Egypt: Dahab to Alexandria

Dear All

The first time I say the word Dahab was off the sign for a down an alley restaurant with the same name in the capital of city of the Czech Republic, Prague. It was an elegant little place suitable for first dates. It was fashioned in a typical Moroccan style with hexagonal padded stools for chairs and a low glass table set in a carpeted wood brown Arabic style room. The menu was Mediterranean and boasted a fair cuisine at unfair prices. The shisha, common in many tea shops across Prague, remained popular and the fragrant smell of sweet burning flavoured tobacco added a romantic element to the place. It what I was expecting from Egypt and in some ways it is but compared to the city of Dahab, the restaurant has it all wrong. I guess they were using the Arabic translation of the word meaning 'gold' and not as the city in Sinai. The bus journey to this dive capital was not a golden one.

The bus from Luxor to Dahab is a gruelling 14 to 16 journey through barren desert landscape and up and around the western coast of the red sea then passing through Suez and finally down the eastern side and around the peninsula of Sinai. For me 14 to 16 hours on a bus is a breeze as long as I can get some sleep on the overnight journey. This time it was impossible.
I managed to meet up with Klaus from the fellucia trip and share company on the ride. The bus was double deckered but the bottom deck was unavailable for some reason. I was happy to get out of Luxor after the days of negotiating and compromise that ground my soul to a fine powder. The bus was a run down cramped version of a cheap airline plane with an overhead compartment and a pull down tray for some meal that I couldn't imagine having on this bus. As the bus geared out of the tomb saturated town, the video began. It was a murderous mob story of a man scorned by infidelity as he catches his girlfriend in the shower with another man - all set to a Spinal Tap volume of 11. I realized the hilarity of the unrealistic truth in television. For us, movies are a fantasy where being honest and reasonable to each other is unrealistic while here have pre-marital sex and infidelity is the dream. Anyways, he kills both of them is a gory shoot out with a gun he conveniently carries with him everywhere and goes to the mob for, er, something. At this point, I lose the point. The entire movie is in Arabic and there is some confusion over whether the man is running from the law or just doing odd jobs for the mob while sporting various outfits ranging from plumbers overalls to sailors suits. The movie breaks half way to advertise women’s hair products which I figure will only be seen by women who are forced to take the bus or those with a lust for blood. I didn't see any Egyptian women on this commute nor have I seen any anywhere since Cairo. All the public work is done by men such as in serving food at the restaurants and reception in the hotels. The movie dragged on and as the sun dragged down. We got police checked once before the sun set - just a passport search - then again once after we ate dinner at a roadside restaurant at extortion prices.. The movie played twice and my eyes shut until the police woke me again to check through my passport at 3:30am, more people to got on the bus and the movie played for a third time. All the while there was a waiter dressed in casual clothes wandering the aisle waking the foreigners to get money for food that he had placed on their pull down tray without their permission at, again, extortion prices. The bus finally pulled into Dahab city around 16 hours from when we left and the exhausted westerners that remained on the bus hopped onto a 4 EP commuter bus to the reef-side backpacker resort of Dahab.

We ended off getting dropped of at the hotel we requested - a popular place called The Penguin Camp. It wasn't hard for them to do it. Dahab has two main roads - one for the cars and the other is a pedestrian promenade that winds and twists around the coastline. The promenade sidewalk is tiled in oddly shaped light red and grey slates. There is a rock and concrete wall that separates the rough sand made most of pebbles beach, the water at high tide and the sidewalk itself. The promenade is full of cushion seating, take-your-shoes-off restaurants and dive shop after dive shop. This place isn't known for it's beach but for the reef. The coral and rock heads out about 15 meters from the shoreline then it drops down into the deep blue nothingness as a sheer rock cliff but this one, unlike their above ground counterparts, are filled with various shades of green and grey coral and feeding fish that range in size, colour and population. Some large parrot fishes and tuna eat quietly in solitude on the coral itself while other shiny blue masses that swing and sway magically in unison eat off the surface of the water consuming their invisible dinner. This was my first time snorkeling and it was an amazing experience. I have never liked salty sea water and often the water is very cold and uncomfortable but this time the water's saltiness was an aid to helping me float horizontally on the water and the temperature was just right. I was struck by the activity and excitement which seemed like a Toronto Queensway of fish during rush hour. Hundreds of fish at various depth were coming to feed and pleasantly ignored the masses of land animals that stared at them with their single plastic eye and their mouth which breathes as a tube through the back of their heads. Snorkeling is a wonderful experience that I never tried nor had easy access to before. This was something which I realize all Australians take for granted but was unique for a Canadian who is landlocked by his nneighbouringprovinces. The snorkeling breaks up the time between eating overpriced food at the bbeach siderestaurant and reading, yapping and smoking a daily shisha with apple tobacco. By the third day, there came another option for the crew I had met in Dahab - climb Mt Sinai for sunrise.

I was at Mt Sinai about twenty years ago with my parents but I only have one memory of it. All I remember is a stone room with one eentrancefacing a fireplace and a mantelpiece split in two and made smaller so that there is only space for a small potted plant on each of them. The room continues on to the left the door on the other side touches the wall you first walk through. Next to the other door is something like a small indentation or walled lip and a tap so that when the tap is on the water remains in the trough. It is a fuzzy memory with a potential to be completely false. I could have seen it on TV when I was young but the memory still holds. Why this one I’m not sure but there is some drive for me to return to my youth.

The bus leaves at 11pm. My crew, this time, includes Klaus, the well ttravelledfriend from Aswan, Tiram and Chris, two Aussies I met on the bus to Dahab, and KKatherine an Israeli on vacation from her nursing school with a flare for complaining and diluted ideology that walking two hours up a mountain will rid her of the weight she put on during a week of eating velvety fattening restaurant food. It is a cramped, rickety ride through the desert and into the night. The dusk holds on closely to the sky until it’s grip fails and darkness prevails. I manage to get a few hours sleep in the bus but it is scattered one, waking often and being uncertain of my location. The bus drops the people off at the bottom where the droozy people make our way up the dusty mountain. The drop off happens at 1am at a small laneway of restaurants and the walk takes two hours. Slowly we creep up the camel trekking side. This side is longer but less steep than the staircase we will descend down to the bottom in the morning. The path in lined with ugly camel drivers with their ugly camels touting for rides as we pass but by foot we go. As we ascend, the desert night predictably chills and woolly jumpers and Nepalese thermal underwear goes on. Every hundred feet or so there is a tea shop where you can rest, enjoy a drink at ooffenciveprices and recuperate. The darkness prevents seeing any detail in the mountainside and I breath harder as the ascent gets steeper then changes from a smoothed out path to a series of 700 steps before reaching the plateau where the salesmen try renting blankets and mattresses the to truly tired and unprepared. I heave myself to the top, exhausted and cold. We would have moved slower but the gaggle of Egyptian Cub Scouts and their annoyingly loud disobedience made us run for the hills. There were many other tourists whom we didn’t see before on the way up but now crowd the little spaces between the carved stone structures. Then at the top, we waited and froze.

The conversation drifted as quickly as my brain suffered from sleep deprivation. It was a gruelling three hours to sunrise which peaked over a blue mountain range and smeared the sky a rose red. The silhouette of mountains start as a dark blue but the sun's rays curve over the globes atmosphere, the dark blue lightens at the event horizon and the infinite landscape becomes apparent. Then, as the deep red sun just appeared over the horizon, the layer upon layers of brown wrinkly mountain appear in the sky and the air above turns from a shade of blue to a golden yellow. The sunrise was magnificent and all I kept thinking about was how Moses must have stayed up here a few extra days just to watch this. At least he had a burning bush to keep him warm. It was just at that critical point where the sun was at its most majestic that I realized how much I need to piss. The Laotian coffee I made was working extra hard as a diuretic today and my bladder soon reached it’s full capacity. I knew that if I went to the bathroom now I would miss the rest of the sunrise so I waited. It felt like an eternity before I could reach the bathroom and when I finally got there, I couldn’t go. Too much pressure and holding it in. Embarrassed and still uncomfortable, I decided to make my way to the bottom and try again there. A few hundred steps down the other side and a few layers of clothing removed later I remembered something. I had a boyhood memory to recount. With my overflowing bladder I completely forgot to look for that room! Damn! It was the entire reason why I decided to come in the first place! I laughed a little inside. I will have to do this again someday before I leave the Middle East and find this room. Otherwise, it isn’t important, I tell myself.

The was down was a steep series of 3750 steps of makeshift stone stairs that seems endless and the heat made the lack of sleep worse. Eventually we hit bottom. The dusty road leading to St Katherines Monastery reflected an already abusive sun and shade became a valuable commodity while we waited the hour for the ancient church to open. We sat and ate triangle cheese and jam on very stale pita, Tang and the rest of the coffee (the only thing keeping me awake). The inside of the Monastery was fairly uninteresting though I am sure there is endless hundreds of years of history locked away in it’s walls. The interior looks very eastern European with multiple oil chandeliers to give it that extra flavour. Then, from around the corner and behind the Monastery comes the infamous Burning Bush – a green leafy round thing with a mass of dead branches underneath the coating of green foliage. It didn’t look like it had ever burned and why did they move it off the mountain? Don’t they thing that God would be upset at rearranging his garden? How would you like it if someone came and redesigned your backyard?
Last on the agenda, later that week, was the Blue Hole. This snorkelers paradise was a large circular reef teaming with more life than the reef near the hotel and a hole that drops to the depths of hell. There is a sheer wall that green grey coral grow in twisted shapes and a rainbow of fish seem to feed from. You stare down and you see the darkness being broken by a cloud of glittering silver and blue schools of fish then you look up at the surface of the water and are surprised to be caught in the middle of feeding foot long clown fish. You balance on the edge of the water but the salty sea water enters your nose due to an inefficiency in the snorkel design though do your best to ignore it and enjoy the life unknown below. The hour drive through the desert and the breakdown on the way back was background noise compared to the fantastic day the Blue Hole offered. I can only imagine to could be better by being one of the scuba divers whose bubbling breath I loved to bathe in as they ventured into the deep wilderness where us non-self contained breathing vehicles can't go.

Home again and chilling on the restaurant next to the reef where I read for days and days and days. I spent a good amount of time watching the reef as the tide bashed the unsuspecting newcomers to snorkeling against the living underwater cliff where the water changes colours from grey to a crystalline blue. The Bedouin girls did their tour of the restaurants demanding you buy their bracelets and the kittens added that last beautiful touch to the palm tree paradise by making this backpacker wasteland a little more cute. I ate my fill of strawberry shakes and set Egyptian breakfasts with their abstract continental version of Egyptian food - everything always coming with several packets of ketchup. After snorkeling, you shower the sea away though the showers and taps here produce a salty water stream that desiccates your skin worse than the sea water would but at least you don't smell like fish piss.

The budget breaking sea side resort town of Dahab was a well needed break from the torment of the tourist bear traps off the Nile. It was semi-unharassing though venturing past the restaurants over the bridge was a test of patience and excuses not to go into their establishments. The restaurants touts were in full force but still not as bad as the other parts of Egypt and I managed to eat at my hotel restaurant most of the time with my shoes off, warm wind blowing hard every morning to keep the endless number of flies away and cool me down from the broiler which was my room every morning. As Chris called it, it is "Heaven's drain that sucks the world's problems away..."

I took the minibus to Cairo - a long 7 hour trip that should have been a breeze but with the cramped space was really a nightmare. From Cairo, I caught the train to Alexandria (called Alex by the locals) and nicely settled into the guest house next to the one listed in my badly written Middle East Lonely Planet as the one I wanted was 30 EP per night (about USD5) and this one was only 17. A tout dragged me around and since my LP only has a map for the downtown area I decided to stick to this place. I am sure I could find a cheaper place but I would need to find some Japanese or Koreans and that could take all day. Anyways, the staff are friendly and offered me a room with 4 other beds in it so I never feel alone with four imaginary friends.
In fact, I am actually very alone in this city. This is the end of the Egyptian tourist season and the beginning of the foreigner season so there is a lull in the population of same-kind-as-me types. For some reason, after days of hard core socializing, this is a good thing. A little time to contemplate and regurgitate. A little time for me in a beautiful city.

The first thing you notice when you walk out of the train station is the pristine clean streets with modern women, a European style tram system and a cool blue sea that stretched to the edges of the enclave that hold the piece of the Mediterranean like a mother holds its child. The weather is perfect and the people are pleasant and kind. So far I have been met with only nice people who are helpful and only overcharge me a little. I have visited the Great Library here and, well, not a whole lot. I was so tired my first day in Alex I managed to fall asleep in my clothes at 6pm and wake up at 8am the next day, losing the day of touring. I do have three more days here.
I will do my best to fill my time for the next few days here. Siwa is a beautiful oasis and I could go and spend a few days there but the Jewish New Year (called Rosh Hashana) is coming and there is an active synagogue here and the ceremony is on the night of the 15th and the morning of the 16th. I have already visited the synagogue and met some of the Jewish community who work there. It will be me and 25 other locals in the most beautiful synagogue in Egypt. I could mad rush it to Siwa but I busted my watch and have given it to a shop to fix and it won't be fixed until tomorrow so the next few days will be here. Siwa won't be a problem to return to since I will be living in Israel. That, of course, is easier said then done. Siwa, I heard, is a magical place as well.

Next, I head back to Cairo after Rosh Hashana and then to Beirut on the 21st. Oh ya, for those who have asked my Muslim moustache is coming along nicely. Thanks for asking.

Be well



Oren Jalon
World Traveller

This message is brought to you by the foul (bean sauce) man near the tea shop who told me the price was 1.50 EP for a plate of foul but when I came back on the second day he decided to charge me the 1 EP local price, giving me back 1 EP when I handed him 3 for the 2 plates I ate. Alex has been good to me.