Archive for December, 2009
Escape to Egypt in the New Year. 7 nights from just £235pp
Posted by: | CommentsAfter the Christmas holidays, what could be better than heading off to Egypt for a week in the sunshine to unwind and relax. We’ve been search out some of the very best deals to the popular resorts of Sharm el Sheikh and Hurghada but you’ll need to hurry as they won’t be around for ever. Don’t miss out on these amazing prices, book now !!! They…
Elite delivers big time on North Classic safari
Posted by: | Comments| Boat: Dates of safari: Dive guides: Route: Exit-Enter Harbor: Pax number: Guest nationality: |
Elite 20-27 Nov 2009 Sonia and Marc North Classic HRG 20 Spanish, UK, Austrian |
DAY DIVING ONE:
Dive one: Check dive at Poseidon Gardens, Shaab El Erg. Excellent schools of banner fish, masked butterfly fish, really nice, and large crocodile fish great!
Dive two: Carnatic at Abu Nuhas, not too much light on it, because late, but very beautiful soft corals and everybody happy. Very large moray eel at stern.
Night dive: Abu Nuhas ergs, very large Spanish dancer, everybody happy with it.
Weather: sunny
Wind: Indicate force and direction: 15 knots from north
Water Temperature and Visibility: 20-30m and 26C
DAY DIVING TWO:
Dive one: Chrisoula K with excellent visibility; really beautiful dive; all the garden eels far out, lots of Nemos and free-swimming lionfish, three large tuna, awesome.
Dive two: Giannis D, many batfish, Napoleon fish, beautiful light inside going through engine room and adjacent rooms up to bridge. Many glassfish and copper sweepers in the engine room; beautiful. The bow mast and ropes covered in soft corals, very large moray eel.
Dive three: Dunraven with gorgeous visibility; school of 20 batfish by wreck, large Napoleon fish, hugest and very old moray eel, schooling goatfish, schooling sweetlips, cruising schools of jackfish, anthias mating by the reef, large barracuda getting cleaned by the reef and turtle cruising by, absolutely awesome dive and everybody loved it!
Night dive: Beacon rock with Spanish Dancer and moray eels
Weather: sunny
Wind: Indicate force and direction: 10-15 knots from north, good weather
Water Temperature and Visibility: 20-30m and 16C
DAY DIVING THREE:
Dive one: Shark Reef and Yolanda with very gentle current, which made for a stunning dive, with all the soft corals puffed up and clouds of anthias. Especially Yolanda was gorgeous, with schools of batfish, trumpet fish and Emperor fish, and tons of anthias as well as a huge amount of blue spotted stingrays and several monster moray eels. We toured around shark reef and around the whole of Yolanda, and had a turtle at the end, beautiful!
Dive two: Another stunning dive was on Anemone City as we slowly made our way around the pillars covered in soft corals, the huge table corals and admired the huge amount of baby black damselfish who inhabit the anemones with the anemone fish. We also visited the deep pinnacle, which is covered in glassfish chased around by a resident school of jackfish. Superb dive!
Dive three: Thistlegorm with no current again made for a very leisurely visit of the forward holds with all the goodies. The highlight was a large school of about 100 batfish hovering above the wreck, fantastic!
Night dive: Thistlegorm with large turtle, lots of lionfish, scorpionfish
Weather: sunny
Wind: Indicate force and direction: 10 knots from north, flat calm seas
Water Temperature and Visibility: 26C and 30m
DAY DIVING FOUR:
Dive one: Thistlegorm, school of batfish still hovering above the wreck, lots of other divers unfortunately but still nice as no current and good visibility, did stern this time.
Dive two: Kingston wreck at Shag Rock, good visibility and no current, really nice dive and lots of anthias and some goat fish, no yellow snapper schools. A turtle with us for the whole dive from the wreck and along the reef.
Dive three: Bluff Point, absolutely fantastic dive with 15 bottlenose dolphins coming in and playing with us for at least 5 minutes, including mothers and calves, awesome. Also spotted multibar pipefish and a comet fish, as well as scorpion fish and many lionfish.
Night dive: Barge with torpedo ray, crocodile fish, monster scorpionfish, giant moray eels and clouds of sergeant majors and rabbit fish.
Weather: sunny
Wind: Indicate force and direction: North 15 knots
Water Temperature and Visibility: 26C and 20-30m
DAY DIVING FIVE:
Dive one: Rosalie Moller
Dive two: Rosalie Moller with good visibility and lots of fish and predators chasing the little ones around. Many groupers and lionfish, and lots of cleaning action by cleaner shrimps in the anemones and in the vents around the ship, also small peppered and marble moray eels, plenty pajama nudibranchs and yellow striped dottybacks, beautiful dives!
Dive three: Siyul Kebir, WOW, the famous pinnacle was even better than normal today… as beside the usual fantastic inhabitants (yellowmouth morays, broad-banded and multibar pipefish, many different cleaner shrimp, anemones, clouds of glassfish, blennies, scorpionfish and pepper moray eel) we saw a giant painted frogfish…fantastic! What a dive…
Night dive: Um Qammar and everybody loved it. Saw red stonefish, moray eel eating a fish, lionfish eating fish, a cuttlefish, a crocodile fish, and 2 Spanish dancers and, of course, tons of shrimps and crabs…awesome!
Weather: sunny
Wind: Indicate force and direction: 15-20 knots from North
Water Temperature and Visibility: 23 — 26C and 20 to 30m
DAY DIVING SIX:
Dive one: Um Qammar Island, beautiful pinnacle with lots of soft corals and gorgonians fans, many fish, beautiful dive.
Dive two: Wreck of Belinda, many schooling fish, lots of nudibranchs, ideal for guests as flying next morning.
Weather: sunny
Rosetta Stone row ‘would be solved by loan to Egypt’
Posted by: | CommentsEgypt’s head of antiquities will drop a demand for the permanent return of the Rosetta Stone if the British Museum agrees to loan it out, he says.
The Stone — a basalt slab dating back to 196BC which was key to the modern deciphering of hieroglyphics — has been at the museum since 1802.
Dr Zahi Hawass has long called for foreign museums to return six of the most prized antiquities of Egypt.
The British Museum said it would consider the loan request soon.
A spokeswoman said no official request had been made by Egypt for the permanent return of the stone, but the loan had been discussed and would be considered by the museum’s trustees “fairly shortly”.
Dr Hawass said while he still ultimately wanted the stone to have its home in Cairo, he would settle for the British Museum’s acceptance of his request for a three-month loan.
He had written to the museum to ask for the stone to be made available temporarily for the opening of Egypt’s Grand Museum at Giza, due by 2013, he said. Other European museums have been sent similar requests.
He said the response from some museums had been “not good”, with questions over how they could guarantee artefacts would be returned at the end of the loans.
“We are not pirates of the Caribbean. We are a civilised country. If I sign something I will do it,” he told the BBC’s Nick Higham.
“We have the right for our monuments to be shown.”
The Rosetta Stone, discovered in Egypt by French soldiers in 1799 and given to the English under the terms of the Treaty of Alexandria two years later, is one of the most high-profile items Dr Hawass has previously demanded be returned.
What makes it so significant is that it contains the same text in Egyptian hieroglyphs, another ancient Egyptian script and in ancient Greek.
The presence of that Greek translation meant that for the first time it was possible to use the stone to decipher and understand hieroglyphs.
Last month Egyptian archaeologists travelled to the Louvre Museum in Paris to collect five ancient fresco fragments stolen from a tomb in the Valley of the Kings in the 1980s.
Dr Hawass also lobbies for the return of other cultural objects deemed to be of great archaeological value to Egypt.
This includes the 3,500-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti, wife of the famous Pharaoh Akhenaten, on show at the newly re-opened Neues Museum in Berlin, Germany.
Other items on his wish list include a statue of Hemiunu, the architect of the Great Pyramid at Giza — also in Germany; the bust of Anchhaf, builder of the Chepren Pyramid — at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; a painted Zodiac from the Dendera temple, which is kept at the Louvre, and the statue of Ramesses II in Turin Museum.
Since he became head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in 2002, Mr Hawass claims to have returned 5,000 artefacts to Egypt which he says were stolen.
Thousands of artefacts were spirited out of Egypt during the period of colonial rule and afterwards by archaeologists, adventurers and thieves.
According to a 1970 United Nations agreement, artefacts are the property of their country of origin and pieces smuggled out must be returned.
Egypt also pursues items taken before that time if it has evidence of illegal practices. However, the process of determining whether an item has ever been stolen can be laborious and complicated.
Source: BBC News (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8402640.stm)
