August 21, 2018: Snorkeling

I signed up for a full day snorkeling trip today.  Thirty of us piled on to a three story boat and headed out on the Red Sea.  I went snorkeling in the Keys about 10 years ago, freaked out a little, but overall enjoyed it.  I heard the snorkeling here is incredible, so I was pretty pumped for the day's adventures. I signed up alone, and knew nobody else on the boat.  I met other people who spoke english, but there were a lot of people from all over the world (mostly Europe), so a lot of different languages being spoken.  When we got to the first reef, our boat tethered up to a group of 4 other tour boats.  With little instruction, other than "don't touch the reef, some of it is poisonous," we were told to jump in and take a look.  There were probably 80 people swimming around this one tiny reef.  People were crashing into one another, other people were being accidentally pushed into the coral, there were bloody feet and legs from coral puncture wounds, people were yelling in like 13 different languages.  Not my idea of a relaxing trip.  I swam back to the boat and decided reading my book away from this chaos might be a little more enjoyable for me.  We ended up stopping at one more reef and a huge sand bar, and I braved getting into the water both times.  Thankfully, both stops were a little less chaotic than the first one.  Fish and coral are definitely cool, but I think my snorkeling days may be over.  But look at how gorgeous that water is!