Diving Jordan

The Jordan days were pretty great - Petra and Diving in the Red Sea on the same day! Then the next day, diving again and then crossing into Israel and floating in the Dead Sea . . . but more on that later.

I didn't have any sort of underwater camera for the diving, but I found some pics of some of the things we saw while diving. The water was crystal clear and blue as could be. On the first dive we went to a ship wreck called the Cedar Pride. There's an air pocket in it and the dive master took us up to that part. Pretty cool feeling to be way underwater and surface in an air pocket in a sunken ship. We swam thru the wreck a bit and then around the beautiful coral. There were so many different bright colored fish and other sea life.

Allen and Brian, well and the dive master actually, saw a big octopus. I technically saw it too, but can't claim it cause I didn't pick it out of the reef it was camouflaging itself in. They said it was one of the biggest ones they've ever seen though.

Monday Brian and I got up early to go on another dive, this time to a sunken tank. In that dive, we saw a couple of sea turtles. SO FUN. One of them was eating and when we swam up and stopped it actually swam closer to us and then chilled there for a bit. It went up to the surface for air and then came back down pretty close to us and met up with another turtle and they swam pretty close to us for several minutes. Brian has dived in MANY places and has seen turtles before but he said they normally take off pretty quick when they see divers and you have to swim after them to be able to watch them at all. It was seriously like finding Nemo what with the water being so clear and having it swim right up to us and stuff. Oh, and I saw clown fish and anemones too, adding to the whole Finding Nemo experience. I like diving a lot. Still trying to get the whole buoyancy thing down though. Brian and the dive master had to pull me down a couple times cause I'd start floating back up to the surface . . . or I'd sink right to the bottom. Definitely haven't mastered that quite yet.

Anyway,the diving was definitely one of my favorite parts of the trip. It was incredible how close all of it was to the shore. We walked into the water from the beach almost right across from our hostel and swam out just a bit and there it all was. So many bright colors, and the bluest clearest water ever. So great.

Our hostel was pretty awesome there too. I wish we could have spent more time there. It was right across from the Red Sea and was pretty picturesque.



Our room was pretty sweet too. The room was barely big enough to accommodate 4 beds, so we basically all slept in one giant bed. Not really, but its kinda what it looked like.



I'm a big fan of Jordan. There are several more dive sites there where we were that I'd like to check out sometime. That's an interesting little area too - the cusp of multiple countries. Egypt is across from where we were, the Saudi Arabian border was only like 10km away, and Israel has a little piece right at the edge there too. All bordering the Red Sea.

I'll try to get Israel done here tomorrow or the next day. I'm actually home . . . well not really. I got home, but now I'm in Salt Lake for work. I did get a whole 3 and a half days in AZ though before taking off again for work!