One of the joys of working as a dive guide in cosmopolitan Sharm el Sheikh is the amazing diversity of clientele one comes across on a daily basis. On the one extreme we have the aging BSAC diehards wearing inflatable toilet seats around their necks and carrying toolkits the envy of any demolition crew. On the other extreme we regularly encounter the PADI PINK nouveaux divers with the latest line in colour coded wetsuit/BCD/fins, mask and snorkel, discovering neutral buoyancy for the first time. Oh yes, we poor dive guides have to cope with a veritable melting pot of nationalities, cultures and abilities. But why, I ask, are they always on my boat !

Take last week for an example. As befits today’s cool diveguide, I suavely sauntered into the dive centre in the nick of time. Whilst squinting through my mirrored shades against the all too bright morning sun, peering through a slowly lifting fog due to last nights overindulgence in the Pirates Bar, my heart sank upon the realisation that even if I could focus upon the names on my crew list, I wouldn’t be able to pronounce most of them :

Mr & Mrs. Yamakakamoto with miniaturised digital recording appendages surgically attached to their wrists and the joint air consumption of a very small fish

The three Botinecellos, kitted out in matching Mares equipment with the latest in high-tec regulators costing more than my entire annual salary, but unfortunately combined with a total lack of understanding regarding all things aquatic.

Rheinhart Kleinerminder with his rebreather. Enough said.

P. Staines and Roger Harder complete with twinsets, pearls, 8 litre chest mounted nitrox deco tanks, an armful of computers and a formidable array of spanners and wrecking bars hanging from their weightbelts.

Sergei and Anna Kalashnikovovich sharing both a diving certificate from a hitherto unheard of eastern block diving organisation and a very small triangular piece of nylon purporting to be a unisex ‘g’ string.

Having loaded the somewhat excessive amount of gear onto the boat, we set off for the divesite. I endeavoured to give a briefing in sign language, since not only was my tongue still stuck to the roof of my mouth but there were 4 different languages spoken on board, excluding mine and that of the crew. Mooring up at around 10.00 am I was a touch disturbed to discover that Sergei was already halfway into his first bottle of vodka and Anna was halfway out of her ‘g’ string. The twinset merchants were kitted up and ready to go wrecking, the rebreather fiend had collapsed with carbon dioxide poisoning whilst checking his mixes on the dive deck and the Botinicellos were still struggling, having inadvertently put each others matching wetsuits on. At least Mr. & Mrs. Yamakakamoto were calmly stood there, demurely bowing apologetically, mini-digital Sony’s at the ready.

Having put Rheinhart on oxygen to clear his head, we left Sergei and Anna to start on bottle number 2 whilst sunbathing in their ‘g’ string and jumped in. The twinsetters dropped like stones to the sandy bottom and crawled around looking for bits of rusty metal to attack, whilst the Botinicellos flopped about on the surface like oil stricken ducks having misunderstood the need for lead in ‘integrated’ BCDs. Well, it did say it was ‘weight integrated’ in the catalogue after all. Meanwhile, Mr & Mrs. Yanakakamoto hung serenely in midwater filming each other filming each other.

An hour later, having put some weight on the Botinicellos to pull them down and some air in the twinsetters ‘wings’ to lift them up, it was time to exit the water and partake of lunch. I could spot the twinsetters easily – they were still firmly stuck to the bottom surrounded by a cloud of sand and bubbles, busy adjusting each others tank brackets with their spanners having drawn a blank at finding anything else metallic. The Botinicellos were clinging nervously to the ladder, 50 bar between them and eyes wide open in a mixture of fear of the deep and appreciation of each other’s fashion statements. Meanwhile, Mr. & Mrs. Yamakakamoto were busy filming all the little fishes, having used a mere 20 bar in an hour. Upon returning to the boat I discovered that Sergei, Rheinhart and Smirnoff had become great friends, Anna had attracted every other dive boat in the vicinity to our mooring, and the crew had suffered hernias trying to lift Paul and Roger out of the water.