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back to Dahab

Sunday, July 27th, 2008

Going back to Dahab I wasn’t keen on another 9 hour bus and because we were short on time we decided to fly to Sharm which is only an hour from Dahab. We got a taxi in the morning and almost missed the flight because flights to Sharm for some reason leave from a separate terminal which is impossible to get to and true to Egyptian style no-one will give us any information. But we made it and flew over the red mountainous expanse to Sharm-El-Sheik, a resort tourism spot. We were going to wait the 4 hours for the bus to get to Dahab but ended up in a taxi which was pretty cheap to take us the whole way. The taxi driver actually convinced us to let him take us and offered a price, however upon getting there he decided he wanted an extra, very large tip. A bit of arguing before our hotel guy came out and got rid of him.

The hotel ended up giving us separate double rooms for the same price because there were no rooms left with 2 beds, so we had nice flash rooms all to ourselves. Again in Dahab we spent the rest of the day and the following day lying around eating and reading with the occasional swim. Nice after the madness of Cairo.

After our day of laziness we got on a minibus to take us up the coast to the town of Nuweiba where we would catch the ferry across to Jordan. The process it took to get the 2 hour ferry was totally ridiculous, but what can you really expect from Egypt? On the minibus heading the same way were two American guys I had meet on a minibus tour in Aswan about 10 days so it was kind of random to see them again. So together we tried to get on this ferry.

First we got tickets after walking to the wrong place, so back to buy the most expensive tickets ever at $80USD, which was totally stupid but you have to do these things sometime. So we go through some sort of customs, walk around some docking yard for ages, no signs or anything. Eventually we find an office stamping our passports and get on a bus on the ferry. We probably get on the ferry at 12.30 but don’t end up leaving until around 5pm, we just had to sit and wait while the whole thing filled up and they were ready to leave. It was pretty frustrating. Eventually we got going and made it across to Jordan where there was a special bus for foreigners waiting to take us to do passport stuff. We were the only foreigners so the bus only took us leaving the hundreds of other passengers behind. Kind of strange. They had taken our passports on the boat so we waited (getting good at that by now)  in some sort of arrivals lounge which was only half built until we got our passports back with a free visa and exited out in some back alleyway climbing over rubble to be greeted (read accosted) by taxi drivers. But this stage it was about 7pm and we hadn’t eaten all day. We negotiated a taxi to take us the hour and half to Petra for 35JD (about $70), however after driving onto the town area another taxi driver who spoke english turned up and told us our driver didn’t want to take us and he would take us for 40JD, the whole thing was a bit strange and I am sure they were scamming us but it was late and we were tired so we got in the taxi, just wanting to get there. The driver turned out to be pretty nice and drove us around different hotels until we got a nice place with a tv in our room! Bliss….so we all grabbed some food from down the road and finally got to bed at 11pm, 13 hours after leaving Dahab, for a journey that should have really taken 4 hours!

Jordan is much more expensive than Egypt, about double the price so we need to be careful with money! But I think I needed to get out of Egypt as I was getting a bit cynical and pissed off with people!

Posted in Egypt, TRAVELS 2008 | No Comments »

Escaping to the Beach

Thursday, July 24th, 2008

OK, so I know that I should probably be taking the opportunity in Egypt to immerse myself in amazing temples and tombs but too be honest, it gets a bit much, especially when you are in 40 degrees and fighting off touts and stupid tour groups in giant buses with no regard for any local customs at all….and I did see a lot of stuff already, so I didn’t feel too bad by cutting my time in Luxor to a minimum and heading off with the boys to Dahab which Lonely Planet called the Ko Samui of Egypt. Now having been to Ko Samui in Thailand, it sounded about 100 times better than putting up with another minibus tour.

So a five hour bus ride with a whole lot of men and a few screaming babies, plus a constant stream of arabic pop I arrived in Hurghada at 1am. I was ridiculously thankful that my hostel in Luxor had called ahead and someone was waiting for me at the bus station. I don’t care if it was their cousin and they were getting commission, it was just so much easier than trying to fight with taxi drivers. There were no other tourists on the bus, which is pretty common for Egypt as it is actually pretty rare to see tourists outside of the major attractions, like I have said before it seems 99% of people come on package holidays.

In the morning I headed to the ferry where I meet up with the boys. True to Egypt bureaucracy I waiting in line to get on the ferry to find out I needed my ticket stamped at another office across the road. I am not sure why they couldn’t stamp it for me…but back across the road to get it stamped then back in the line. The ferry was across the sea up to Sharm, supposedly one hour but it took 2 and half on very rough water and at some point I thought my stomach might jump out of my mouth. Luckily I dont really get sea sick but you could see some people reaching for their sick bags. We arrived in Sharm to find a minibus transporting backpackers the one hour to Dahab, it was nice to have things work easily, even though you pay a higher price for it. So we piled our packs on the roof and drive across the Sinai peninsula to Dahab. Sceneray in the Sinai is limited to red rocky hills and red rocky flat bits, about 1 brown dying tree per sq kilometer it is hard to imagine anyone possibly living here. But they do, the Bedouin tribes have lived around parts of the Sinai for the last forever, moving around herds of camels and goats in tents. It made me appreciate NZ green mountains and plants.

We arrived in Dahab and it really was like Thailand, there was even a ‘Same Same but Different’ cafe (anyone who has been in Thailand knows about this). Really it is just a stretch of restaurants and beach camps along the water.


Lots of shops selling jewellery and hippy clothes and a sea front full of identical restuarants with standard backpacking food. Also to top it off a bar that played movies every night. Perfect. and it actually was, after 10 days or so fighting with touts and seeing temples, wearing long sleeves and eating falafel, it was nice to be somewhere like Dahab where all there was to do was lie on cushions by the water, read, smoke some shesha, eat seafood and go swimming.

(another tough day at the beach with Hugh and Brian)

The place is definitely not like real Egypt and I think you should only ever go at the end of an Egypt trip, its not like real travelling and there is no Egyptian culture really at all, plus the food is about 20 times as expensive, like normally a mango juice is 2 EL, where Dahab it is 15 EL, and instead of spending 5 EL of dinner, 40EL seems to be the standard. Luckily I was still in my never-that-hungry phase and one meal a day was good enough, so had a nice seafood meal a few times and lots of juice. Even though its expensive it is still not that bad when you convert it back. All the restaurant staff and hotel staff are all typically sleazy and try to be cool and impress tourists by being as less Egyptian as possible and pick up bizarre accents and phrases from tourists. Our hotel staff were total dickheads trying to be cool and swearing lots, very lame.

So we basically spent the days lying around doing nothing, watching movies in the evening and moving around a few different restaurants but always ending back up at the ‘local’. Me and Hugh went up the coast a little bit on a snorkelling trip to this place called Blue Hole which is amazing, most people go to Dahab to dive but snorkeling is good enough for me. Blue Hole is this part of the reef which drops around 600 meters so you are swimming above these giant underwater mountains which just go on forever, all the little fish and coral are around near the surface and you look down into the clear water to see massive schools of tiny fish and bigger fish in the darkeness below, it is truly amazing and I could have spent hours there. You can do some crazy deep diving which you go down through the hole to 60meters and along some tunnel and come out somewhere else, people die doing it and there are plaques dedicated those who don’t make it. It seems like pretty scary stuff and I was happy just to stick to the surface. So you can swim along the reef for a bit then around the outside of this big blue hole (hence the name). It was very very amazing. Its a bit of a circus around there with hundreds of camels and a whole lot of little beach side cafes, which are needed to shelter from the crazy heat which makes the ground impossible to walk on. We spent the afternoon there and meet up with some of the people from the felucca. People pretty much do the same circuit in Egypt so I often meet people more than once in different places.

Heading back to Dahab we found Brian asleep by the beach, grabbed some seafood for dinner to celebrate Hugh’s last night in Egypt and my exam results, which I did well in, actually really well, much better than I thought! My best mark was for the exam which I almost forgot so I am very happy with all of that. So uni is well and truly over for me, now all I have to do is graduate when I get home.

Me and Brian headed off later that night towards Mt Sinai because for some reason we thought it would be a great idea to go climb it in the middle of the night…

Posted in Egypt, TRAVELS 2008 | 1 Comment »