Dahab, Egypt - Good night, and good luck.

My last meal in Dahab. There's a really cheap Egyptian restaurant around the corner from 7Heaven. Here I'm chowing down on cow ankles. Mmmmm...despite the chunks of fat hanging off the protein... Fish here is cheap as well. Notice the lack of eyeglasses... (photo courtesy of Sally.)

Diving here was a bit of a disaster. I could not achieve the depth of 30m that was required to go on to other more interesting dives. Not only was I bumped off of the Canyon/Blue Hole trip but they recommended that I take the peak buoyancy course. I agreed with them that I needed some kind of refresher but I'm wasn't sure whether I wanted to do the course work here.

I think, for the future, that I need to practice more. You know, keep my diving skills up. It would help if I owned some of the equipment as well (eg. fins and mask at least). But, hauling around SCUBA equipment would be impractical to say the least.

I might be headed to Thailand or the Philippines. I'll do some kind of refresher there.

Otherwise, I'm done with Dahab. What a relief. I planned on 5 days here. I spent 17. It's been a slice.

Heading back to Cairo tomorrow. I might head off to Mt. Sinai instead. That was the original plan. I'll sleep on it. I'm outta here for sure.

Out of Canuckistan: A travel blog, June 30/07
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Dahab, Egypt - Dahab is 3 fourths underwater...

Photo courtesy of Thais.

I'm so exhausted. I did my checkout dive today. Checkout dives are intended for landlubbers like me who have not dove for many, many, many years.

I went with the cheap option, 7Heaven. Wise or not I was gonna find out first hand. I booked the dive and asked for a manual. That's how rusty I was. I spent the next 4 hours burying myself in the text.

The divemaster, Gefer, was Egyptian. He was okay. We had some communication problems with the hand signals. I figured out something really quick. SCUBA diving is not like riding a bike. I used to be an expert (ok, I was good) at controlling buoyancy. It's a combination between breath and using the flotation jacket. Couldn't do it. Frustrating thing was Gefer achieves it primarily with the jacket. You have to have done it to understand the concepts.

Anyway, for most of the time he was just dragging me around. Felt awful.

My breathing rate was pretty high. Gefer ended up giving me his back up regulator. How embarassing was that? I hope tomorrow is better because I was flopping around like a fish today.

Frustration aside, the Lighthouse Reef was pretty spectacular. Just metres offshore the floor just plunges to 30m. Lots of wildlife, especially them spiny-needle covered puffy fishes.

Out of Canuckistan: A travel blog, June 29/07
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