New TUI flights from London Gatwick, resuming a route that had been a casualty of the Covid pandemic, can now allow scuba divers to escape to Marsa Alam for winter diving on Egypt’s Red Sea coast more easily, according to Regaldive.
The tour operator is offering the twice-weekly service, with a flight time of less than five hours, as part of a package with diving and accommodation at the new Wadi Sabarah Lodge, which opened in October and is said to be a short transfer away from the airport.
Built from coral limestone in traditional Bedouin style, the lodge has 46 en-suite rooms, with either sea views or private balcony, and three suites.
The resort contains an Emperor Divers dive-centre, pool and restaurant and also offers meditation and massage sessions. It is set in a garden containing more than 2,000 plant species, many of them endangered.
Diving is a combination of shore-dives on the resort’s extensive house-reef and other coastal sites or day-trips by boat to locations such as Elphinstone Reef or Sha’ab Samadai aka Dolphin House. Seven nights’ B&B accommodation (two sharing) with a 15-dive package, transfers and return TUI flights is priced at £1,125pp through Regaldive.
Online taste of Bali
Regaldive’s sister-company Dive Worldwide is inviting divers to attend an hour-long virtual talk by underwater photojournalist Saeed Rashid covering his experiences of diving in north-eastern Bali. He will be leading a 10-day Bali Photo Safari: Reefs & Rice Fields Tour there from 23 June next year, and his talk takes place from 7pm on 28 November.
Priced from £2,095pp, the trip will include 10 nights’ accommodation, meals, up to 24 dives, evening presentations and transfers, but not flights.
Regaldive and Dive Worldwide form part of the Natural Travel Collection.
Also on Divernet: Marsa Alam, Never mind the season, Southern exposure, Splitting the dives in Bali
