Dive! A lot!

Oh Dahab!  Okay, some things to know about Dahab. It's a little coastal diving community on the Sinai on the shore of the Red Sea where you can see Saudi Arabia just across the way.  An old story tells of an American windsurfer who on a particularly balmy day windsurfed across to Saudi Arabia but wasn't skilled enough to return to Egypt, so he was seized by the Saudi authorities and had to pay $100,000 for his release.  Fact or fiction?  Don't know, but I wasn't about to try it.  Dahab is big with divers, windsurfers, kite borders, snorkelers; basically relaxed, fun-loving, cheap people.  Sharam, close by and more famous, is also big on diving, is supposed to be an Arab Las Vegas, a temple to Saudi vacations, and overbuilt and over touristed.  So shhh, Dahab is a good secret.  Both places have been hit with bombs--bedouins attacking on national holidays in protest of government policies.  People died.  Things had been calm for a while though; it didn't keep me away, and I don't think it ought to keep you away either.

It's a ten hour bus ride from Cairo to Dahab, and Sarah and I parted ways--she back to Israel and me to the Sinai.  On the bus ride up I met Mary Ann, a school teacher in math and physics in Cairo for the last twelve years, an Australian liberal in viewpoint, and a fun and easy conversationalist, who's been coming to Dahab for the last decade for a month in the summer; I also met a Jordanian teacher named Maget who was coming to Dahab for a second time.  We survived the bus ride and numerous passport checks, and as both were staying at the Penguin hotel (haha, welcome to alaska they say to you when you step into the ninety degree heat), I went with them, got a room (no ac) for $8 a night.  What a great place--right on the beach, it had a two-story deck filled with cushions (a pillow pit like ours at school, on a grand scale) where you can order fresh juices and smoothies and hookah and hummus.  The water is warm (seventies) and perfect blue--not much for sand beaches but who needs them when you're stretched out on pillows under the shade of a palm, reading a John Grisham, sipping a fresh lemonade, with perfect sunsets turning the sea to silver while Saudi Arabia in the distance turns from parched brown to black sand.  All after a day of diving.

See the fish, eat the fish

So, diving.  I love it.  I've done it before in a bunch of places but never gotten certified.  I was only going to spend a day in Dahab before going to Jordan, but I was tired, the place was paradise, and I wanted to get certified.  So I found a nice professional place, Big Blue Dahab, forked over a lot of Euros, helped by a gift for graduation from Ryan and Arden, and spent three days diving Blue Hole, Lighthouse, and Canyon.  It's considered some of the best diving in the world.  You get in, and weightless, sixty feet under the surface of the water, you swim in schools of orange fish and tiny silver fish that catch the light and flit constantly, giving the whole sea a shimmering, spasmodic effect.  You turn on your side and see a fifty foot bank of coral and in the coral eels and fish from the size of your hand to the size of your arm in lime, tangerine, white, electric blue; you roll on your back and blow smoke rings with your air; you play charades on the sea bed with your new British friends.  You clamber out of the water and have a coconut milk shake and go for round two.  You learn to set up the equipment, to talk a new language with your hands, to plan your dives and read your depth...diving is amazing.  I plan to continue doing it, and so if you're up for getting certified you'll have a dive buddy in me.

Dinners were either on the beach or just inland with Maget and Mary Ann.  One night we got a whole sweet fish cooked in butter and garlic, skin crispy, flesh perfectly moist, and prawns six inches long, some barbequed and some fried, all served with all types of salads and tahina.  Washed down with Stella--not Stella Artois--but a Stella locally brewed, quite good when cold, hard to describe otherwise.  Found a little pizza place run by Italians and had a perfect panna cotta with ingredients flown in from italy. A gem.

Got a shave one day--I hate shaving but if you don't shave your dive mask leaks--with a straight blade razor...the power went out in the middle of it and the job was finished by light of a cell phone.  Yikes.  Then, when you're shaved, they take thread, and somehow twist it so that it catches the hair on your upper cheeks and forehead and pulls it out...hurts a bit but is supposed to be very good for you.  Ladies and bikers, you can get it done to your legs, or you can get your legs sugared--like wax, but with toffee.

But all good things come to an end, so I said so long to lovely little sweaty Dahab, packed up my Open Water Diver Certification, and made my way to Jordan.