When visiting the Red Sea, one must do a little diving. After doing most all of the nap duty (totally by choice as I love just relaxing with some puzzles), Lauren wanted to give me a break. She sent our friend Jeff Fetters ... ok, let's back up. Our friend that we met in Ecuador named Jeff came to visit us for a four day weekend. He is now teaching in Cairo (just an hour flight away). It was AMAZING to see him again and hang out and relax together! It reminded us of our trips to Papallacta hot springs in Ecuador ... ok, so Lauren sent Jeff and I off on a little dive trip for the day and took the girls for the day. It was great ... now it was definitely ghetto and Egyptian, but still awesome ...
First, the semi-brief story ... so the day started out with them telling me right before leaving that I needed a photocopy of my passport, which meant a lot of running around and being a little late ... and then it was off to the docks! Or at least, one very small dock for many, many large boats. We waited in crazy lines so a guy could "inspect" our bag which meant opening it and closing it again in about three seconds and not checking anything ... then a lot of waiting on the dock and on the boat since every boat in the country apparently came to the same 30ft long dock at the same time in the morning, haha. Then it was off to the first dive spot, to wait while they took about 15 people on dives one-by-one ... we kept asking to snorkel, but they said the snorkel gear was coming on another boat (WHAT? WHY?!) and would be there in 5 minutes (in Egyptian this means "probably today, but maybe never"). After a few hours, we finally got to get into the water ... after finding out that the largest flipper size they have is a size 6-7 and I wear about size 12-15 ... so after waiting for a few hours I got my snorkel and mask. We dove and it was amazing. Then lots of waiting, dive, lots of waiting, dive and back to the first dock ... nine hours later, haha ... and the entire time, every European tourist around us and every worker on the boat were chain smoking packs of cigarettes ... then finally we get to the dock, lots of waiting, and there is no bus to take us back. They call the guy and there is a lot of yelling in Arabic ... and then a scramble to put us all into random vehicles. They shoved us into a taxi with some Egyptians where no one spoke English and we just went along with it ... we saw a fist fight between the guys in the cars in front of us, got pulled over and briefly inspected by the military with big guns ... and then ended up safely home about ten hours after leaving ... haha, quite a day ... but still, AMAZING water and great company ...
Look at the color of the water!
Here is our first dive spot.
Jeff!
What crazy fish they had! This one was one of my favorites. It just looked like a seahorse had gone through a straw and came out perfectly straight.
... and then I saw a red lion fish!
Great company!
Beautiful dive spots! This was our second location, a huge reef in the middle of the sea.
... and here was our third spot. A little private beach area. These are my two favorite shots.
... but eventually we had to say goodbye and head back
What a beautiful place
... and a random photo that I just thought looked cool. It's the arm strap for the camera on the seat cushion. It just looked simple and beautiful.
No comments:
Post a Comment