Keywords: El Quseir, Egypt (Movenpick, Hayes and Jarvis, Air Atlanta,
Subex)

Background: just back from 1 week in the Movenpick in El Quseir, about
140km south of Hurghada. Me: novice diver (27 dives before now, mostly
indian ocean, some UK) and my wife (9 year break after learning and
doing about 10 dives in the indian ocean).

Hayes and Jarvis: Seemed the cheapest company to book the hotel
through. Got most of my documents to me (except the insurance info) but
failed to provde the vouchers for the diving we had paid for so that
all ahd to be checked out on arrival.

Movenpick: Gorgeous hotel - check it out on the movenpick web site.
Lots to do, loads of helpful friendly staff, very green building with
grey water irrigation etc. Good food - local and continental (swiss
kitchens, local chefs) and reasonable prices.

Air Atlanta: Amazing. Actually a decent plane (747-200 in reasonable
nick) and not bad legroom. But organisation? Couldn't organise a
punch-up between celtic and rangers fans. Told us the wrong terminal at
gatwick, wrong flight time out, wrong amount of carry on luggage, wrong
fligth time on return...any information we got out of them was
guaranteed wrong. Remarkable.

Subex: Exceptional. Exceedingly professional and safe. they limit the
number of divers out at one time and protect their reef. It starts with
the low-impact jetty to get you beyond the reef. There is a full
briefing and no-one goes in the water before they have a check-dive.
Then they decide if you can go unguided or not. Every dive is preceded
by a full briefing of what to look out for. The local staff help you
kit up - they will do everything from nothing at all through to fit
your tank and bcd and fins. Most dives are off the jetty or a short
zodiac trip to do one-way swims and their are half day and full day
safaris further afield. Each dive was a minimum of 60 mins - even
guided it is simply a case fo going until you are nearly out of air. As
they have a fun reefy area at about 5m depth you can continue to play
there long past 50bar. After a hot shower and kit rinse there is a full
debrief with the fish books. All in all a truly rolls royce service. I
cam eaway with the impression that they are there to give the divers
what they want, not to pack them in the water and take their money.
They took very very good care of my wife who was understandably nervous
after a long break and she had a really pleasurable reintroduction to
diving as a result. They have a website (www.subex.org).

Diving: Great for beginners and near beginners - fabulous house reef,
loads of small fish but very few pelagics in the bay. We did swim with
a turtle and ended a dive looking a barracuda down the snout. Otherwise
it was a terrific array of butterfly fish, crocodile fish, snappers,
groupers, wrasse, damsels, an emormouse moray, blue-spotted rays and
banner fish. Also squid, prawns slugs, garden eels, lots of soft coral
- all the works. For more advanced folk there is lots to see, caves to
explore and the safaris. We did one to Abu Dabab, abotu 100km further
south (just north of Marsa Alam) and met the dugong there as well as
several guitar rays and a huge featherrtail stingray. Water temperature
was mostly about 22deg C (last week of March) - at surface or at 20m.
Visibility varied with the wind from an easy 20m+ to about 7m on the
last day (very still).

Summary: fantastic easy diving especially for those with less
experience - although there were divers there with 400+ dives enjoying
themselves. Not cheap - but a really nice resort with kiddy club,
lovely beach etc so non-diving members of th eparty have loads to do.
Next time - we'll book a flight directly to Marsa Alam, book the hotel
and diving on the web and save almost 50%.

Ken