The last few days have been very good but also really exhausting. Yesterday, I roused myself out of bed at 3am to get a ride to Sharm El Sheik, to then get on a boat to go on some wonderful dives. First up was the wreck site of the Thistlegorm: acted as a carrier for the Brits, sunk by a German bomber in 1941, discovered in the 50s by Jacques Cousteau, who kept its location secret, rediscovered in the 90s, and now visited by thousands of divers a year. The ship was hit right where the ammunition was held, so it basically split in two and sank almost immediately (all but 9 of the crew survived). But the Thistlegorm was fully stocked with materiel (is that how you spell when it refers to war supplies?) to resupply the British forces in Africa in 1941, so you can see train locomotives, tanks, jeeps, trucks, and motorcycles - some still in the holds, which you can swim through. The ocean leaves its mark - fish are swimming through, and the usual marine squatters take up residence. But the divers leave their marks too - some lame people take things like wellie boots as souvenirs, but everyone leaves trapped air bubbles that look like liquid mercury clinging to the tops of the intact holds. I had read that all that trapped air is actually causing serious deterioration to the site, but I went anyway. Better to ruin a wreck than a coral reef, right?
That was my first wreck dive and everyone was pretty excited afterwards, but our last dive location was even more spectacular. I took this photo on our way to it. We dove around two reefs in the huge national Ras Mohammed National Park, which was created in 1980 and includes both land and sea. Starting at a reef that is an enormous wall of coral with a drop off to the ocean floor 750m below, we saw loads of coral in excellent condition, and the amount of creatures, especially larger ones, reflected it. We saw five sea turtles on this dive, two huge black eels just chilling out on the ocean floor with a tiny, colorful nudibranch keeping them company, lots of tuna, and all kinds of other things that I either can't remember or don't know the name of. It was a great day, but because we had 2 deep dives, and the drive back to Dahab takes you 600m above sea level, we had to kill a few hours in Sharm in order to give our bodies a chance to convert some of the liquefied nitrogen in our blood back to gas. Sometime after 9pm, I made it back to Dahab. Like I said, a long day. All in, it was 9 dives in 5 dives, which is my personal record for frequency. So far. I plan to top that in Indonesia....
Today, I lounged, fought the urge to pass out (I'm strangely awake now though), and ran some errands. Dahab cracks me up. All the restaurants have touts, and since there are really only two main drags, you get to know each other in a very limited way - my repeatedly rejecting their entreaties to dine at the respective establishments. I finally broke down and had a coconut milkshake at the Funny Mummy because the guy had been so persistent over the last week. That and coconut milkshakes are a true treat. But I've also been roped into lots of cellphone photos. From the guy who sold me a phone card, from the guy who sold me some postcards, from the guy who sold me some cheap sunglasses...I think facebook is going to have lots of fuzzy shots with me and random Egyptians standing veeerrrrryyyyy close.
Egyptians are so friendly and welcoming though that you can't get too worked up over all the "I'm such a lucky man to have brought such a beautiful lady her coffee" business. They're very florid in that respect. But at least I'm not a blonde! On my flight from Sharm to Cairo earlier tonight, one was sitting next to me in a window seat. Before takeoff, an Egyptian guy sitting in the middle section of our row tapped me on the shoulder and gestured for me to get the blonde Russian's attention. I did, and he tried to get her to move next to him. She declined wordlessly. Had they even spoken before? I don't know, but I bet she was glad to be sitting next to me.
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