Thursday (afternoon), June 23 to Saturday, June 25, 2005

Dahab, Egypt:

Dan, Adam and I spent a few hours on Thursday afternoon sitting by a swimming pool smoking cigarettes, drinking rum (not a lot of it) and stating a number of fairly obvious things to one another. Eventually Dan wandered off to get some rest and Adam headed off to do the same. I sat around for a while before I decided that sleep would be the best thing for me. It was.

When I woke up some 14 hours later on Friday afternoon I felt that what had happened the day before was unreal. If it had happened, it was weeks or months ago. I knew that it wasn't going to feel that way for the victim's family (they had two daughters in addition to the son who was on the boat), but I was lucky. I spent a quiet day walking through Dahab and resting in the cafes. The weather was perfect and Dahab is a beautiful place. If you ever have a miserable day, head there; the environment works wonders on your mood, no matter how bad.

Later that evening I met up with Adam. We had both been having the same thought: We wanted to relax. That meant diving. We told Mohammed and he arranged things for the next morning.

On Saturday we went back to the Blue Hole via the steep wall dive along Bell's Wall. After a second afternoon dive, we decided that we wanted a third dive as well. On a night dive starting at sundown we saw numerous lion fish, various nudibranches (including a "Spanish Dancer") and a small, pulsating squid.

By the time we were done, we agreed to do something else as well: We would go back out to the Thistlegorm, provided it was a different boat and a different crew. We told the guys at Divers House that if things didn't seem to be run competently, we wouldn't dive and we would demand our money back. They agreed to this. While I was a little uneasy about the idea, it felt like something I had to do. I wasn't ready to leave the Red Sea yet and if I wasn't leaving, I had to do more diving.