Chillin' in Dahab

The beach in Dahab

Normally Adam takes care of writing the blog, but since he is sound asleep and I'm wide awake at 5AM (we're having a bit of jet lag since getting to Thailand)...I thought I would give it a whirl so we can get caught up.

After Luxor we decided to head to Dahab - a town on the Sinai Pennensula by the Red Sea (actually it's the Gulf of Aqaba, but who's counting?). After a couple weeks in the desert, it was time to see some water. From our hotel, we booked an overnight bus that was suposed to be very nice, clean, and take us straight there. They never tell you an arrival time for these things, only a departure time, but we heard it was supposed to take about 15 hours..maybe 17 at the most. Well, the bus was not nice, dirty, and I think we set a new record because it ended up taking 21 hours - not fun. We decided to just block the bus ride from our memories, so this will be the last time we mention it.

When we made it to Dahab though, everything was good again...we loved it! It's a really laid back beach town famous for the good diving and snorkeling (and some bombings a few years ago, but nothing to worry about now). It is also a good place for windsurfing due to strong, consistent winds. One more fact - we could see the coast of Saudi Arabia from Dahab, which was kinda cool and different. Never thought I would be that close to Saudi Arabia. We heard a rumor of a Japanese tourist who rented a jet ski and made it to the coast, only to be immediatly arrested. Gotta love the Japanese tourist! Adam had planned on doing a dive, but since we are being cheap and there was so much marine life you could see from just snorkeling, we stuck to that. It was amazing. We rented snorkeling equipment for less than 2 bucks per day and went to great places just off the main beaches. There is coral reef along most of the beach that was beautiful and so many kinds of fish, many of them being unique to the Red Sea. Our favorites were the multi-colored angelfish, parrotfish, lionfish, butterfly fish, clown fish, and a big moray eel Adam spotted but scared me out of the water!

The Red Sea and Saudi Arabia in the background

Another thing Dahab has going for it is good food. There is a nice pedestrian street along the beach that is lined with restaurants. Since it's in the desert and it never rains most of the restaurants have their kitchen on one side of the road, and open air seating on the other side right next to the water. The temerature there was much cooler than in "mainland" Egypt (I'm sure that's not what they call it, but I can't think of anything better), so it was wonderful to be able to have dinner by the water, under the stars, with a cool night breeze!

There's not much else to say since we didn't do anything in Dahab besides relax, snorkel, and eat. We had planned to do an overnight hike up to Mount Sinai from there, but since we were just getting over a week of stomach sickness we decided it would be too much. It was something we were really looking forward to, but it will have to wait until next time. We needed a few days to relax and Dahab was a great place for it. We actually stuck to such a small area while we were there that we had no idea how big the town was until we went for a stroll on the last night. The row of restaurants down the beach just kept going and going! You could spend six months there and eat somewhere new every night.

Sunset on the Sinai Mountains

We sadly left Dahab after three nights on an overnight bus back to Cairo. This time we had a much nicer bus and it was also a much shorter ride so I was happy. We stoped by the hostel we had previously stayed at in Cairo in to pick up our iPod that Adam had dropped on the street (someone found it and returned it, amazing!) and then headed to the airport for our flight to Jordan. Soon we would be seeing Petra!