Camel diving

Backtracking here a bit but Dahab deserves more comment. The eight full days we had in Dahab were amazing. Unfortunately, we don't have that many photos. The best things to take photos of were under the sea. The other time I would have liked to have got a few photos was when we were on the camels but it's a little tricky to juggle a camera and ride a camel. Well, I figured it would be for me. However, our dive guide was able to read a book and smoke a cigarette simultaneously while riding her camel! The diving and snorkelling was amazing. For those that know the area we snorkelled at the Lighthouse on the first day. This gave us a chance to make sure masks, fins and snorkels were in good order. The Lighthouse doesn't actually seem to have a lighthouse near it. It's merely an area in front of the main broadwalk where the cafes are. I was quite amazed to see so much sea life so close to everything. Diving wise we dived at the Canyon a couple of times and at the "house reef" - that is, just in front of the hotel. This reef isn't dived very often as it's only really accessible when the tide is high and there's no wind. We also snorkelled at the Bells and the Blue Hole. The Bells were great. Not really any divers around but lots of sea life. We saw these cornetfish hunting smaller fish. The cornetfish are very long and thin and would make sudden darts into these schools of fish. Mel believes that the little fish were trying to stay close to us as this kept the cornetfish away. The Blue Hole is a big hole! It's blue because it's full of water - d'oh - and because of the way the light shines into it. It's very pretty but is notorious for divers being idiots and trying to dive through an archway at 52 metres. That's well beyond the limits of recreational diving but people still try to do it. Some succeed, some don't. The best dives were 1) the last one of our training. This was when we were surrounded by fusilier fish - as I mentioned in an earlier blog and 2) the second dive on the camel safari. Yep, we loved the camel safari. It was an early wake up but it was definitely worth it. We took all the gear out to the Blue Hole where the locals loaded it on to camels. They then walked the camels over the first, very steep, hill. We then hopped on and rode the camels for over an hour. Then we relaxed for a little bit in a so-called Bedouin village. It was more a bunch of beach shacks. Some of these were more protected from the elements than others. Not quite what I'd imagined for a Bedouin village but then again it was perfect for the local environment. We only saw a couple of other groups of divers entering the water and didn't see anyone but our group once we were under. The dive was very nice and we had to wind our way between different coral formations. Lots of different sea life again. I looked up a few but the diversity is overwhelming. Our second dive was a bit further up the way. We loaded our gear on to a jeep to get to the site. This slightly spoilt the illusion of being away from everything. Certainly, you can't drive to these locations from the south but you can from the north. Still, the location of the dive was indicated by a large boulder on the shore and a barnacle covered rock in the sea nearby. This site is known as Triggerfish reef. Funnily enough, it's called that because of the large number of Triggerfish. These are quite unusual looking in that they have tails shaped like a magnet and are a very dark blue, nearly black colour. There was lots else to see here that we hadn't seen before including a ray of some sort hiding under some coral and a nice big octopus. He was just staying in his spot in the coral so we didn't get to see him swim but he was impressive all the same. I can see why people get hooked on this diving lark.

London again

Well, here we are in London again - one last time for the forseeable future. We've had a long trip to get here. We left Dahab at 8:30am on a nine hour bus ride to Cairo. The buses are pretty basic. At least there was air conditioning. Mel hadn't been feeling well overnight so we were a bit concerned how she'd managed as there are no toilets on the buses and they don't stop very frequently. However, she managed fine.

The supposed nine-hour bus ride from Cairo to Dahab had actually taken 11 1/2 hours so we were concerned about how long it would take. Thus, we choose the early morning bus. In the end, the bus made good time.

Security on the Sinai peninsular is very obvious. There are road blocks quite frequently. There was even one just north of the hotel. They didn't look at passports when we went off diving but were, we were told, noting number plates and number of occupants. They check the numbers on your return. However, many of the locals would hitch a lift with us in the back of the jeep we were in so I'm not sure how strict they are about it all.

In places, I think they are much more careful. When returning from the Sinai to the mainland we had to get our luggage off the bus and line it all up with everyone standing in front of their luggage. A dog then walked past all the luggage - supposedly looking for drugs I guess.

We got kind of used to seeing people with machine guns on them. In many tourist sites there are guys posted behind portable shields just keeping an eye on things. And, obviously, we were aware that a group of tourists had been shot in Egypt in the 1990s so it was good to see the security. It's one of those things though where the real risk is actually quite low. Two million tourists visit Luxor every year. You'd have to be really unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Anyway, back to the trip. We got back to Cairo in good time and managed to get a room for about seven hours. This gave us some sleep at least. Our transfer to the airport picke us up at 1am for our 3:45am flight. The flight to Istanbul was less than 2 hours. We, then, had to wait around Istanbul airport for a couple of hours before flying on to London. But we're here now. Mel's got a very busy few days catching up with friends. I'm not so busy...less friends???

Diving in Dahab

This blog site is a bit unreliable at times. I've tried to update this a couple of times recently but without any luck.

Dahab has been great. The weather has been perfect - still up around 30. We've completed our PADI Open Water diving certificates. Six dives at a couple of different sites. The last was the best. We were surrounded by a school of fusilier fish. They split into two groups to go around us and then reformed on the other side. Amazing! We followed them for a little while too.

The coral reefs are very pretty too with lots of various sea life. Before we started our dive course we went for a snorkel at "The Lighthouse" which is at the north end of Dahab bay. There is a broadwalk along the shore with lots of restaurants and shops. All very trendy. A lot of the dive schools are based here. We were amazed that the reef was so close to all of this. And it seemed to teem with life - although we're told it's nothing like it used to be...too many tourists unfortunately :(

Not nice to think that we might be part of the problem but we've been very careful to avoid touching any of the coral...not like some divers and snorkellers apparently.

We've also climbed Mt. Sinai. That was quite hard work. We were picked up from the hotel just before 11pm and drove for 2+ hours to the start of the climb. We arrived at the summit at about 5am to watch the sunrise. Very pretty but it was freezing cold up there. Then we climbed down again (which took about an hour and a half). We went inside St. Catherines Monastery and saw the Burning Bush or, at least, it's descendant.

Today we're going to go snorkelling at the Blue Hole. You can dive there but we thought we'd take it a bit easier today.

Tomorrow we have a bit of an adventure. We go "camel diving". We'll get a ride to the Blue Hole where we hop on the camels for an hour and a half trek to a remoter diving spot called Ras Abu Gallum. This isn't accessible by road. From there we will do a couple of dives and have a Bedouin style lunch. Then back on the camels to return to the Blue Hole and then the hotel. Should be good.

The following day it's the long bus ride back to Cairo to catch the 3;45 am flight to Istanbul and then London. That will be a long, long day. Never mind...it's definitely worth it.

Bye for now...