At last the Red Sea

It's hard to believe that our three weeks in Saudi Arabia are coming to a close. Although it is our last day here, we went out with a bang by enjoying an awesome day of snorkeling in the Red Sea. During our stay in Jeddah, we kept hearing that the Red Sea was home to a fantastic and vibrant collection of sea creatures. We were not disappointed. I was quite amazed by the number, variety, and colorfulness of the fish we saw. We swam along a fairly shallow coral reef so we were able to see the fish quite close up. Unfortunately, we didn't have a waterproof camera to take pictures, but here are a few images that are fairly representative of what we saw:

This gives you an idea of the coral reef and how many fish there were. There were even more brightly colored ones than shown here, but we did see a lot of these black striped ones called sergeant major fish.

One of my favorite types of fish was the bluecheek butterfly fish. They were bright yellow (with blue cheeks) and always swam in pairs. The other fish in this photo are bannerfish, which we also saw.

Here we are before getting in the water.

Eve is ready to tackle the Red Sea waves.

Hind and I are studying up on the array of colorful fish that we may encounter in the water.



I am so glad we were able to snorkel in the Red Sea before leaving! It is definitely a must see/do in Jeddah!