Arrival
First Class on the
ferry to Nuweiba is at the prow, spacious and uncrowded with a cafeteria
and the opportunity to buy freshly-cooked box meals. Almost half of
its passengers were backpackers, and the remainder well-heeled Jordanians
and Egyptians. It is separated by a monitored glass door from the
remainder of the deck where you find the Second Class seats: closely-spaced blue rows
filled with locals in an array of regional clothing styles.
Bidding farewell to the
pair from Amman I’d been chatting with - a Cruise Ship 3rd Officer (on
his way to Cairo and thence to Alexandria port) and a Liquor Store
manager (on his way to visit his family at Sohag, another 17 hours of
travel away) - I exited the ferry. Nuweiba port is jammed with
manually pushed cargo-laden trolleys and their handlers, but acquiring a
30 day visa was uneventful and customs x-rayed my bag and waved me
through to the exit. Most of the other backpackers were also going to
Dahab, so we shared a minibus there.
Boardwalk
When I first arrived in
Dahab, it was a dead quiet Sunday evening. The majority of restaurants
were empty, the boardwalk had few tourists on it, and there were even
fewer in the shops (If I recall correctly, I noticed one in one). Go
south a few hundred metres from the point at which the souk meets the
boardwalk or north a kilometre or so and the place wasn’t just quiet,
but dark. Monday was similarly quiet, with vacant deckchairs on private
beaches during the day, and few on the boardwalk even at night.
Viewed from the
boardwalk, Dahab is a tourist hell of the standard variety - restaurants
mostly with pretty-much identical menus, dive shops, hostels and
hotels, a few bars, and souvenir shops with pretty-much the same range
as the shop two doors down. Most noticeable, in particular, is the same
designs cropping up time and again on clothing, bags, towels, etc.
Follow the boardwalk
far enough north, and number of restaurants on the seafront diminishes,
the number of souvenir shops diminishes to zero, and a bit further on
the concrete stops, there’s mostly beach, and things are kind of pretty
in a bleak kind of way, with the bare brown mountains serving as
backdrop to the curve of the bay. Far enough south, and the buildings
stop and there’s beach and lagoon and folks flying kites. Out at sea
there are a few windsurfers and kitesurfers.
Viewed from landward
it’s more post-apocolyptic than touristy - bare brown mountains, scree
slopes down to the plane, a frontier-town look in the middle, and on the
outskirts towards the lagoon, skeleton after concrete skeleton of a
things that could have been intended to be a hotels, and empty shops. I
had to go to the Commercial International Bank, the only place around
that could change travellers cheques, and it felt like a little island
in the middle of nowhere. After half an hour or so of waiting the
electricity started working again, I cashed my cheques, and walked back to the Masbat area.
Christmas
Winter is low season
in Dahab, but the couple of weeks from Christmas through to the
beginning of the year are a peak bump before things settle back to
normal. By the end of the week things were busier: a few of the
restaurants at least were full, and many of the others were reasonably
busy, though there were still a few that were still struggling for
customers; tourists filled the deckchairs, and day or night you had to
step around strolling tourists on the boardwalk. The shops were still
quiet though - apparently snow in Europe has stopped a lot of travellers
from flying; it should have been much busier in a normal year.
Roast Turkey for
Christmas seemed like a good idea; there were two places side by side
that were offering what appeared to be near-identical choices.
Unfortunately the Roast Turkey in question was not exactly done in the
traditional style, being more of a semi-stew, and the Roast Vegetables were
definitely Vegetables but anything but Roast. No stuffing was provided
at this restaurant; the other place did have stuffing, though this had apparently been
“done interestingly” with Egyptian spices. Expectations/Assumptions are
dangerous.
Diving
PADI Open Water Course at Bannerfish Bay
Both
Confined and Open Water classes were in the sea, and we (a Saffie was
my fellow student) ended up having a bit of a swim around at the end of
each session. Had one moment of sheer panic on early submersion in the
first class, but apart from that and a tendency to dogpaddle from time
to time no real issues. Bannerfish Bay had some fish, some stubby
seagrass, but no real stretches of coral.
Fun Dive at the Lighthouse
Mounds of coral spilling down the sandy slope into deeper water. Really enjoyable dive (Real Coral!) and reasonable breath control/buoyancy management.
Deep Dive at the Canyon
Good
banks of coral and ok fish. Didn’t actually swim the Canyon, which
apparently requires Tec Diving experience - just dropped down to the
sandpit at the start to experience depth, and then ascended out of the
canyon and along the bottom. The swim back was not so good - got caught
by the optical illusion where I thought I was on the same plane as the
divers ahead of me, but their heads were lower than their feet, and
ended up on the surface when I should have been at ~5 feet... and then
getting back down to the proper level was tricky.
Drift Dive from Bells to Blue Hole
Magic
dive. Amazing coral walls that disappear down into the blue depths,
with lots of fish living on and around them. Kept pace/level with my
buddy (really experienced diver from Jordan). Not a lot of drift
noticed though. Ended with 80 bars (ie used ~120 bars), which is apparently a
Good Thing. On the other hand, our instructor only used ~25 bars... Scary. While we were swimming round the wall of Blue Hole, a bunch of divers were climbing down a line from a float out in the middle, presumably to swim through the Arch at ~55m.
Underwater Naturalist at the Islands
Great
site with interesting topography, and loads of varieties of coral and
fish - including multiple schools of baby barracuda. Saw mouth of a
clam as well -- bright purplish blue. Really lousy dive, though, as I
had the wrong size boots, and my right foot in particular was a bit sore
beforehand, really sore during the dive, and sore for hours afterward.
Swimming was consequently really difficult, particularly as there was a
canyon with strong currents to fight. On the bright side, when the
current was with the direction of travel, it felt far more of a drift
dive than the previous Blue Hole dive did - probably a metre every few seconds.
Ended with well under 20% air, which is apparently Not Such A Good Thing.
Night Dive at the Lighthouse
Coral
was not particularly brightly coloured - impression was lotsa white,
with a few yellows/reds/pinks, and rare blues. Actually found
Lighthouse’s coral more visually interesting in aggregate during the
day because of the distance that could be seen. Achieving neutral buoyancy was tricky perhaps because water was a bit colder than it had
been - was probably nearly halfway through dive before was really
comfortable with the control of things. Saw a Spanish Dancer though it
wasn’t dancing. Didn’t find the safety stop particularly relaxing as a
lion fish kept swimming around fairly close but did bury lights momentarily to play with the bioluminescent ?plankton? in the water.
Underwater Navigation at the Lighthouse
Didn’t
really see much apart from sand, a few fish, and the compass on my
forearm. Compulsory, no doubt eventually useful, but not interesting.
Also a little rushed - more of an overview than anything since the
square I swam wasn’t (finished metres off my mark)
Exit
Finishing the final dive in the afternoon, I caught the 22:00
overnight bus to Cairo, arriving around 6:30am. This has the advantage of not losing a day in
travel, but is otherwise not recommended as there were a lot of
interruptions which made sleep difficult. The TV was playing Egyptian
movies reasonably loudly, and every hour or so the lights would come on
and someone would wake everyone up to check our passports or tickets.
