As you can see, smoking doesn’t sit well with diving. And I haven’t even started talking about the problems caused by platelet aggregation, increased blood viscosity and elevated lactic acid levels — all typical in a smoker — yet.
No wonder that all dive training agencies warn about diving and smoking; GUE goes so far as to specifically prohibit smokers taking their training.

Sinai is the part of Egypt where Africa meets Asia, where the Middle East starts, shaped almost like a heart Sinai borders with Gaza, Israel and is surrounded by the Red Sea. Officially Sinai is not part of Africa, its classed as Asia/Middle East. The Gulf of Aqaba on the East Side with views of Jordan and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf of Suez on the West leading to the famous Suez Canal. To the North of Sinai is the Mediterranean Sea and to the Southern Point is the popular resort town of Sharm El Sheikh and the beautiful Ras Mohammad National Park.
Sinai is much different to the rest of Egypt, not only by the landscape and its location but also by the Bedouin Tribes who have lived in the region for hundreds of years.

Tourism in Sinai started over 2000 years ago when pilgrims started to seek out the elusive Mount Sinai. Then the building of St Catherines Monastery in 527AD helped the area to become a place for tours of the holy lands.
But there is much more to see and do in Sinai, whilst a visit to the monastery and to climb Mount Sinai is an adventure in itself there is much more to do Sinai that makes it worth a visit of at least 2 weeks.
In St Catherines town itself many visitors miss out on a lot of other interesting things in the area. For example there are some great treks up in the high mountain region of Sinai. Hidden water sources hide an abundance of plants and wildlife that only a three – five day trek can help you discover the wonderland surrounding the Monastery and the high mountains. By tracking with a local Bedouin guide you can discover the secrets of survival in the Sinai (Oasis, Springs, Water wells, Caves and Valleys full of trees, plants and herbs).
The herbs that grow in the Mountains of Sinai have unique properties which the Bedouins here have been using for medicine for hundreds of years. St Catherines has a herbal medicine doctor called Ahmed, who you can visit and he can prescribe you with anything from herbs to reduce blood sugar in Diabetics, to herbs that can fix stomach problems. Also visit the new organic gardens and see the herbs as they grow naturally, staying overnight at the on site Eco Lodge known as El Freish.

Also at St Catherines is Fansina Handicrafts, a project started by Salima a local Bedouin woman which now provides employment to over 400 local ladies. They make a wide range of bags, accessories and gifts using traditional Bedouin motifs cleverly translated into modern designs. They have a new showroom right in the middle of St Catherines town.

Many visitors to the Monastery are not aware of the other interesting things to see in the area, they have a whistle stop tour of the Monastery and Mountain and then return to their hotels in Cairo or in Sharm El Sheikh.
Sinai is also home to other beautiful towns and landscapes, take Ain Khudra for example which is a small Bedouin village inside a palm tree Oasis and it is just 40 kilometers from St Catherines. Or Wadi Fieran (also mentioned in the bible) is another small oasis town nestled between the high mountains. The colored canyon is also an amazing site, truly a work of art formed over thousands of years. Then there is Nuwebia, now a busy port town serving ferries to Jordan, but is also home to many small and peaceful Bedouin camps and sandy beaches. Perfect for some peace and quiet with amazing views of Saudi Arabia.

Wadi Gnay Oasis 5kms South of Dahab
Just north of Nuweiba are several old crusader castles including Castle Zamman, Castle Saladin and Pharaohs Island with a castle in the Middle of the Gulf of Aqaba. All are worthy of a visit. Also north of Nuweiba is the Fjord an area of turquoise sea, nestled between rugged Mountains.
Just South of Nuweiba is the resort town of Dahab, originally a Nabatean Trading Port and Bedouin fishing village. It is now a centre for water sports in Sinai especially diving (for learners or adventure divers), wind surfing and kite surfing. The town is also a great base for exploring Sinai, with St Catherines 120km’s away, Sharm El Sheikh 100kms and Nuweiba 90kms.

Dahab has been a popular backpackers destination since the 1960’s, it is relaxing and small enough that you can get around most of it by foot, or by camel : ) It has a unique mix of Bedouin and Egyptian Cultures and a slight European resort feel. Now it has accommodation to suit all budgets and is becoming the alternative resort for those who prefer to stay somewhere quieter and less touristic than Sharm El Sheikh.
North of Dahab is Ras Abu Gallum, a Bedouin fishing village where you can stay in a hut on the beach made from the leaves of palm trees, without electric and really experience the quietness and beauty of the desert, mountains and the sea. Snorkeling here is great and turtles and rays are often spotted.

But even Sharm El Sheikh is changing these days, it is set to become the entertainment and shopping captial for Sinai. Featuring multinational food and clothing chains (McDonalds, KFC, Gap, Morgan etc), but also a new nightlife center called Soho Square will set Sharm apart from its neighboring quieter resorts. Featuring a new night club called Pangea, the Queen Vic pub, an Ice Skating Rink and multi screen Cinemas, Soho Square is changing the face of Sharm El Sheikh and of Sinai. So gone are the days of camels and Bedouin tents in this part of Sinai.
As for diving Sinai offers the best in adventure diving from the amazing wrecks of the Ras Mohamed National Park, to the depths of the Blue Hole and Canyon in Dahab. For the experienced advanced or technical diver Sinai is a divers paradise.

There’s a lot to more Sinai than meets the eye, the old traditional nomadic living of the Bedouin communities here contrasted by the glitz of the nightlife, casino’s and shopping in Sharm El Sheikh. The small oasis towns contrasted by the huge swimming pools of the 5 star resorts. But there is something for everyone here, especially for those who want some adventure and to experience some nomadic culture during their holiday.

Yes, of course men and women should dive together! But women do have some special concerns and challenges when it comes to dive training. Women now comprise approximately 30% of divers worldwide. Training organizations as well as gear manufacturers are jumping on the women bandwagon more and more as they realize the commercial possibilities of catering to women entering this sport.
When I was certified 30 years ago women were very much in the minority. It was my privilege to train with Norine Rouse, marine activist and environmentalist. Although the training was tough, ir prepared us for some of the more ‘exciting’ things the ocean has thrown our way over the years.

Scuba Diving is a sport you can participate in well into your old age, as long as you remain reasonably fit. As such, it’s a sport for everyone, and it all starts with getting the right training.
Training:

* Consider choosing a woman instructor. Women are obviously more able to understand your challenges – they probably experienced the same ones along their way as well.
* Get good, solid training, even if it’s hard. If you are prepared for the worst, you will take day to day conditions in the oceans easily in your stride. Get references from past students and take your time in choosing your school.
* Do your research. The more you know about what to expect, the less frightening it will be. There;s a great publication called Undercurrent, where you will find the answers to just about every question you might have.
* If you live in a cold climate, consider taking your classroom and pool sessions in your home town, then take a tropical vacation to a dive destination and do your open water training there. Doing your open water dives without the added stress of cold water and low visibility is much more comfortable for most people.
* Ask questions! There is no such thing as a stupid question other than the question you don’t ask. If you are wondering about something, chances are that others in your class are as well.

Special Concerns and Suggestions:

* “The Curse” – Who hasn’t wondered what would happen if it just happened to be ‘that time of month’ when we encounter our first shark? Experience has proven it, absolutely nothing. Unlike the portrait painted by Peter Benchley, author of “Jaws”, it takes much more than a few drops of blood to get a shark excited.
* Consider using a smaller scuba tank. Most women can last longer on one tank of air than men, so carrying a standard aluminum 80 cubic foot scuba tank can be unnecessary.
* Check out Buoyancy Compensators (BCDs) that have been specifically designed for women. Consider a weight integral BCD so that you have one less piece of equipment to contend with. Many women find that distributing the lead creatively makes them more comfortable. Explore your options. This is especially important in colder climates where it is necessary to wear higher amounts of weights due to thicker wetsuits.

* Tie back that hair! There’s nothing worse than getting long hair tangled around your tank valve!
* Stay warm. There’s nothing fun about being underwater and being cold. If you’re cold, you won’t be relaxed. You’ll use up more air and may even want to abort your dive before it’s over. Wearing a wetsuit is always a good idea. There are always things underwater that might sting you, or to cut yourself on, and even if the water is warm, it’s a great idea to wear some level of protection.

Summary:
So if you have always wanted to try diving, go ahead and do it! Don’t think of diving as a sport only for men, it’s a great sport for all genders and all ages.

1. Baby shampoo. A small bottle of this is cheap and it is perfect for cleaning the inside of a mask before diving. Just rub it in and rinse for perfect underwater vision.
2. Xylitol. A natural sugar with five carbon atoms instead of six, so your body doesn’t digest it (handy for diabetics). It kills bacteria, so sweet manufacturers are using it as a dental health booster. When you use a Smint or some Orbit chewing gums a bit of the Xylitol goes up your eustachian tubes where it forms a PTFE like coating which bacteria can’t stick on. End result: less ear infections.
3. Elastic bands. Put a couple round your forearm, over your undersuit and under the cuff dump of your drysuit, and you will dump (air!) far more easily.
4. Talc. A wonderful lubricant for putting on your drysuit, but many brands have added starch as a drying agent. This means it becomes gum when it mixes with water. Make sure yours is starch free.
5. Shaving. This makes thousands of micro-cuts in your skin. They don’t bleed, but they can make a nice home for all sorts of nasties that live in water. The simple solution is to shave in the evening when diving, to allow the micro-cuts to heal overnight. I don’t recommend using a cut-throat razor on a rocking and bobbing liveaboard.
6. Nausea on boats. This is caused by the inner ear and the eyesight sending the brain conflicting information. Most people know the fix of looking at the horizon so the brain gets matching information. Another fix is to eat ginger (like pregnant women with morning sickness do). You can get it crystallised and in capsules from your favourite health food store. Holland & Barrett will do, though you may not want to buy from them as they also sell shark cartilage.
7. Use a pony? Cross an elastic band over the mouthpiece. You can still breathe through it but you will definitely know which regulator you have in your mouth. This can help prevent dangerous numpty accidents but is no substitute for proper training, drills and buddy procedures.
8. Think fins are ambidextrous? Keep one as a left fin and one as a right fin then only use the inside strap clip/adjuster, leave the outside one fixed. This makes it much easier to kit up on a rib in confined space and whilst standing on a bigger boat or in surf. You just rest each heel on top of the opposite knee to tighten the strap. Even better than straps is to use spring or bungee cord; you can still use the opposite knee trick though.
9. Use children’s lotion. A lot of us dive in the tropics yet our sport washes ordinary suntan lotion off. The trick is to use children’s lotion, which is designed to be slapped on in the morning and to work through all the seaside/pool activities that kids do. It is much more waterproof and comes in high factors. Check the label as there is a big standards difference between water-resistant and water-proof lotion.
10. Treat yourself like Red Rum. Race horses get flown round in planes a lot. Sometimes they get very ill or even die during or after flights. Lloyds of London often has to pay out so some boffins did a big investigation. They found that the nearer the front of the plane the healthier the horse were afterwards, the nearer the back the more the likelihood of an insurance claim. It’s down to the way plane ventilation systems work, carrying all the bugs from the front to the back. So some bright spark rang up loads of long haul human passengers after their flights asking whether they had been ill since. You guessed it: the front was a lot healthier. So now you know where to sit when you fly out on a diving holiday.
11. Polythene supermarket bags. Everyone knows that these are good for getting your hands through drysuit wrist seals. Just put your hand in the bag, push it through, then pull the bag through. What most people don’t know is that it also works brilliantly for both hands and feet with wetsuits. For girlies on liveaboards this can be a lifesaver for that manicure. Blondes, don’t use them to get your head through seals!
12. Ears. Ear infections stop diving and can ruin a holiday. A few drops of olive oil in each ear before every dive gives a lot of protection, especially in manky swimming pools. Many liveaboards have micro showers near the dive platform; use these to rinse out the ears after every dive. Dilute white vinegar is excellent after dives for preventing infections — you can buy it ready-prepared from your pharmacist (ask for ‘Ear Calm’) or make your own.
13. Decompression sickness. It is easy to get this even when diving within tables/computer if you are dehydrated. This has put a lot of people in the pot. It is especially pernicious in the tropics where you don’t realise how much fluid you are losing. But drinking lots of fluid can lead to embarrassing moments underwater. The answer is to have a drink and a pee immediately before going in, then a big drink immediately when you get out, which will be ‘processed’ during the surface interval.
14. It takes at least a day to hydrate yourself properly. You can’t rely on drinking just before the dive. Beware of taking diuretics for 24 hours before a dive. Diuretics include alcohol, tea and coffee. Especially alcohol.
15. People have also bent themselves when within tables by altering the perfusion of blood within their bodies. The ways they have done this are by exercising, by taking a hot bath/shower or by having a large meal. Any of these after diving.
16. Breathing. Belly breathing uses the alveolai from the lower lung which have 50% more blood vessels, this also flushes out CO2 which is the trigger for respiration rate. And for very experienced divers only. To get even more out of each lungfull breathe in for 4 seconds, pause for 2 seconds and breathe out for 4 seconds. Keep your larynx open during the pause and use your diaphragm to keep the air in. When you get good at this try 6, 3 and 6 seconds. Never pause breathing while ascending, no matter how slight that ascent. This is potentially dangerous. Don’t even think about this tip unless you are ultra competent and understand totally what is involved.
17. If you are a novice or less experienced diver do not dive with a camera. You will enjoy the dive far less, your diving skills will be worse and the buddy system won’t work. Far better to take a good torch (UK C4 minimum) on every dive. Even on a shallow reef in the tropics in the middle of the day. A torch will enhance your diving experience. Even experienced divers will enjoy dives far more with a torch than a camera.
18. Talking of torches, LED technology is taking over. Soon all underwater torches will be LED. The technology is getting more powerful every year. They are so efficient at making light from electricity that the burn times are amazing. My LED Lenser torches, for instance, give a 50 hour life from 4X AA batteries. The Greenforce range look very good.
19. Polythene gloves, like they have at petrol filing stations. These are brilliant for wearing under dive gloves. They trap an extra layer of water so you get a double glazing effect keeping your hands much warmer. They also make getting the gloves on and off a lot easier.
20. Breathing under pressure exposes every tissue in our bodies to to problems involving oxygen. There is whole body oxygen (or pulmonary) toxicity and CNS toxic hits. You can reduce the bad effects of oxygen by what you eat. Certain foods have a powerful anti oxidant action, vitamin E and selenium for instance. However one of the most powerful anti oxidants is grapeseed extract which you can buy at Holland and Barratt (if your moral scruples allow you into this accessory to the destruction of sharks).
21. A diving holiday can easily be ruined by a regulator fault. While regulator technicians are easy to find the spare parts for your regulator are often difficult to come by. You can buy service kits for your make and model over the internet and take them with you. The small cost is better than a ruined holiday and the kits weigh very little.
22. Doing multiple dives on multiple days it can be difficult to keep a supply of dry swimwear. Firstly rinse in fresh water immediately after use as saltwater contains hydroscopic salts which need to be removed. Then place on dry towel, roll up and then wring the whole thing. This will almost completely dry your Speedos.
23. People often use fabric conditioner in the laundry to make clothes softer. Do not do this with any insulating fabrics or feathers. Insulation works by having extremely thin fibres that trap air. Conditioner just attaches to the fibres making them thicker and reducing the insulation. This also applies to towels, they are a lot less absorbent if they have been exposed to a conditioner.
24. Avoid quilted undersuits. The sewing of the quilt brings the inside and outside material together with no insulation in between. This creates cold spots along the quilting.
25. As you ascend after a dive your tissues produce very small bubbles in you veinous system. These are sieved out by your lungs. If at any stage you descend again these bubbles are crushed by the pressure to a smaller size which the lungs can’t sieve. They then travel through the heart to the arterial side and get distributed throughout your body, only to grow again when you resume your ascent. This can make you feel thick headed and sleepy after dives. It can also bend you. So once you have started your ascent keep ascending, sawtooth profiles are bad.
26. The traditional regulator setup of a primary which you use and a secondary octopus is not the best method. Far better is to have the regulator you breathe through on a long ( 6 foot, 2 metres) hose. This goes down behind the right side of your BCD then up diagonally across your chest to go under your left ear and round behind you neck to come to your mouth from the right side. Your second regulator is on a short hose held just under your chin with an elastic necklace. If someone is really out of air they are going to take the regulator from your mouth, with a long hose you can deploy it very quickly to them and they will be far enough away not to interfere with your diving. The necklace regulator is for your use only and is easy to switch to, even if both hands are otherwise occupied. Although this system originated with technical diving it is far safer for recreational diving as well. You can respond to out of air problems much quicker and much better.
27. Beware dive centre rinse tanks when warm water diving. It is a simple fact that many divers pee in their wetsuits and then rinse them in these tanks. This is why you will see the instructors and dive guides rinsing their kit under the shower.
28. The reason you rinse kit is to prevent the damage caused by the formation of salt crystals as it dries out. If your kit is not going to dry out you don’t need to rinse it. Many liveaboard dive guides go for months without rinsing their kit with no problems.
29. The effect of pressure changes on your body are related to the percentage change in pressure. This becomes massive in the last few metres so always ascend very slowly from your 5 metre safety stop. Take at least 2 minutes, more if possible.
30. The pressure changes are so great in the top few metres of water that there can be a big pressure difference within your own body if you are vertical. Far better to ascend horizontal.

Warning. Never do anything that is outside what you have been trained. These tips are informative fun only. I will not be held liable in any way if you were to actually try any of them.