Dahab

Random Internet Cafe, Main Street, Dahab Egypt
5:04PM

We've ventured further up the Sinai peninsula to Dahab, which is really what we've been looking for all along. Sharm was beautiful - but as the Egyptians say, really, really touristic. Huge hotels and resorts everywhere; not much good food; angry Russian women dressed like teenagers at every turn. Dahab is the opposite - in many ways, it reminds me of some of the islands in Thailand that I visited. There is definitely still the annoyance of Egyptians and Bedouins selling their wares at every shop you pass; but there's a relaxed atmosphere, including bars on the beach that have only floor cushions and low tables instead of real furniture, restaurants on rooftops, and backpacking tourists with hair messy from the salt water and skin as dark as mud.

I didn't think much about being American and visiting the Middle East before I set out on this trip but it's very apparent that Egyptians are not at all used to seeing us Americans. Lynn and I get asked if we're British or Aussies...even after we speak. We're positively received though, which is nice, in spite of the fact that we're American. As in the past, I refuse to say I'm Canadian, so it's easier that I don't have to even deal with any negative repurcussions of being American.

Our main focus in Dahab is soaking in the sun, eating good food and, of course, diving. Lynn decided to do her advanced cert here - it's almost as cheap as if she were to do free dives, and she can do some of the most famous dives in the world here with the next level of training. Yesterday we arrived by bus in the mid morning and found a dive center/resort combo. The room we're staying in is much simpler than the Marriott which is a nice change. It's too easy to snuggle down into the comfy covers of the Marriott beds while wearing the complimentary white robe and watching American TV (we only did that one night, but still feels like one too many). Here there is much to see and many people to meet, so we spent the majority of the day yesterday - after dropping off our bags - wandering the streets and taking pictures. Last night we saw the lights from an oil company on Saudi Arabia - I feel like I could swim to it. We had fresh shrimp and calamari on the beach then wandered around trying to avoid the rogue camel we'd spotted earlier in the day in the darkness of night.

We awoke this morning and went diving. We headed north from Dahab via a dirt road that runs along the coast. We passed about 500 camels, several Bedouin families, and many other dive companies. We did two dives - the first was Lynn's deep dive - I maxxed out at 36M and she at 30M. It was beautiful and warm, even over 100 feet under the water. The second dive, and possibly the most famous I've ever done, was the Blue Hole. It was a little bit eery to see the memorial to the divers that have died there posted on the beach. The blue hole is basically a huge (7M across) deep coral tunnel. Divers come from all over the world to test their deep dive limits, and many have died trying to get to the bottom of the 106M shelf, and maybe even further to the 1000+M bottom. We were nowhere that deep and safe the whole time. Yet another fantastic dive complete with nudie branch, cornetfish (my favorite so far - the like to follow you and are very playful, which makes the diving more entertaining), napolean fish, many hard and soft corals, stonefish, and hundreds of other amazing species of fish and marine life.

Tonight our dive guide is taking us to his favorite restaurant in Dahab (Italian food) and we'll likely go to one of the bars near the beach for a few cold Sakkaras. I hope we have Sakkara in the states - it's my new favorite. Tomorrow and Sunday we'll continue diving. We can't fly Monday as it'll be too soon after diving, so we're going to try to hike Mt Sinai and see St Katherine's monestary, then head to Luxor for the day on Tuesday and back to Cairo on Wednesday. I fly out Thursday morning (3:30AM) for Kilimanjaro; Lynn leaves soon after for NYC.

Nothing else figured out about the duration of my trip after Kilimanjaro except that I have tickets from Zanzibar to Joburg S Africa, and again from Joburg to Cairo for the return. I anticipate 2 days of misery on the way back - I'll fly from Joburg to Cairo (9 hours) then 4 hours in the Cairo airport; Cairo to NYC (12+ hours), then 3 hours in JFK; and finally, JFK to SEA (6 hours) with an arrival in Seattle on Oct 22 at midnightish. I think that will be enough travel for me for a while!

Hope you're all well. I'll try to find something exciting to write about beyond diving before I post again. I can only imagine that you're tired of hearing about fish and coral.

Off in search of Sakkara...

~G