Whale Sharks!

5:49PM, Cairo Marriott

I love to dive. I miss my dive buddy Hank, but I love to dive. And yesterday I went to Thistlegorm - absolutely amazing. The best wreck I've seen yet.

I got up at 3:30 AM and met the crew (10 of us total, two groups) for our early morning departure. We hung out at the port with the army for a while and when they agreed to let us through we sat on the end of the dock and watched some cats for a while. I only mention these two seemingly useless facts because an hour is a LONG time to wait when you really only want to be sleeping. We boarded the boat and I immediately fell asleep until Sharky - my dive guide and buddy - woke me for the sunset. I had another of those moments that Lynn and I keep talking about - my life is amazing and I am so blessed. Wished you all could have been there to share it with me!

We reached the dive site and descended about 100 feet. The wreck is huge - 120 feet long, and still has many of the original pieces of cargo that went down with the boat in the 40's. To start, we only circled the wreck - we saw the captains quarters from the outside, the propeller, the machine guns on the outside of the boat. With the next dive, we penetrated the wreck. Amazing. I saw parrotfish swimming amongst 40's era motorcycles; Napolean fish skirting the edges of submerged tank (the kind that people ride in, not the kind fish swim in); a locamotive; and a blue spotted ray hiding among cartons of big ass bullets labeled 1929. We were facing horrendous currents - the kind that you have to hang onto the mooring line with both hands in order not to be swept away. Sharky's amazing, though, so he timed the dive just right and we were all safe.

As if that wasn't enough, we came back thruogh Ras Mohammed National Park and dived Shark Reef to Yolanda Reef. We saw a whale shark - my first shark (today I saw my second - a reef shark). Uncanny to be that close. The bugger was about 20 feet long and I think I actually saw him first out of the group...looks just like a shark and I must be paranoid. He was swimming in the blue looking for unknowing divers (JUST KIDDING - they're docile). Anyway, that was something I can cross off my life list. The best way to describe that dive was like we were watching a big screen tv. I was literally in the midst of an amazing aquariam - like the one at Hattie's Hat, only 100 times better. It was also a drift dive so we got in the horizontal position and just watched the Red Sea pass us by. Another 'thank you God!' moment for sure.

Today was Lynn's first day as a certified diver - she did really well. We made three dives in the straits of Tiran and actually dove in Saudi Arabian water. We saw a reef shark and a ton of beautiful coral and a couple of non-submerged wrecks...generally great diving, but I'm excited to get back to Ras Mohammed tomorrow.

Tonight we'll both go for massages and end the evening in a local bar, probably talking about diving, and certainly drinking a few cold Sakkaras. More diving tomorrow, then off to Dahab for a few days and then onto the final unknown country for Lynn - possibly Israel. We're both doing very well and enjoying the heck out of traveling and each other - I think we would import friends and probably bagels & cream cheese (there are neither of those things over here), but other than that, we're at about a 24 out of the 1 to 10 scale.

Hope you all are doing well. Talk soon!

Cheers - G