Day 14 – THUR - 27/9/12 – Dahab, Egypt
Yoga this morning was about working on self pacing breathing techniques and extended sun salutations. We also undertook some additional positions and stretches to loosen up hip and knee joints.
After a delicious breakfast again I established the previous days selection as my regular ;) and we headed to The Canyon and Rick's Reef for diving that day. The dive brief was that it was a more technical dive with entry via a crack in the coral plate, into a lagoon and diving through a bright aqua pool type area with a sandy bottom and rock walls out into a coral reef.
The yoga brief was to continue observation and focusing your mind on the moment, creating stillness and weightlessness.
Dive 1 was in The Canyon. It had more fish and coral than Lighthouse with the entry being via the lagoon and I felt I had much more awareness during the dive. At the end of the dive I was actually following in a fish wake and I felt blended with my surroundings.
Dive 2 had an entry via a crack in the reef table. There was lots of light and a huge amount of coral at Rick's Reef. There was a good variety of fish, although I was told not as many as there was even 5 years ago due to local over fishing. Menu's at restaurants we had passed on the waterfront still sell reef fish to eat! As a diver, you observe, not eat them all so there is nothing left to observe.
On our way back I asked our local driver Mousa why so many half built buildings are along the waterfront. He said it was because the banks would loan people money and after a certain point of completion the bank would give access to the whole amount of the funds. People would then skip the country with hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds, leaving the seaside looking like degenerated concrete shells of abandoned construction projects.
Dinner that night was in the desert sand dunes and was cooked by our Bedouin driver Mousa. After a 1 hour meditation in the stillness of the desert with our yoga teacher, we ate tea, roast chicken, roast veggies, rice and pita. Dessert was fresh fruit salad with yoghurt. Dinner was followed by a lie down on the Bedouin carpet and watching the stars. It was a very relaxing evening.
