Dahab

In February 2010, Sue and I spent a week in Dahab, on the Sinai peninsula. We decided to get away from the grey winter in Britain, and for me to do some warm water diving before and relaxing before an important clinical meeting.

Our Dahab holiday was meant to be a relaxing break and a chance to escape the dreary, grey and miserable February in Britain and it certainly fulfilled our ambitions for it, but not before a difficult and wearisome start. The flight, which was to take us to Sharm el Sheikh, and then from there by bus on the hour long journey to Dahab, was delayed by eleven hours! I cannot recollect a time during our many travels by airplane any major delays and so I suppose it was just our turn. But that did not make it any easier to bear!

The fact that the flight was from Gatwick had already raised our levels of anxiety as it is not our favourite airport. I had enquired whether there was a flight from Stansted but was told that was not possible by the Regaldive tour operators. However, waiting for our return flight at Sharm el Sheikh we couldn’t noticing, in fact it was impossible not to notice as the eager passengers where lining up by the appropriate gate next to the table where we had taken a seat to wait for our departure, that there was indeed a flight to Stansted!

However, I am jumping ahead by referring to our return flight when I have not yet finished relating the story of our flight there. As I have already mentioned the flight was delayed by eleven hours. It was due to take off at 10:15am and we had allowed plenty of time to get to the airport, mindful of a previous experience regarding a flight to Malta where, due to the traffic on the M25, we arrived literally minutes before the plane was due to take off. We waited for our boarding call in the depressing departure lounge at Gatwick, our eyes gazing up every few minutes at the display to see which gate we were required to report to when instead it announced that the flight would be delayed until 4pm. We were rather sanguine about this is retrospect but not when the revised boarding time of 3:15 came and went and clearly nothing was happening, except a growing rabble of frustrated and increasingly angry groups of fellow passengers who, as time passed, began to lurk around the information desk and more and more came to resemble a crowd of angry peasant villagers with pitchforks intent on destroying the monstrous abomination that lurked in the forest or was constructed by the local mad professor in the nearby castle. When eventually someone did come down to speak to us I was slightly anxious for him – but only slightly. I couldn’t help feeling annoyed and angry with the way we had been treated and if someone had given me a pitchfork I fear I would have joined in with the best of them – or more accurately the worst of them.

Well the long and short of it was that the plane was further delayed until 8:15pm (according to the pilot because of a hydraulic fault) although it didn’t in fact escape the runway surface and begin the journey that we had been eagerly anticipating until 9:15pm. By this time I was flustered and physically tired from sitting around all day and did not manage to get any sleep on the plane. As a result we both arrived rather worse for wear in Sharm el Sheikh and had to face a further one hour transfer. We finally arrived at our hotel in Dahab at 6am (Egyptian time, as they are two hours ahead)! We both fell on our beds and tried to sleep.

It is rather strange that one can be too tired to sleep and I in particular found it very hard to drop off to sleep and when I did it was a rather fitful sleep. We both got up about ten in the morning but I must say that I felt dreadful, as if my body had been filed with lead and my head stuffed with an enormous pillow. I can see why sleep deprivation is considered a torture. I would have agreed to anything that morning.

It took us the whole of the day, lounging on the beach to recover. But what a lovely beach and indeed what a super hotel. As we overcame the unpleasant effects of lack of sleep and began to feel more human we were able to fully appreciate our surroundings. The hotel was immaculate with clear blue lagoons and beautifully manicured lawns and flower beds. Too manicured in fact. The whole place had a Port Merion feel about it as if we were about to be assigned a number as in the TV series ‘The Prisoner”. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see one of those strange large white bubble things from ‘The Prisoner’ floating about the place. It was very neat and tidy but quite artificial. Which is of course exactly what it was – an entirely artificial fantasy land set amidst the desert. When I went outside later to go on dives I would see the local areas which were dirty, scruffy, barren and strewn with rubbish. However this was our holiday and we were happy to be part of the fantasy land, at least for our stay.

The beach was lovely if composed of rather gritty sand. There were plenty of hotel staff around to fawn and fuss over one with lounge cushions and towels, with enquiries about whether we would like something to eat or drink. Of course we would, and we quickly became addicted to the fresh mango juice which we rather naively thought must be pressed from fresh fruits behind the beach bar only to find out later that week that it came from a large plastic bottle. Hey ho – fantasy land.

But the water and the fishes were not fantasy, they were real. Even a brief snorkel on the hotel beach revealed the beauty of the underwater realm with all manner of tropical fish to swim amongst. Sue would (until her ears started playing up) spend the time when I was diving snorkelling and was constantly astounded by the fish life under the water.

Our first evening meal was spent at the fish restaurant, which went by the rather predictable title of Neptune’s, and was set back a few metres from the beach. This enabled us to enjoy our evening meal whilst listening to the wound of the waves. Wonderful. One evening I booked a meal for myself and Sue on the beach – very romantic. We sat next to the waves with some candles for light set out in a circle around our table on the sand and enjoyed a lovely meal. The waiters had the habit of bringing the dishes to the tables covered by inverted silver bowls which were then removed in a theatrical flourish to reveal the gastronomic delicacy we were about to enjoy. I was never too sure whether I was meant to applaud. The only other company we had was the bright stars and a few walkers on the beach. We returned to our rooms well satisfied.

The hotel was built as separate white washed square blocks of three apartments scattered amongst sinuous lagoons of blue water, all well proportioned with their own en suite bathrooms and an outdoor covered sitting area, which was a perfect place to read, write and watch people about their business or pleasure, or watch the changing light as the day moved to its gentle end. The white washed walls and verdant green of the grass complimented the blue of the sky and the rich browns and gold of the mountains that formed the backdrop to our stay. We were told that Dahab meant ‘gold’, and as the sun sank behind the mountains it would send sharp beams of sunlight into the sky and clothe the mountainsides in a soft golden glow. At night the many lights around the paths and lagoons would be illuminated proving a fairyland of twinkling lights and soft shadows to delight us.

Having recovered from the effects of our delayed flights I was off for my first dive on Tuesday. I had already checked out the dive centre and it seemed to be very well organised and run. I must admit, despite being quite an experienced diver with over one hundred dives that I am still a rather anxious diver. I think that my anxiety may be partly a result of simply getting older but also perhaps exacerbated by my diagnosis. One of the reasons for going on holiday was to take my mind off the fact that on return I had to face a scan and then the clinical meeting which might prove to be the most important so far. The holiday succeeded, for I thought nothing of my illness until the last night when I suddenly was overwhelmed by a sense of sadness and had a cry. But it was only brief and the moment passed.

The first dive was called the ‘Eel Garden’. It was a lovely dive, down to a rounded sandy bank out of which popped the heads of countless little eels, dancing in the current trying to gain nourishment from passing plankton. The dive however was ruined by my being underweighted, running out of air and my ears playing up dreadfully. It was an ominous start but over the next few days I sorted out my weights and my ears got better and better. I have always been a gas guzzler and so accepted that I am often the first diver in my group to run low on gas.

There followed seven more dives over the remaining week, three of them on board a boat which brought back strong memories of diving from a liveaboard a few years ago in the Red Sea. The last dive in that series was across the most astounding mass of coral I have even seen. We weaved in and out of circular pinnacles of coral, finned over ever more weird and wonderful mounds of twisted and fantastic shaped corals and even swam through a coral tunnel. The dive ended with sighting a turtle. We came round a corner of a coral mound and there it was, perched on a lump of coral as if waiting for us. It was possible to imagine from looking at its expression that if it could speak it would declare, “just where have you been,” like an angry wife on the return of a drunken husband form the local pub.

The highlight of the dives however was the Blue Hole and the Canyons, which we did as two dives in one day. Indeed I thought the Canyons an excellent dive and the better of the two. It involved swimming along a short stretch of shallow coral to a sudden drop off into a narrow canyon (hence the title). I always enjoy these kind of topographical dives and this was no exception. The fact that I got separated from my dive party for a while and ended up at 43.3 metres (the deepest I have ever been) on 31% Nitrox did not detract from the experience at all. I thought it a truly spectacular dive. Apart from one dive during the week which was on air, I used Nitrox throughout as it was provided at no extra charge. I did however find the use of twelve litre cylinders rather than my normal fifteen litre cylinders rather annoying.

Interestingly, the blue hole dive itself, which is a famous dive (or perhaps infamous, as it has claimed the life of several deep divers) was more impressive due to the start of the dive which required a descent though a vertical chimney known as ‘Le Bell’ only wide enough for one diver at a time, from a few metres near the surface to thirty metres below. The chimney exited through an archway and then we drifted along the coral wall towards the blue hole itself and investigated the shallow rim before clambering out. I buddied with a chap called Ian who has been in contact and took some super pictures, some of me. It quite unusual for me to have pictures of myself underwater as you might imagine so I was very pleased to be able to download them when I returned to London.

So the week passed by with me diving and Sue sunbathing, snorkelling and having massages. We went out one night into Dahab itself and sipped a fruit juice in a bar right by the shore and brought some gifts, although Sue found the need to haggle over the price of things and the heavy sales pitch of the shop owners unsettling and scary and so we didn’t stay long.

On Saturday we had booked a coach trip to St. Catherine monastery which is in the heart of the Sinai desert. We found ourselves in a coach largely of people from hotels in Sharm and headed off into the hills. The mountains are impressive, barren and dry like the desiccated bones of earth herself. It is difficult to imagine people living out here but that is exactly what the Bedouin people do. As we stopped on the way to take in the view and stretch our legs some Bedouin children appeared as if from the rocks themselves with trinkets or souvenirs to sell. We didn’t buy anything.

The journey to St. Catherine’s took about two hours and when we arrived there were large crowds. I don’t like crowds. Humans en masse are not attractive creatures. They do not move with the sinuous grace of a shoal of fish but rather blunder about like blind and stupid cows. Why can’t people walk in a straight line? I find other peoples’ behaviour really irritating at times like this and feel the ever rising urge to hit someone. It is not my most appealing characteristic it must be said. During the summer months the place must be literally packed with people making it as far as I’m concerned a hell on earth – which is rather ironic as it is a monastery. Anyway, we did manage to see Moses well (yawn) and the church which I thought was really disappointing although Sue rightly pointed out that the interest in the church was its great age rather than its pretty interior.

Then we went to see the burning bush which turned out to be a real disappointment. I mean, it’s just a scruffy old bramble bush! In fact our guide told us it was a raspberry bush! I don’t remember anything about raspberries in the bible! Well, call me a sceptic but frankly it was a load of rubbish. Sue and I exited as quickly as we could, (which was not very quickly due to the tight press of the crowd trying to get through a narrow door) and stopped for a quick drink and then a barter for an alabaster tea light cover which we took a shine to before returning to the coach for the journey back.

When we returned to the hotel I went out to the chemist to get some diarrhoea tablets for me (I had gone down with bad diarrhoea after the boat trip and had been quite feverish for a night), cream for my insect bites which were all over my feet and calves (most unusual for me) and some medicine for Sue’s ears. The very nice man at the chemist loaded me down with medications and lotions and I duly returned with a laden bag of medical goodies. I had never been into drugs in my youth despite growing up through the 60s and 70s but my life in later years seems to be increasingly dominated by drugs!

Too quickly the week had gone and I found myself on the last morning before our flight back to Britain, snorkelling on the beach while Sue went off for a coconut scrub (don’t ask). I regret not snorkelling with Sue more, for there is so much to see that we could of shared. The sunlight through the water was magical, creating patterns of hexagonal dancing light on the sandy floor and casting sharp oblique shafts of light, stabbing down into the water. At one corner of the swimming area was a rope and I was amazed to see that coral had actually grown on the rope and clustering around the coral was a swarm (seems a much better word than shoal) of tiny fish darting around a few metres below. In the thick blankets of seaweed there were beautifully camouflaged small brownish fish that at first I thought were seahorses. Nearer the rising slope of the beach I saw a shoal of tiny silvery fish that sparkled in reflected sunlight and earlier I came across some larger (probably 6cm) narrow silvery fish with elongated beaks. Two pipefish lazily swam past and out into the deep.

But the best by far were the few small jellyfish – no bigger than my closed fist that lazily drifted through the water. They had the most beautiful purple circles inside their transparent bodies and delicate purple fringes to their mantles. They moved with a graceful motion through the water. I touched one hoping that I could experience some  communition with the sea itself. But it was not to be – time to go. Where had the week gone? The flight back to Britain was fairly uneventful actually returning slightly earlier than scheduled and we were home and in bed by 1am. We woke to rain sleet and snow, grey skies and heavy clouds and wondered whether our holiday had been nothing but a pleasant dream.

I feel I have left part of me behind in Dahab.