Sheikh Hakel Swims with the Fishes

Blog 14 July 16, 2010


A day that began soaring soundlessly over the desert continues with a snorkeling trip on the most gorgeous reef I’ve ever seen. The skeptics out there will ask how many reefs I’ve seen, and the answer is now two, but I’m counting all the reefs on the Jacques Cousteau specials I was addicted to when I was a kid. So there.
We drove right through the city of Aqaba and up the coast. For those of you familiar with the political boundaries in the area you already know that the Northern end of the Red Sea hosts the borders of four countries in an area small enough that I was able to see Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel in the same place. Jordan only has about 24km of coastline on the Red Sea, but they make the most of what they have. Israel has even less with around 15km. We drove up to a rickety old wharf and saw out to sea a bit a rather nice looking boat that was supposed to be ours was sitting motionless in the calm sea. The water is impossibly blue. So blue the tidy bowl man came to mind, but fortunately it isn’t that kind of blue. One problem. It was about 200 yards away from the end of the dock. Shortly a much smaller boat showed up that the 14 of us barely fit on together. It did have a glass window in the bottom, but still, this was not going to be as cool as I thought in this overstuffed dinghy. Well, this little boat took us out to the big boat and the next adventure began.
I quickly changed in the hold and donned my flippers, snorkel and mask and set out. My one and only previous snorkeling experience was in the Keys and I was disappointed. The rest of the family was more than disappointed, they were ill from the choppy conditions. Today was the opposite, my expectations were more than exceeded. I’ll spare you the details for now, and no, I don’t own a waterproof camera so I can’t show you 300 pictures. The highlight for me came on my third trip out when I spotted not one, but three Lion Fish. This fish makes it self look larger than life by the extended fins it deploys as it swims. I’d always wanted to see one in the ocean, heck I’d have settled for seeing one in aquarium, but today I saw three at once. When I first saw it, it was tough to spot because its colorings help it blend with the coral so well. I got really excited when I realized there was a second one right next to it and giddy when I saw the third below. I then spent 20 minutes hovering above one of them as it hunted a school of fish that managed to hover just out of striking distance. I finally began to realize how tired I was getting and headed for the boat.
I’m sitting now in the Captain Hotel in Aqaba knowing that days like this don’t come very often in a lifetime. The afterglow will last long after we have returned to Amman tomorrow; it will last long after I’ve told you all about it in person and it will last long after I’ve told the same story to my class year after year after year.
It’s six o’clock here. I can’t imagine I’ll need to write another episode today, so “Salaam” from Aqaba, Jordan on the Red Sea.

Lane/Dad/Sheikh Hakel