While in Dahab, I completed 16 dives for a total of more than 10 hours underwater. It has been a great time and I feel way more confident and comfortable underwater now.

As I had written in my previous post on diving, I had some trouble with buoyancy control and kicking but I completed a class to work on this. Once I had done that and got the chance to practice more on shallower dives, I thought it was time to go for the best dives around Dahab. You can see that as a reward :).

Canyon and Blue Hole

On Sunday, I dove at Canyons and then Blue Hole. They are both 30 meters (90ft) dives. I was actually a bit stressed in the morning of these dives because I had thought about my first and only deep dive I did in Monterrey last year where I had a very bad experience. It was quite cold down at 27m (81ft) and I was stressing a bit looking at my pressure level going down fast. It ended with a case of nitrogen narcosis that caused me to not be able to inflate my BCD properly and start going back up. The dive master had to take charge, inflate my BCD and pull me up.

I did not really enjoy the Canyon dive that much. It is an OK dive but I did not find it that great. To be fair, it might be because of the stress.

On the contrary, I loved the dive at Blue Hole. You get in through a 20 meters deep hole and exit in the deep blue, except for the coral reef behind you, everything around is blue. I have been a fan of the movie “Big Blue” for a long time and always loved the deep blue scene but that was nowhere close to the feeling you get when you are there looking at it. It is like being lost in the dark, it could be quite difficult to know which way is up or down if you did not have the bubbles. It gave me a feeling of vertigo for an instant. The rest of the dive is really nice too as you dive along the reef with around 170 meters of water under you! The exit is done in the place called blue hole that is a circular reef wall that seems bottomless (same kind of depth).

Thistlegorm and Ras Mohammed

Since everything had gone for the best, it was time to go for the classic one day boat dive tour that is offered from Sharm El-Sheik. It consists in 3 deep dives. 2 are made on the wreck of the Thistlegorm and one is the protected natural reserve of Ras Mohammed. This I did on Monday.

I went on the tour with Carolyn (American), Carolina (Argentinian), Gabriela (Argentinian) and Alex (German) that were all staying at the same hotel in Dahab. We were actually not the only one on the boat since we were around 25 divers total.

The boat arrived soon after breakfast to the wreck site where many boats were already dumping loads of divers. Our dive guide Salaka went first for a solo dive to attach the boat to the wreck at 2 points.

For the story, the Thistlegorm is a British boat that was sank by the Germans during world war two. If you want to know more, go read this. I will then try not to repeat too much of what is there.

The dive went well and it completed the day, we were back in Sharm around 6PM but had to wait 2 more hours before making our way back to Dahab since there is a 600m highest elevation on the road from Sharm to Dahab.

That was a great diving day. The highlight of a great 2 weeks of diving.

And the best is that Gabriela owns an underwater camera and Alex (that is more experienced than the rest of us) took it for each dive and made some great pictures and videos. I have a CD of these pictures and videos and will post the pictures ASAP. The videos will be shown when I come back to those interested.

[Edited on 5/19/2006 to add related pictures]

Houray!!!

I uploaded over 100 pictures from different parts of my trip up to the point I left Cairo for Dahab.

I will edit older post later to add link to these pictures and point out which pictures have been added.

Go in the pictures gallery and let me know what you like :).

Alright, I did it again. I had such a good time the first time in the white desert that I could not say no when Suzie said she was going on an overnight trip to some Canyon Wadi Araba in the Sinai.

We were supposed to be 5 for the trip but Yosh fainted during the night and hurt his head quite badly on the sink. His friend Alex and he ended up not coming so we were only 3 at the end: Suzie, Faris (British-Iraqi) and me :).

The trip was organized by the hotel (Penguin hotel in Dahab) consisted in ridding a camel for 1h30 first. It was one of the thing I said I would do before leaving Egypt so that was perfect. I had a very tall camel so I was seated very hight. It was very impressive. The ride went very well and I did not experience any back pain or things like this that other people complained about. Maybe it was because of the extra padding they added on the saddle or maybe it was because we rode at walking pace the whole time.

Then, we hiked through some really narrow canyons for 1h or so. This was quite impressive and it was fun to climb up and down along them.

This was followed by a yummy lunch and 1h more of camel ride to reach our camp for the night. We then hiked up one of the big sand dune to check out the sunset while our guide Mohammed was fixing dinner.

On the contrary, dinner WAS great. It was almost the same thing that I got in the white desert. It was also very good though so I did not mind at all :). My 3 best meals here will have been while on day trips to the desert!

After dinner, since it was almost full moon, Mohammed took us for a moon walk around the camp. It was nice walking at night with only the light of the moon and the stars to see where we were going. I spent some time watching the stars but I did not see any shooting stars this time and I missed the sky map Alex had with him while we were in the white desert. I should have bought it from him when he offered! We called it a night and I ended up sleeping looking at the stars. I actually woke up around 3AM to an amazing view of the sky where it seemed like the number of stars had doubled! Was I groggy or what?

After climbing down, Mohammed finally fixed breakfast that consisted of great banana honey pancakes (thicker than crepes but thinner than American pancakes) and tea. And I almost forgot the hobnobs Suzie had brought with her that were a great compliment to the Bedouin tea.

We rode back to the Bedouin village in the back of a pickup truck and were at the hotel soon after.

The Sinai is a very interesting place when you think about it with its great desert landscapes and awesome sea shore. I am really enjoying this part of my trip. Of course, I enjoyed the more cultural part I did before, it is just different.

[Edited on 5/19/2006 to add related pictures]

After a week of playing in the sea and doing not much else. Today, we decided to go visit the Saint-Catherine Monastery and hike up to the top of Mount Sinai. As usual in Dahab since I arrived, our party was very international with Carolyn (American), Suzie (English) and Rado (Slovakian).

For the cultural aspect, Saint-Catherine monastery has been built to protect the church built close to the burning bush where (based on the book of the exodus) god told Moses to remove his shoes because he was on a sacred soil. And the Mount Sinai is the place where Moses received the 10 commandments from god.

Since the monastery is closed on Fridays and Sundays. We decided to make it a day trip and go to the top of the mount for sunset.

We arranged for a mini-bus the day before costing each of us EGP110 for the round-trip.

We left early in the morning and made it to the monastery first that is open for 2 hours only in the morning (on the days it actually opens to the public). The church is just amazing with an impressive collection of orthodox icons, mosaics, amazing light features and many other golden items. The most impressive for me was definitely the museum that presents some of the nicest items the monastery owns. That includes very fine gold objects as well as more icons and paintings but also an amazing collection of books like the Codex Syriacus (Vth century) or a version of Iliad and the Odysseus (XIth century).

Behind the church, you can actually see the burning bush. It is not exactly what I was imagining!

After a great lunch downtown Saint-Catherine, we started the hike at 2:30PM and reached the top around 5PM. The hike is quite easy if you follow the camel path and then climb the 700 step stair. All along the path, there are small shops that sell drinks (hot and cold) and food as well as crystal stones.

We finally decided to go back. It took us around 1 hour to get back to the mini-bus. It is possible to sleep at the top of the mount either under the stars or in one of the Bedouin shops but I was not interested in that for that time.

To give you an idea, the usual tourist trip works like this: you leave the hotel at 11PM, drive to Saint-Catherine in a full mini-bus, arrive their at 1AM, climb to the top of Mount Sinai at night arriving around 3:30AM-4AM, watch the sunrise and go back. Then you usually visit the monastery (in a fatigue haze for some) before going back to your hotel. Not exactly what I am looking for in this trip but it works if you only have 2 weeks of vacation and want to fit the visit in.

All in all, that was a nice change of pace and a great place to visit. Highly recommended :).

[Edited on 5/19/2006 to add links to related pictures]