Dahab

So....I'm officially a certified open water scuba diver! yup, Louise and I took a scuba course at Big Blue and learned how to scuba in the Red Sea;) Pretty much the sweetest thing ever. We took the course with a fellow traveler (30 some year old John-there is a creepy trend of 30 year old males clinging to us) and had a great young Scottish instructor named Vivienne. Managed to finish the course in 3 days packed with dives, skills, reading/movies, wksts, quizes and tests. But we did it and boy was it worth it. Today we dived two of the best spots in the world...canyon and Blue Hole. We went with an instructor and a couple from Arizona, down to 30 m for both of them and it was pretty crazy. The first 10 m are the worst and really affect your ears, but by the time you get down to 30 it's not bad at all. Blue Hole was amazing...the coral was huge and gorgeous, and the aquatic life was numerous and beautiful. Our guide, an awesome guy named Emad, opened his mouth and let a wrasse fish in to clean his teeth....better watch out mom, I hear it's the new thing and you might be losing your job soon;) Emad is an amazing diver, and has done 6,000 dives in 8 years. He plays around so much and has a blast underwater...it was quite fun going with him. We saw a bunch of fish and it was just like out of a documentary or something. Amazing...y'all have to try it sometime.

Dahab is a sweet town....very relaxed and cool atmosphere. It's only a few blocks long along the coast and has many restaurants serving the same things, but their fairly cheap and have decent food. One of my favorite places serves some amazing thick pudding like sahleb, topped with strawberries and bananas. We're paying a whopping $3.50 a night for a place at Jimmy's which is decent. Breakfasts are amazing and only $2. The last night in Dahab we strolled along the main street and did some shopping. Ran into some little local girls selling bracelets and started talking to one named Noora. She was a really sweet girl and we talked for awhile and bought some bracelets. Some others then came up and initially started intensely questioning why we didn't by from them but all but one obnoxious girl quit after a few minutes and sat down to talk. She kept throwing a little fit, thrusting her bracelets on me and being quite mean about it and I really wanted to smack her, but I refrained. The guy at the nearby Caravan restaurant was trying hard to get us to come for dinner, so he brought us some fresh lemon juice which pretty much sealed the deal. For 25 EG (less than $5), we got an amazing meal of tabouli, tahini, bean salad, eggplant sauteed, baba ghanoush, cucumber yoghurt, and freshly made pita bread for starters, along with grilled chicken, rice, veggies, tea and crepe with ice cream for dessert. Yeah, it was quite a feast. Noora came by and sat with us for awhile and then we played backgammon for a bit...her friends soon followed and eventually the restaurant guys told us they were bad for business and had to go....

Dahab was over all a blast and thawed us out from Turkey and Jordan. We both sport a pretty nice tan now. And now, I will probably start planning vacations around diving;)