Life in Jeddah: Day at the beach

We had a good week at work. All the equipment is up and running and we're a day or so ahead of schedule. It doesn't get too warm during the day (mid 80's) and a nice breeze kicks up in the afternoon to cool things off. We spend a lot of time in the sun setting the equipment up, running big heavy cables from diesel gennerators to the equipment (I get to start the generators each morning) and generally getting hot and sweaty. It was a good week but it was a long week (we worfked six days) so we decided to go to the beach on our one day off. There are a lot of beach resorts north of Jeddah. The company has an arrangement with one of them that lets us use the facilities if we get a pass. Earlier this week John called one of his friends (he has friends everywhere) and got us passes for Saturday. I really wanted to go because this particular resort has a dive shop and I haven't been diving in years (maybe decades). Curt, little Chris, James, Chuck, Dave, John and I piled into two cars and headed north toward the beach. It should have been a short ride but the GPS we have in the cars doesn't work very well. There's also tons of construction going on here so streets that appear to be open on the GPS are sometimes blocked. We got all mixed up and wound up taking a tour of the city. We saw a brand new airport terminal being built especially for the millions of pilgrims that pass through here on the way to Mecca, a nice new sports complex that's just a huge stretch of desert filled with cranes and heavy equipment, the airport (once or twice) and many miles of brand new roads. Luckily, the traffic wasn't that bad and little Chris had a GPS app on his iPhone that worked pretty well. After about 45 minutes we made it to the beach. The club is very nice. Some very nice rooms overlook two pools, a volley ball court, a restaurant and lots of green "California" grass. Danika and I first saw this stuff when we lived in Huntington Beach. It's short, very green and doesn't seem to grow very much. We liked it when we first saw it in California and it looked very nice here as well. Although I'm a certified diver, I haven't been in the water for a long time. Little Chris, on the other hand, has been diving every weekend for over two years. He has all kinds of certifications and he's a great teacher. He brought his own gear but John and I rented all the equipment we needed at the club. You get into the water by walking down a short stairway that ends at the top of a reef on the Red Sea. As soon as John and I got into the water, we were being tossed and turned by the breakers. It was hard getting my fins on and once they were on it was hard to maintain my position in the water. Chris helped us through the breakers and got us to a point where we could do the dive. The dive was fantastic. I wanted to dive in a place like this all my life and it didn't disappoint. There were all kinds of colorful fish down there swimming in big schools. Big bright blue fish with shocking yellow fins were all around us. We saw two Moray eels (one was very big) as we swam along the coral wall. Jeddah is know for it's diving and I see why. Visibility was great, better than 50 feet and the coral was spectacular. I was afraid there would be a lot of trash in the water but this place was perfectly clean. Our dive lasted only about 20 minutes because John and I were so excited we were breathing too hard but it was well worth the price (130 SAR for me, roughly $50). We went down about 70 feet before it was time to surface. Chris coached on throughout the dive and only used about half a tank of air. I felt bad that this was more like work for him so I'll pay for his air. Luckily, he offered to take us diving next weekend so we didn't piss him off too much.

Me on the beach