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Published: April 13th 2007
Helwan
My lovely camel, who loved to jump every time a car beeped us. Which, in Egypt, is all the bloody time
Tom Griffith
Dahab
Message from me
Helwan the camel Something weird is happening to the world's weather when you get a hailstorm in the Sinai Desert, right on the Red Sea coast of Egypt. Either that, or Allah or God or whoever is really angry. Why else would ice drop on a balmy diving resort in the Middle East, and on Friday the 13th as well? That's exactly what happened here this morning, and the locals are as amazed as the tourists. One guy was running around taking pictures of the hail with his mobile, shouting, 'Snow, snow in Dahab!', and most people agreed it was a pretty freakish event. It certainly put paid to my diving adventures today, with brown mud flowing into the ocean from the hills and reducing visibility to near-zero. Diving, you ask? More on that later...
The Sinai Peninsula is pure Bible territory.This triangular section of deserts, beaches and mountains has seen more history than is really fair - Moses and Jesus are both said to have passed through this way (if you believe in that stuff), and wars have been fought way too often over this spartan landscape, as recently as 1973 when Egypt tried to get its own back on Israel
Dahab
View back over the Dahab shoreline from the northern end of the beach. Large numbers of Eastern European sun worshippers not pictured in the Yom Kippur War. Sinai has had all manner of imperial masters: the Pharaohs, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the Turks, the Brits, the Israelis and the Egyptians. It is home to the world's most famous waterway, the Suez Canal, as well as Al-Qaeda's favourite resort target, Sharm-el-Sheikh. People from North Africa, Palestine, the Middle East and the world converge on the peninsula to soak up the sun, swim in the crystal-clear Red Sea, and marvel at the other-worldy landscapes of the interior. It's a pretty damned cool place.
My journey from Cairo took place overnight, and my only glimpse of the Suez Canal was from underneath, as we passed through the tunnel near the city of Suez. The sun rose at around 5am, and the mountainous desert terrain for which Sinai is famous revealed itself in all of its glory - crumpled and craggy brown mountains almost rolling over each other as they descend to the plains and then, suddenly to the sands and the azure waters of the Red Sea.
There are all manner of resorts along the Sinai coast, catering to all groups. Sharm-el-Sheikh is for tour groups, rich Egyptians and Gulf Arabs.
Sunset over Sinai
The sun descends behind the mountains near Dahab Dahab is the poor cousin up the coast, with its shabby bungalows, smattering of bars, and restaurants serving juices and pancakes, and playing Bob Marley/Jack Johnson, definitely designed for the backpacker crowd. The place is quite compact, and is full of people, yet never feels crowded. Apparently business is right down (you'll discover why later), and there does seem to be an air of quiet desperation amongst the local salespeople. Every restaurant tout tries desperately to get you into their establishment, with promises of free starters, free dessert, free drinks, free sheesha pipe.
The place is pretty laid-back, but small enough - and still conservative enough - to make it completely different from other backpacker beaches like those in, say, Thailand. There are bars, but only a couple, and because the locals don't drink, the tourists seem to restrain their urges a little, and keep it low-key. You actually feel quite guilty trying to get pissed on the beach, when you're looking across the Gulf of Aqaba directly at Saudi Arabia, and the Dahab muezzin is doing his call to prayer just behind you. Not exactly the recipe for Party Central.
The crowd here is quite mixed -
Mohammed and Sharma
Our camel guides squat by the fire to make us a refreshing pot of sage-flavoured Bedouin tea new-age families, ageing hippies, young travellers, Cairo expats up for some quiet beach action, and vast numbers of Russian package-tourists. Every restaurant has their menu in Cyrillic, and I'm even writing on a Cyrillic keyboard.
One thing I didn't realise - or recall - until I got here, and the reason for the low tourist numbers, was that this was the site of a terrorist attack just under a year ago. Not that it is widely publicised here: nobody told me about it, and there's no physical evidence, except for a small memorial plaque and a bunch of flowers for a guy called Marc. I only found out when I was flicking through Wikipedia and read about it. 23 people were killed when three bombs went off, one of them just 50 metres or so from where I'm staying. I couldn't think of a more tranquil, or unnecessary, place for the bastards to target. I mean, what have a bunch of backpackers drinking milkshakes and eating seafood got to do with the dictatorial anti-Islamist policies of Hosni Mubarak? Anyway, I finally realised what the umpteen passport checks were for as we crossed the Sinai, and actually found myself a
Birra Stella
Egypt's premium brew, and very nice too if you can find it. A bit more available along the beach than in the conservative desert towns, but you still feel guilty hunting it down and consuming it when barely any of the locals drink it... little thankful for them...
After a few days of swanning around the beach, and the restaurants, and the one cheap bar, I decided to do what a lot of other people do when they're here, and go for my Open Water diving certificate. Being the Red Sea, the water is pretty darned clear and dive-worthy (hailstorms not permitting), and being Egypt, the courses here are cheaper than back home. So I found a place that offered a good deal, and signed up to learn how to scuba. It's a lot more involved than just strapping on a tank and a mask and plunging into the depths - there's a whole range of skills, and academic knowledge, that you need to pick up. Over the course of the Open Water, you do about eight dives, ranging in depth from 2 metres to the full 18 metres allowed by the certificate. You do all sorts of crazy stuff like swapping air regulators, practising emergency procedures for when you run out of air, taking your mask off underwater, and rehearsing the emergency ascent methods. It all gets quite technical, but there's heaps of practical diving time where you see what needs to
Lawrences of Arabia
Myself, Dan and Jaymie, riding our trusty steeds on Wadi El Bida be learned, and then do it yourself. I've heard it compared to learning to drive - once you can do it, you never forget it. Certain skills are very counter-intuitive: you are never, ever supposed to hold your breath underwater, even if your regulator comes out of your mouth. Its quite hard trying
not to hold your breath while sitting 12 metres under the surface with no air supply in your mouth. Also, because of the weird pressure physics at play, you do strange things like
inflate your buoyancy device as you go down, and then
deflate it as you go up. But I won't bore you with any more details. Suffice to say the whole experience was hard work, yet thoroughly enjoyable. It is hard to describe what it is like down there, and I won't do it justice. It really is like a different world, with different rules and sensations at play. On my first day, we were taken down to 12 metres, and on the way we saw lionfish, scorpion fish, and stonefish - all deadly, and all of which I've had a phobia of since I was a kid. Yet - here's the strange thing -
Shaay and sheesha on the shand
This is the life - a cup of tea and some apple tobacco by the waters of the Red Sea... the calm of the waters, the relaxing gurgle of the scuba regulator, the beauty of the reef, all combined to take away my fear, and I stared in wonder at them like a child at an aquarium. I managed to renew my phobia today, though, when I read that lionfish often attack divers, by tilting their head down, and darting straight at you so they can inject their poisonous dorsal spines into your flesh. Ouch.
Anyway, long story short - our Austrian instructor Astrid guided five of us through our course, we had an amazing time, and I would recommend diving in Dahab to any and all who visit this part of the world...
As well as lounging and diving, there are plenty of other activities available in Dahab. The most enjoyable I had was the short camel trip up to Wadi El Bida, a hill behind the town with great views over the ocean and across to Saudi. I went up with two mates, Dan from NZ and Jaymie from the UK, as well as our three camels, and our two young guides, Mohammed and Sharma. The ride was as ball-achingly agonising as camel rides tend to
Diver Dan
A rather fetching photo of me in my super-tight wetsuit, apres-dive be, and my camel Helwan was a bit jumpy, but the clomp up the hill was well worth it. Sinai was experiencing one of its rare thunderstorms, and there was literally electricity in the air: as we stood on the hilltop, our hands began to make crackling sounds, our skin crawled, and our hair stood on end. Fun for a few minutes, but we headed back down the hillside when we realised that we would be the most likely conductors for any wayward lightning strikes...
So, that was Dahab. A bit of a departure from the real Egypt, but a fun place with great memories all the same. Next stop is Cairo once more, where I hope to pick my mate Bec up from the airport, before heading down to Luxor to get some culcha. Thanks for reading my long-winded account of what was essentially a week at the beach...
PS I have tried to include a couple of videos that I made. Anecdotally, I've heard that they work on some computers, and not on others. Click on the icons and see what happens. I've kept them short so they can upload from these slow Egyptian internet connections.
Leave your camel at home!
No humped quadrupeds on THIS beach! I've also put some videos on the last few posts from Egypt as well, so go back and have a bit of a look if you like...
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Bernie
non-member comment
Have you found Atlantis?
Hey Tom, my son is so impressed with the combination of a camel video and a Donovan reference. Any sign of Atlantis down there? I'll redo my introductory Elective History unit if you can find me some nice photos of Atlantis. Helwan is just the coolest animal I think I've ever seen, and you two seem a perfect match with your laid back lifestyles. Happy trails, Bernie