Float like an Egyptian

Back into the Red Sea today - this time snorkelling on the house reef. The on-shore breeze was strong, whipping the water in the bay into white horses and sending spume crashing over the jetty. Maybe not ideal snorkelling conditions, but this is our last full day and I want to see the fishes again before we leave.

At about 100 yards out into the bay, the wooden jetty splits in two. Straight ahead is the disembarkation point for divers and the three motor boats that ferry scuba trips to off-shore sites. The L-shaped spur to the left is for snorkellers and leads to a canopied pontoon that in turn gives way to an iron staircase and ladder that drop directly into the water and onto the reef.

The fish cluster around as if at the edge of an infinite ornamental lake and I am not disappointed. Shoals of white fish with luminous eyes look to be swimming upside down and are everywhere just beneath the surface. Further down the face of the reef a huge parrot fish is grazing, his rainbow colours flashing in the sunlight. At the very bottom two stone fish skulk invisibly on the white sand. In between, a hundred thousand fish of all colours and shapes and sizes swarm and wriggle and dance, chasing each other or feeding in companionable oblivion.

The snorkelling zone is roughly marked out by a string of buoys and slime-covered ropes that bob up and down in the waves. The current is driving on-shore and swimming against it is both exhausting and pointless. Holding onto the marker ropes gives me a fantastic view of the reef life below, and I float there ebbing and flowing as the water rises and falls. The stillness of the perpetual motion of ocean and creatures and plants allows my brain to snuff out one by one its constant threads of internal chatter and narration. Eventually all that is left is my body floating in the sea and just the one direct feed from eye to brain. Complete sensory immersion; I think this must be what meditation is like.

An hour or so later, Liz meets me as I'm walking back along the jetty, flippers and mask in hand. She fetches some coffee while I change out of my wet suit and the four of us sit on the beach drinking our drinks as the sun starts to go down. We head into the hotel's health centre and spend a quiet hour in the spa pool and steam room. By the time we come out, the sky is blazing red and the call to prayer drifts to us, carried on the breeze from the other side of the bay.