I’m just now getting around to posting an account of our incredible trip to Sharm el Shiekh Egypt - over four months after we returned. I’m all about quality, not quantity, or even worse for me yet - timeliness ;-)
You might recall the journal post just prior to our departure. We found a very cheap package through a popular Czech travel agency - Firotour - and left Brno on a direct flight to Sharm. The following is a slightly elaborated email that I originally sent to my Dad while I was in Egypt last August.
Kyle and I are sitting here in a sweaty, toilet-hole of an internet cafe, in a dusty town along the Red Sea coastline called Dahab. It’s a town made famous for its diving - the Blue Hole is its claim to fame. It is mostly a place for divers and backpackers, but with signs of the inevitable corporate vacation developments just beginning. Kyle and a cafe worker are
fighting with an old printer as I type. He’s trying to print out his Arabic lessons. My brother speaks the local language very well. He’s been here for 3 months already, working for AIESEC in Cairo, in a neighborhood known as "Garbage City". In the dirty streets outside, boys on Arabian horses trot back and forth, tourists and locals smoke apple tobacco out of big water pipes, and camels casually fornicate on the beach. Many tourists tend to get sick for a day or two – my girlfriend and I included. Even Kyle got horribly sick, and his stomach should to be used to this place by now. But the ocean and the diving are fantastic, as are the prices – our rooms are only $3 per night, or $5 for A.C.
Today I shared a taxi across the desert from Sharm with two Germans, an English dive instructor and a tourist kid from Taiwan. One of the resident expat Germans fixes well pumps, the other compressor motors – stereotypical engineering minds. Their stories are quite interesting to hear. They talk of the latest BS they have to put up with at the military checkpoints, now that bombing in Sharm recently occurred. What an adventure…to live on the Red Sea for years on end. The kid from Taiwan was alone, so we agreed to meet later on after I had a look around for my brother. Kyle was busy with his studies, so I walked up the beach to the British pub along the dusty Dahab waterfront. I met the kid from Taiwan and we had a few drinks. At the bar numerous characters showed up as a surfing video played on the TV. An old British expat and I started talking about surfing. I had lived in Hawaii for a few years – owning a number of boards, but never actually rising above the level of “suck”. He began to tell us spell-binding stories about the surfing culture he had once enjoyed in Morroco, some thirty years ago. The pub was place for the adventurous travelers of the world to meet, drink and tell stories. The Chinese kid seemed a bit gloomy. He joins compulsory military service in a few weeks – a few more beers, and one last hurrah for him.
I left Jessica at our fancy Sheraton hotel, 70 miles south of here. Sharm El Sheikh feels something like an oceanside Disneyland in the desert; with every local competing to get your last dollar. Jessica really wanted to take a popular tour - a climb of the Moses Mountain and a chance to see St. Catherine’s monastery; I wanted to go diving, see my brother and get away from the Disney resort crap. Sadly, I’ve been either too sick or too sunburned to really enjoy my vacation up until now. It does feel good to get away on my own for a day or two. Solo travel has its own wonderful solitude – not something I acsolutely prefer, but something I certainly enjoy at times.
Jessica and I met the nicest family at our hotel. I’m not by any means a “family man”, but this five member family is such a good one. We got to know them quite well. The husband has a German mom and Egyptian dad. He looks like a middle-eastern Tom Selleck. He always has his gorgeous Afgan wife and three beautiful kids by his side whenever we run into him around the hotel. They live in Germany (he, all his life), but they can hardly stand the prejudice they face there. So, no real surprise…they dream of moving to America some day. They seem to have made a little mistake though...they named there cute little boy Osama! And only 7 months before 9/11 happened. He tells me he’s not sure what do, kids in Germany already tease the boy. He says it is very expensive to get a name changed in Germany. I told him its worth whatever they're asking - the poor kid.
We enjoyed the best snorkeling of our lives on this trip. The coral reef that rings the Red Sea coast is amazing. But was easy for me to see just how fragile it is, and the signs of reef destruction the tourists bring to the area. The flow of snorkeling and diving tourists from Europe never ends, literally thousands every day. This trip, I learned to hold my breath much longer than ever before and go very deep, Kyle too. Jessica developed her skills as well and has a true love for snorkeling. Yesterday we went snorkeling from a very fast speed boat – twin Mercury 250hp motors – “The fastest boat in Sharm!” the Captain told me. We went out to some desolate islands far away from resorts. The reefs here were almost pristine, although there were still many other boats all around us. The diving tourism is incredibly popular now.
A few days ago, I told Kyle how to relieve the pressure on his ears at depth (most important) and he was doing great, snorkeling above me and a few divers as we were diving at 90 feet below in the famous Blue Hole. But, I guess I forgot to tell him something else - to relieve the pressure that the masks puts on your face as you dive down. He told me that he thought "this pain from the mask must be normal". He just ignored the pressure of the mask pushing hard on his face as he dived down to 30 ft.
I enjoyed an excellent, technical, scuba dive. Quite scary though; dropping into a hole in the reef, squeezing between the rock above me and a scorpion fish below me in a tight cave. Then looking down and seeing a virtually bottomless wall below.
After the dive I met Kyle on the beach and I'll be damned if he didn’t look like a giant frog with a hangover! His eyes were blood red and bulging out of his head! He told me he his eyes felt pretty strange, but I couldn’t stop laughing at first. He said, "Yeah, I bet I look pretty funny...I noticed some people on the beach staring at me". That mask of his had pressed really hard on his face – it took about a day for his eyes to return to normal.
I have to give him credit - the kid really amazes the Arabs with his language skills and constant
questions. The Taxi drivers we met were the best teachers. On long rides he would be jabbering away with them, improving his skills while I dozed off in the back seat of the Renault 504. I think Kyle is doing a great service. He is certainly spreading good will - showing them that not all Americans think only about themselves, and could care less about people from other countries.
Click on the Sharm Egypt photo album to see the photos from our trip. Sorry, I would have more photos, but I forgot my camera's battery charger at home.
