africa, is studded with turtle nesting holes and guarded by a nest of ospreys who attack if you get too close. Underwater, however, is where the real magic happens. Long Reef, as you’d expect, is a huge unbroken wall of brightly coloured coral surrounded by twisting plumes of acid yellow fish. Al Jadir island, sitting atop a deep trench, is filled with quite forward sharks – the white tip reef sharks flick towards you before nonchalantly going about whatever it is sharks do all day.
The night dive at Mar Mar Island is hugely recommended, an underground wall of coral that looks like the inside of a cathedral populated by humphead parrot fish the size of small cows.
Underwater you could be anywhere: the Caribbean, Thailand, or even the much more well-known dive resort of Sharm Al Sheikh further up the coast. “This is much better than Egypt because it has much more colourful coral and fish,” declares Ralph, a long-haired, German heavy metal fan who previously worked as an instructor at Sharm Al Sheikh and who had come here, like the other German tour operators, to see if the Saudis were ready for him to sell diving holidays back home.
“There are only two boats in the whole area, which is great for the reef. It’s like Australia.Yesterday I saw lots of hammerhead sharks who have probably only seen 50 divers in their life so they are still curious.You won’t see that in Egypt because they have 20 boats going out every day.”
After three days in the middle of nowhere, returning to Jeddah seemed too much excitement. In some ways it has many African elements to the city, something to do with the fact that Jeddah was – in some people’s eyes – the world’s first international tourist destination, albeit on religious grounds as anyone making the Hajj to Mecca passed through here. Many visitors stayed on. “When you fly in to Jeddah the first thing you notice is the satellite dishes. They are like mushrooms,” says Mason. “Pilgrims from Indonesia and Africa all came through here and left their mark.” It’s apt that, as the crow flies, Jeddah is closer to Port Sudan than the Saudi capital.
“Things are changing,” he adds.This year women were, for the first time, allowed to travel abroad unaccompanied by a man.And Mason believes that this will be followed in the future by women being allowed to drive. Until that time, Jeddah and its amazing coral reefs will continue to alter stereotypes of Saudi society one diver at a time: Shway, shway.
Dream Divers offers all-inclusive trips for around £1,450 per person per week. By law, Dream Divers must apply for your visa. For further details, contact +966 2234 0473 or www.dreamdiver.net
bmi flies direct to Jeddah from London Heathrow. For more information and to book flights and hotels, visit flybmi.com
