Arriving in Sharm

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Sharm el Sheikh!

Departing and Arriving

I have finally began the second part of my planned travels! I love diving and have been fascinated by Egypt since I was a small child so why not put the two together and venture into the great desert-y lands of Sharm! The day of my flight started well, as we did most of the travelling the day before and stayed over night in a travel-lodge (this is how I want to start ALL my trips now! Far less panic that you'll miss the plane!) and I got to the airport on time.

I also bought diving gear with me so was restricted to 32kg, 'God thats loads' you may say, well my dive stuff weight 14.4kg (to be precise!) and that left me with..mm..17.6kg which was EXACTLY how much my other bag weighed! Thankgod for a mini-weigher at home. I then had to put my backs on the 'over-sized' conveyorbelt and watch them dissapear to god-knows where when my brother and my Mum proceeded to say "They're going to get lost! Think how many flights the over-sized baggage goes on" Cheers guys! I spent the next 6 hours praying the bags weren't lost!
The family then departed and I had just enough time to grab some chocolate and a drink for the plane, oh how it wasnt enough. 5 hour plane journey plus the 40 minutes we were waiting for the second pilot (Who just casually strolled in like he was king, you may fly the plane mister but you've royallly pissed us off!). Oh and as per normal I was sitting next to the slightly eccentric crazy lady! Who I swear to god was drunk or high on something and after a short convo I found out she is currently staying in a beudoin tent for 2 weeks! Sounded awesome, but there are no proper facilities and I should mention that Egypt has a horrendous amount of bugs! But each to their own 😊

I then arrived in Sharm after 5 hours of no in-flight entertainment, barely anyfood (damn those people that kept ordering ham and cheese toasties,- I had no money 😞..) and with a dead bum but wow...the views were AMAZING! Loads of craggy desert moutains, no humanity for miles! It was brilliant, a little piece of virtually untouched earth something that would be damn hard to find in good ol' blighty. But hey, we have grass..and life so alls good. Because its April and was 5pm it was the PERFECT temperature, warm but not hot, sunny but not glaring, lurvley 😊 Ah one thing about Egypt, tourists (yes I will admit I am one!) aren't allowed to do ANYTHING. A man met me from my hotel, and was so helpful it was crazy. I had one panic moment when he ran off with my handluggage- yes my laptop was in there, yes my passport was too and my bank cards, visa, money! You get the picture but thankfuly he was decent and was generally just helping. Stupid to let him take it? mm... was v.hard to say no! And I didnt really have time to! Well that was the first 'fo-par' as one might say. The others involve; drinking the tap water (was brushing my teeth ALSO in the tap water), eating after touching the egyptian money (which is notoriously filthy) and not cleaning my hands and giving an egyptian my phone but alls good! I am still living 😊 Its so easy to sit at home and write a list of 'Do-not do's' but when arriving I forgot it all in the excitement of being here! I then met a few of the instructors, unpacked and wondered into Na'ama bay centre which is hideously touristy, has hundreds (literally) or pushy Egyptian men and a camel. Highlight of my night was stepping in camel poo, my fault really for not speaking egyptian. I saw (and heard) and Egyptian guy pointing at my feet and saying '.......' in egyptian (here you interpet dots for arabic. I now know he was probably saying 'Your standing in shit...still in shit...yep..you still in that shit' But oh well! My flipflops (yes I know...makes it worse!) have been well and truely blessed by Egypt!

Well I am off now to start my Rescue course and get to go diving today so SERIOUSLY excited :D

p.s Pictures are from the hotels beach (I ventured down there this morning, to be precise 6:30am...my body clocks screwed!... )

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