Escape to the Sinai
DahabOur escape from Cairo was by bus to the Sinai resort town of Dahab. Not exactly the speediest getaway, the bus was four hours late for an altogether eleven hour journey. The air conditioning couldn’t quite keep up with the heat of the desert, making for a sweaty ride, and Chris was convinced we were being slowly poisoned by a faulty exhaust system. Nonetheless, we had the good fortune to meet Matt, an American on a five month trip through Africa, with whom we spent the next few days in Dahab.
Chilling out in Dahab
Dahab was a breath of fresh air after Cairo. Situated on the Gulf of Aqaba, an arm of the Red Sea, it is one of the nicer backpacker resort towns I've seen. Though hot, it receives constant winds off the water, so the climate is comfortable. The Red Sea is named for the red rock mountains that flank it. The contrast with the blue water is quite a sight.
For the first time, we managed to stay somewhere really cheap: $4 a night. It wasn't exceptionally nice, but the management were very hands-off and it was good value for the money. Other than a half-day trip to snorkel the Blue Hole (which, it turns out, was disappointing: oversnorkeled, lots of dead coral), we managed to do nothing except read, eat, and drink draft beer with Matt. Perfect!
And then there was Nuweiba
downtown NuweibaAfter a few days, we headed north up the coast to Nuweiba, where we had heard the diving was better. Although this did turn out to be true, we couldn't say the same for the town. A poor cousin to Dahab, Nuweiba's budget accomodation was much shabbier and far more expensive. Worse, the town was absolutely deserted. We later learned that Isrealis, who normally flock to Nuweiba during summer holidays, had been officially advised to avoid the Sinai this year. The hotel owners didn’t seem to have realized this yet, and refused to bargain. We headed into town searching for food, had to cross a desolate no-mans-land in the middle of which we discovered several massacred dog carcasses (Muslims view dogs as unclean animals and are apparently none too kind to them); the walk back along the garbage-strewn public beach was equally depressing. The last straw was the discovery that taking a shower flooded our hotel room. So that evening, we decided this was one of those places we would splash out on a better place to stay.
Swisscare: peace and relaxationIt was well worth it. We stayed at the Swisscare resort, probably the nicest place either of us has ever stayed. It is an independently owned hotel with very personal service and Alvin, the owner, runs a tight ship. Our package included breakfast and dinner and the food was superb. Just off the beach was a beautiful reef for snorkeling where we saw a large sea turtle.
Diving!
We spent the week scuba diving with Daniel and Sarah of African Divers, a very professional and friendly outfit. In Nuweiba, the diving is all from shore, which we found much more relaxing than jumping out of a boat. Our timing was great: we were there between seasons so at most there were four of us diving, and on several dives it was just Chris and I with the dive master. Best of all, the diving was superb.
Three dive sites stand out. At a site called the pipeline, there was a stunningly beautiful pinnacle of coral with a crack down the middle filled with lionfish and glassfish. The whole mass is alive with reef fish, the colours of which are like nothing else: sort of brilliant pastels, if that makes sense. When we were there, a couple of parrotfish were chasing each other around the reef, interrupting the various cleaning rituals and territorial spats of the smaller reef fish.
We also went to a site called Ras Mumlah, in a national park, which had endless formations of pristine hard corals loaded with fish. We saw a large octopus that ogled and changed its colours at us.
The sinker (rendered by cbow)But the most special site of all was “the sinker”; a large buoy sunk by the Isreali army thirty years ago whose lead was (oops!) eighteen meters too short. It had become encrusted with soft corals, all the way up the chain and around the buoy itself, which was perhaps ten meters in diameter. We ascended up the chain from the bottom, and as we rose our bubbles formed an air pocket underneath the buoy that created a near-perfect mirror. Schools of glassfish hovered around the buoy, and all kinds of reef fish had staked their territories on its surface. A large puffer fish lived in a compartment at the top of the buoy. The overall effect reminded me of The Little Prince’s planet: a tiny world unto itself.
One of the people we dived with was Gloria, an underwater photographer. At time of writing, she hadn't posted her Nuweiba photos on her website, but it would be worth checking back later.
The onward voyage
From Nuweiba, we took a ferry to Aqaba in Jordan. Although the crossing itself only takes an hour and a half, it took the better part of a day, as we waited in the customs hall for our boat to be called. We spent a night in Aqaba, went to the post office early the next morning, mailed our dive gear to Taiwan, and then hopped on a bus to Petra.