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. |