Diving the Magic Kingdom

I went scuba diving with two of my friends from the british school, Liz and Julia. We went with the British Scuba club and caught a ride up to Jubail with two of the instructors. Once in Jubail we boarded a boat, abaya clad and were told not to drink or eat anything under any circumstances. During ramadan muslims cannot eat or drink from sun up to sundown. I didn't realize this applied to me at all until I was told that I could be deported for merely taking a sip of water in public! I was also told that sometimes they will whip men who don't follow this rule. Something tells me this is a bit of an exaggeration though.


Because we are women, Julia, Liz and I had to pretend we were just along for the ride because it is illegal for women to scuba dive in Saudi. So we took a nap on the boat while the guys checked in with the coast guard. Once out of the harbor we ripped our abayas off and broke out snacks and drinks. It took about an hour to get to Jana island and we went right through a huge oil field, cluttered with hundreds of oil platforms. But oil platforms get dull quickly so I spent most of the trip working on my ability to sleep in awkward places.

Jana island is completely uninhabited, covered in sand and surrounded by bright blue waters with a decent reef. Sometimes the dive club does overnight camping trips to the island which sounds like a blast to me so I'm really hoping to tag along the next time they go! We made three dives and I saw some incredible stuff! I swam with big black sting rays (the same that killed Steve Erwin), saw a school of barracudas, big bat fish, the poisonous lion fish, and plenty of moray eels with their scary looking teeth. I was so happy that I ended up singing Little Mermaid songs into my regulator! Our final dive was at a sunken ship called 'the g spot' and our Saudi boat captain said we could 'penetrate the g-spot' and he turned about ten shades of red as we cracked up. I nearly peed myself after his slip up but I was so excited to do some wreck diving for the first time. The boat was in excellent shape for something in such warm waters and I went down into the hull (going inside the boat is referred to as 'penetration' in wreck diving) it was a tight squeeze and I cut my finger but I really could have cared less!

Once out of the water my scaredy cat friend Julia decided to go for a swim. Then someone shouted, 'whale shark!' and in a split second everyone was grabbing masks and leaping into the water to see the thing that some divers wait 25 years or more for. I couldn't get in the water fast enough but Julia started tripping out, screaming and swimming away from the immense plankton eating creature until she was practically standing on the life preserver. The whale shark stayed with us for about 30 minutes and seemed just as interested in us as we were in her. I held on to her dorsal fin and swam along side with the hundreds of sucker fish that clung to the shark's body. When we were all out of the water our Saudi/muslim boat captain was so moved by the experience that took about ten minutes to pray to alah (he had been diving these waters for 24 years and had never seen a whale shark). Just when I thought the day couldn't get any better, dolphins showed up and swam and jumped along side our boat on the way home. What a day!