Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Chilling in Dahab

Our final Egyptian stop was in Dahab, on the Red Sea coast. Once the van left us at our hotel, we were done with drivers and tour guides and were completely on our own again. Dahab was quite an interesting place to relax for a few days. The town was just a one-and-a-half hours away from where the terrorist attacks had taken place in Sharm El Sheikh, for one thing. Moreover, from the center of town we could look across the water and see the mountainous coast of Saudi Arabia, which turned a beautiful shade of pink in the sunset. Nevertheless, Dahab seemed a world away from, well, the world. It's a Bedouin village that has been overtaken by tourism but, for the moment at least, it’s still remarkably quaint and peaceful.

The days there were calm and relaxed. We could walk the entire length of the town in about 20 minutes. The waters of the Red Sea were a brilliant, shimmering blue. Lisa and I booked a $28 hotel room with a balcony that overlooked the sea. There were restaurants along the shore where visitors could sit on cushions and have a drink, watching the waves drift by for hours. Local Bedouins sold camel rides along the beach. The snorkeling and diving there is among the best in the world, with an unbelievable variety of colorful fish. The Egyptian people were friendly and sociable. We met a university student (Mohammed) who asked us to help him with his English and, in return, he talked to us about Egyptian culture and life. When he heard that Lisa had just had a birthday, he even showed up the next day with a gift for her.

Perhaps Dahab wasn’t the most obvious place to relax after the previous week’s events, but it was actually one of the more relaxing beach towns we’ve ever visited. We stayed there for five nights and could have easily spent twice as long there.

Experiencing a camel ride on the beach...















Mohammed, the university student who asked us to help him with his English...

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