Dahab...a little late

Looking out the back door of our villa in Dahab

Since I missed my flight to Beirut last night, I guess I have time to catch up a bit on my posts. There was a huge football game, between al-Ahly and the national team I think, and the roads were jammed. Besides, cabbies here are VERY hit-or-miss, even the nicer one's with meters. It seemed like we took the longest way possible to get to the airport, and Egypt’s infrastructure isn't the most efficient. We drove at least ten miles out of our way because the way the highways are laid out, we had drive past the airport a few miles before we could make a u-turn and backtrack to the airport's entrance. Then you have the security issues. It takes ten minutes to get from the airport's entrance to the airport itself, winding back and forth and slowing for speedbumps. It just makes me happy to live in a city/country where "someone speeding up to the outside of an airport terminal with a carbomb" isn't something that needs to be considered when designing an airport. We got to Cairo International with 45 minutes to spare, but the taxi didn't know how to follow the sings in the traffic circle to get to Terminal 1, and only ignored us when we told him how to do it in Arabic. We walked/jogged to the right terminal and rushed through security to get to the ticketing country with half an hour to spare. Only thing is, they close the ticket counter 45 minutes before take-off. No amount of arguing would get him to open it up for us so instead I am going to Beirut a week later than expected.

Oh, mafeesh moushgilla I suppose. At least I have an opportunity to catch up on my posts. My last post covered my trip to Luxor, from March 24th to the 28th. The week after that, also the weekend before Spring Break, I went to Dahab with a bunch of friends from here. Dahab is a resort town on the eastern side of the Sinai Peninsula, across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia. A couple of us left by plane early Thursday morning and made it into Sharm el-Sheikh, the most famous resort town in the Sinai, by 7am. From there we taxied to Dahab.

Dahab is about an hour drive from Sharm, which is at the southern tip of the Sinai. Dahab has an interesting history and is one of my favorite places in Egypt. The Bedouin tribes in the Sinai retained a great degree of autonomy around Dahab, even as Nasser came to power in the 1950s. Even before it became relatively popular as a tourist destination, a small population of European ex-pats lived there and it was known as a hippie colony. Its social customs are much more relaxed than Cairo's and most other places in Egypt, but not in an artificial way. The Egyptians there and the Bedouin seem to hold a more embracing worldview as well. This is in contrast to the forced relaxation of social standards in Sharm, which I will address later. Dahab now has a small boardwalk, and a row of hostels and small hotels and villas line its Red Sea shores. We had rented a villa a ten-minute walk north of the town center. The town was relaxed and chill, and made life seem simple and enjoyable. Diving and snorkeling is very popular there as there are a number coral formations, shipwrecks, and fish hotspots that line the coast. It was a very relaxing weekend.

Camels cooling off

We got into town by 8am, and since we couldn't check into the villa until 12pm, we walked around and found a place to sit for breakfast and kill four hours. Before finally heading off to the Villa we stopped at Drinkies, the only reliable liquor store in Egypt, and picked up some beer for the weekend. The guy working the counter, a Coptic Christian, was very suspicious of Muslims. He was excited to learn that we were all Christian, and showed us a small cross tattoo on his wrist. I later learned that many Christians in Egypt have this tattoo. -- A side note: I would only ever recommend buying alcohol from Drinkies or the Duty Free store. Small Egyptian shops are known for salvaging old bottles of hard alcohol and refilling them with homemade "alcohol," which has be known to sometimes consist of poisons and household chemicals. If you are going to buy hard stuff, get it from Drinkies and be sure to break the bottles before throwing them away.

The Dahab Boardwalk, with rows of diving schools and snorkeling rental stores

The villa itself was duplex-style, and we shared our backyard with another group. It slept eight and had a small kitchen and bathroom, which was all we needed. The backyard had a grill area, hammocks, chairs, and opened directly out to the pebble beaches of the Red Sea. We enjoyed the ability to freely swim, run in the mornings, cook our own food, and dress comfortably for the hot weather without attracting negative attention. Our days mostly consisted of lounging about and swimming and we made it out to the Blue Hole for some good snorkeling. There were a lot of little kids on the beach, and we saw some guys taking their camels for a swim on the first day. One of the best things was the view. On the first day there the water was smooth as glass, and it was eerie seeing an entire sea be that still. All the way across the Red Sea we could see mountains in Saudi Arabia. That first night we sat on the roof looking east at Saudi Arabia and watched the evening light fade.

Sunset from the villa roof in Dahab

The most interesting part of the trip were our neighbors. We first met a guy named Adam who helped show us around the town. He is half Egyptian and half American, very friendly and outgoing, and got us a great deal on snorkeling. With him were some family friends, 17 and 19 year-old guys who were both half Palestinian and half American. They were both friendly and outgoing as well, and it was incredibly interesting and sad to hear their stories about Palestine. The younger had been kidnapped six times when living in Palestine. He explained that the kidnappers usually made a video and tried to get weapons as ransom. The family had relatives and friends injured or killed during Israel's attacks last December and January, and they also told us stories of everyday life in Palestine. It was crazy to talk to someone whose childhood included being kidnapped by Hamas three times.

The time in Dahab was incredibly relaxing, and we all got to enjoy a little of the stereotypical college spring break on the beach before beginning our more adventurous endeavors the following week. Jim and I were flying out of Sharm Saturday night to make it back for school on Sunday, while the rest were coming back the next day. Sharm is supposed to have some of the best diving in the world in terms of both coral formation and fish, so we decided to leave Saturday morning and try to get some snorkeling in before our flight. We took the hour-long bus ride across the sun-baked, barren Sinai Peninsula and arrived in Sharm in the afternoon. Coming from Dahab, Sharm was shocking. While they are both resort towns, Dahab is tiny, almost completely undeveloped, and relaxed. Sharm, on the other hand, was a bustling major town. There were swarms of overpriced taxis, five-star resorts, expensive restaurants, and an overabundance of Russian tourists. Sharm, with its popularity among European tourists, also has very relaxed social customs. Unlike Dahab though, this relaxation seems forced. It's as if the influx of tourists forced their standards upon the town, and the town had no choice but to accept them if it wanted to be profitable. Dahab's relaxation of social standards seemed natural, organic, originating from within the town and not from without. In short, people go to Dahab because it is more liberal, while Sharm is more liberal because people go to it. Also, the tourists in Dahab were much more pleasant. Everyone was looking to relax and enjoy the beach, and many seemed to be more of the "free-spirit" type. The tourists in Sharm were the type looking to have a good time partying in the trashy clubs that Sharm built to attract them.

Sharm was not all bad though. We met some genuine guys who gave us a decent deal on snorkeling. We had wanted to go to the Ras Muhammed, but you had to take a boat trip out to it and the boats only leave in the morning. Instead, these two guys worked their connections and let us snorkel in the reef along the beach of one of the five-star resorts. The coral and fish were spectacular; far and away better than the Blue Hole, which wasn't too shabby itself. I couldn't believe the clarity of the water or the vibrant colors of the fish and coral. It was amazing. Also entertaining were the stories our Egyptian guide told us while sitting on the dock. He told us about his nightly negotiations with beautiful blonde Russian girls who were looking to pick up a few hundred extra Egyptian Pounds, if you catch my drift.

The Blue Hole

Having spent around $40 on snorkeling, Jim and I wanted to avoid spending a fortune on one of the overpriced taxies. (If I haven’t covered it already, touristy areas are much more expensive than the rest of Egypt. Now this is normally the case anywhere, but it is made even worse by the fact that Egyptians know they can jack prices up even higher without tourists thinking twice about it, since when converted into euros or dollars the prices seem reasonable to foreigners who don't know any better). After walking around a pretty lame "souk" in the market district of Sharm, we asked around for a bus. We managed to strike and deal with a minibus driver and crammed in for the drive to the airport. The plane landed in Cairo early Sunday morning.

Dahab left a great impression on me, and I would love to return there. It is one of my favorite places in Egypt. The Sinai Peninsula itself is just a spectacular place.