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FLASH FLOODS IN WADI KID EN ROUTE TO SHARM EL SHEIKH IN 1979
In 1979 the Nottingham diving club made an excursion with tour organisers, Penny and Serge, Coral Safaris, to the Sinai Desert which at the time was held by the Israelis. In those days the plane came down in the main street of Eilat and the planes which could not turn round at the end of the runway were unable to land. I made four trips to the Sinai Desert and this was my third. Our first dive was over the border in Taba and the next was at Ras Mamlah. We stopped at Dahab and from there I dived the Blue Hole. The group made its way through Wadi Kid towards Sharm el Sheikh to dive at Ras Mohammed. At the time it was a small, unspoilt Arab town with no evidence of it ever becoming a pleasure resort with a marina and high class hotels. Sharm was very primitive and had merely a dirt track street with only single petrol pump at one end. On this occasion the area had had heavy rain and the road to Sharm had been washed away exposing the desert in which land mines had been planted by the Israelis making the journey very dangerous. Strangely stranded in the desert was a water truck. In the year 1980, after the Peace Treaty with Israel we were unable to reach Sharm ekl Sheikh which had already returned to Egypt. The Wadi had changed completely after the floods and looked very green. The Bedouins had returned and were camping with their tents, beneath the hills on either side of the Wadi.
The following photos were taken by a Kodak Instamatic in 1979 and are not of today's quality. |
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| Beware! Land mines. | |||
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| Israeli Conscript | Admiring a camel | ||
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| Probably a Lunar tail Grouper |