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Temple

Unlike other local dive sites, the dive here at Temple doesn't focus along a drop off, instead it focuses on a cluster of pinnacles found in the middle of a large bay, where you will find the Italian Fanara resort. Be prepared to hear plenty of music and the occasional "Uno! Dos! Tres! Quattro!!" hailing out from the speakers as beautiful tanned men and women perform their beach aerobics.

The boats tend to moor around the edges of the bay, so sometimes there is a swim along white, sandy bottom with undulating mounds of coral before you get to the pinncles themselves. Navigation here is always a bit of a challenge for new guides to the area!

The pinnacles of the "Temple" can be found sitting in the middle of this bay starting at a depth of around 10m with the deepest point of the farthest pinnacle being at around 18m (not a dive site to get great depth really). Once you reach the pinnacles, the guide will then get you well and truly disorientated by meandering in and out of three large coral towers before leading you back to the mooring (another mooring dive) or to the fringing reef where you can safely perform your safety stop and ascent safe from the boat traffic above. There is a small swim through on the deeper side of the pinnacles, however there is sometimes a queue to go through this channel, and I have seen so much coral kicked to bits here, that I have stopped doing it. There is another one at the shallow end too, but likewise, there is a glorious gorgonian fan which will no longer be glorious if people keep dragging their less experienced divers through the crack it graces. I keep the swim throughs to the more experienced divers in places like Ras Mohammed.

If you do lose track of your guide, all is not lost, you can still safely ascend close to the pinnacles, just make sure that you chose the tall tower that reaches almost to the surface for your safety stop, and bear in mind you will probably have a bit of a surface swim back to the boat.

Again all the usual guys can be found there, lion fish in the afternoon, blue spotted rays, sometimes jack fish come in and of course you will find Nemo (the anenome or clown fish). Whilst down there, take a moment to hang back and look up at the towering coral in front of you, just to give you a little perspective on the dive, very cool.

There are a couple of other dives that can be done in this area with a fantastic lagoon at around 6M full of life (including baby barracuda in the spring) and ideal for students performing skills. There is also a perfect location for a deep dive on the corner with Ras Katy where you can follow a sandy road leading down to a ledge at around 28M, where you can easily sit a group of advanced open water students to perform their deep dive tasks. A variation on this dive can also be done as a drift (or semi-drift, where you start from a mooring) following the reef back around the corner towards Ras Katy. Some people have named that dive "Ras Hadaba" after the small town that sits on the cliff. In fact, Hadaba means Cliff in Egyptian.

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