Top End

From Australia

My journey from Gili Air, Indonesia to Darwin, Australia went like this:

• wake at dawn with the chickens and take horse cart from bungalow to harbor
• board public boat which is just a biggish canoe lest you get grand ideas by my words, to the island of Lombok by wading through the water and climbing in, stupidly wearing a skirt
• take another horse cart to a minibus "station," which is a guesthouse with a space for a minivan to park
• take minibus ride for 2 hours to a port in Lombok whose name I never caught.  The ride was beautiful, complete with monkeys hanging out on the shoulder of the road
• bake in the Indonesian sun for 40 minutes waiting for the slow boat to Bali
• spend 6 hours crossing the incredibly deep waters separating Bali and Lombok (the fast boat takes no more than an hour and a half but costs at least three times as much).  I paid a dollar extra to sit in air conditioning, but my comfort was compromised by the "professional karaoke" show going on in the same room.  One man playing the synthesizer and one young, heavily made-up woman singing all kinds of songs, many in Indonesian but she made time for Lionel Richie's "Hello" and Sinatra's "My Way".  No one seemed to enjoy any of it except for the performers and the crew, some of whom took the stage themselves.
• walk to another minibus and board it for a 90 minute ride to the airport
• take a 5 hour flight to Darwin that landed at 3am
• crawl into the top bunk of a 4 person hostel room at 5am

Good times, right? 

Diving into another world

After leaving Siwa, I traveled from the far west of Egypt to the far east to Dahab- by bus! It really wasn't that bad, but 20 hours of bus travel gets old. Luckily, Dahab is nothing if not relaxing. It's on the Red Sea in the Sinai Peninsula, and you can even see Saudi Arabia from here (perhaps the closest I'll ever get to the land of Mecca). I'm no expert, but it really doesn't feel like Egypt. This may sound terrible, but it's just so clean. Except for rubbish along the shore and in the lagoons, which is a real shame because the shore drops off into some fantastic coral reefs that have taken a real beating over the last decade from divers and snorklers tromping all over them. Also, EVERYONE in Dahab speaks English and they speak it pretty fluently, which is different from the other places I've been in Egypt. But the vendors here in Dahab are inordinately pleased when I bust out a "hamdullah" which means "praise god" and is used extensively in conversational Arabic.

One of the people I met in Siwa, Andrew, was also heading to Dahab, so we shared the knee-numbing journey here. It turns out Andrew and I were unwitting neighbors back in San Francisco, and now we are roommates here in Dahab, sharing an ocean view room right on the Red Sea.

Dahab's beach isn't really a beach - it's more like a low wall of rocks with open air lounge restaurants covering the length of it. And there are loads of dive sites that you just walk to from the shore. So upon my good pal Jackie's recommendation, I decided to do the Advanced Open Water diving course here in Dahab. After a refresher dive to make sure I hadn't forgotten everything relating to scuba, I did 5 dives over the last two days, including a night dive and a deep dive to 30m in a site called the Canyon, a name which gives the game away. I also did a dive yesterday where you descend down a chimney-like hole for 26 meters or so, swim along a massive reef wall where you can't even see the bottom of the ocean, then come into the Blue Hole, which is also aptly named, a large circular formation with a depth of 110m.  I mentioned that the coral has really suffered here, but there is still a fair amount of interesting life to see, including cuttlefish and spanish dancers. But the physical structure of some of these dives have been pretty stupendous and alone worth getting in the water.

On that last dive, I noticed that my regulator just didn't want to stay in my mouth in the way you would prefer your link to life-giving air to do so. Regulators have a bit-like piece of plastic to hold it in place in your mouth, and I began to realize that there was only one on one side of my mouth and it felt very unstable. It was my first equipment failure in scuba! Luckily, you always have another, so I switched out, no harm done. But I still don't know what happened to that other piece. Did it fall off between dives? Did I somehow swallow it? I think I would have noticed, but there's lots of other things to think about when you're on such a lovely dive.

Tomorrow or tonight, depending on your viewpoint, at half past three in the morning, I'm heading on another dive trip, to a WW2 era ship called the Thistlegorm with an added dive in a marine reserve after that. And then one more day here in relaxed Dahab until I begin the journey to Istanbul via Sharm el Sheik and Cairo.

I'll have to come back to Egypt someday since I missed so much, but inshallah, I shall. And if anyone has recommendations of places to see outside of Istanbul in Turkey, please let me know. I haven't planned anything and I have more than three weeks there.

On a sadder note, my dear cousin Sarah is no longer with us.  Her husband, her daughter, and her family - my family - are very much in my thoughts now.  Please take care of yourselves and treasure each day, folks.  We really don't know how long we have, which is exactly why I'm taking this trip now.  Sarah understood that and wherever she's diving now, I hope she's smiling and laughing, as she always did in this world.

Love and light to you all,
Monica

The Screaming is the Soundtrack

I left Siwa a few days ago, and I would like to take this opportunity to recommend it wholeheartedly as a destination on any trips to Egypt you may be planning. It is really a special spot. The setting is amazing, the history is fascinating, but like anywhere, it's the people who make the place. But it is growing fast, so come as soon as you can, just in case. Inshallah, it will remain lovely for a long while yet.

Pas du Piste

The next destination was Skoura, west of Ouarzazate, and our plan was to bus to Ouarzazate and rent a car from there.  Now I have previously extolled the buses here in Morocco, but those were either the buses run by the rail monopoly, Supratours, or a very good public line, CTM.  All the other private lines lie somewhere south of those two on the quality, comfort, and safety continuums.  But the times to Ourzazate on Supratours and CTM sucked.  We needed to get in early enough to drive to Skoura before nightfall because the roads may be very good, but that doesn't make them safe.  So Claire and I chose to take what we call a ghetto bus.  I had taken a couple for short rides, and they really weren't bad.  What could go wrong, really?

We got good seats, right behind the second side door, and after the usual late start, we headed off over the High Atlas mountains, thinking we could perhaps get this trip done in 4 hours or shortly thereafter.  Not a chance.  Somewhere along the way, high up in the mountains, the seat one row up on the other side of the bus just collapsed.  One of the leg supports just flat broke.  The two men were leaning to the side and back, really cramping the personal space of the chaps just behind them.  I felt bad (and grateful that those weren't our seats) but I really got the giggles, as I tend to do when Claire and I encounter absurdities in our travels.  One guy opted to stand, the bus being full, and the other took the aisle seat and tried to enjoy the view, which was pretty spectacular.

These ghetto buses stop a lot, to let people on and to let people off.  Soon we stopped in the middle of nowhere, spat out some passengers, and got back on the road.  And then I noticed that the door, the big swinging bus door right in front of my seat, wasn't closed.  I was a bit worried because it's certainly a hazard to have this thing flying open at high speeds on mountain passes with guard rails and a bus driver who is not afraid to pass, but that's when I really got the giggles.  We weren't even halfway there, and this bus was falling apart.  And it's not like I knew how to describe the situation to the "staff" either.  But a Moroccan behind us noticed the problem and yelled it to the front of the bus, so the "conductor" futzed with it, and managed to get it shut.  Very shortly after the rest stop, the bus pulls over again.  Nobody was really sure why until they busted out the welding kit.

I applaud the quick attention to the broken bench seat, but you would think they would perhaps want people to get off the bus - for safety's sake, right?  Nope.  They pull that welding generator into the aisle and people, families, and Claire climb over it to get down.  But I had a pretty good view of the action so I stayed on and took pictures until it got too smoky and stinky.  And I just loved how blase everyone was about it all.  The guy who had been sitting behind the busted seat was smoking a cigarette outside.  When he saw the sparks fling, he climbed the stairs of the bus, reached over two guys holding up the seat and plucked his jacket from his chair.  Wouldn't want burn marks, would ya?

There was no further drama after that, and we got to Ouarzazate late but alive.  We rented our car and headed to Skoura.  Skoura is an oasis just west of Ouarzazate, Ouarzazate being the kind of place you go to to get somewhere else and Skoura the kind of place you go when you want to get away.  One of Claire's friends recommended Chez Talout, which is actually just outside of Skoura.  We saw the sign on the highway and took the turnoff onto a piste road.  I would describe piste as an unfinished dirt and rock road-like surface, and Claire's first comment once we were on it was "The car rental lady said no piste."  'Pas du piste' is an impossible request in Morocco, so we just kept driving on this one lane desert track up and down some rather steep hills for a compact 1.4L sedan.

This part of Morocco is a hard climate - very little vegetation, very little rainfall, lots of rock.  So traditional buildings are made of pise (with an accent over the "e" which I can't provide today), which is packed clay.  The walls are very thick, and they keep things cool during the day, blessedly, are warm at night.  Good choice for a desert.  Chez Talout is really in the middle of nowhere so you get wonderful 360 degrees views from the roof terrace, which is where we were served afternoon tea and breakfast the next day.  I will, I swear, get some photos up of the view.  But I know you're tired of hearing my excuses on that front.

The next day, we planned to walk to Claire's friend's house, which was about 2km away.  Martine is a French woman who has been living in Skoura for a number of years and had recommended Chez Talout to us.  So the staff, which outnumbered the guests, all 4 of us, drew us a map - a very good map too - and off we went.

We knew we would be crossing a river, not deep but fairly wide with some land showing in spots between.  Claire and I opted, sensibly, to take off our shoes and tackle the river that way.  Somehow, not surprisingly, we got the giggles, and between maintaining my balance, holding onto my boots, laughing too hard, keeping my stomach in check as motions were still loose, AND walking on rocks in frigid snowmelt, I made crossing that segment of the river both harder and funnier than it had any right to be.