Backgammon in Dahab

Luxor, Egypt

 

With the exception of the hike up Mount Sinai not much else happened over the two weeks that I spent in Dahab. Frankly, if you're not diving or snorkeling, then there really isn't all that much to do anyways. The two weeks that I spent in Dahab were before the main holiday crowds arrived in time for New Years. I had thought that I would arrive in a town packed with other travelers and partiers, but instead I found a town that could best be described as on life support, but more accurately described as dead. There were very few travelers there, at least when compared to the number of travelers that the town can support.

 

Restaurant after restaurant was empty, in an almost eerie way. There are probably close a hundred places to eat in Dahab, and each one was setup as if it would be full that night, but none of them had more then a few customers at any time. The entire town just felt like it was waiting "for the bus to arrive". Everything was setup, but no one showed up. The first few days were kind of weird because you could feel the eyes of every business owner and restaurant tout sizing you up for business. Over time, they would learn to recognize me and after the first week, few if any would try and lure me into their shop or restaurant. I actually got to talk to a few of them and ultimately I sort of joined that quasi-locals group of travelers that either work in Dahab or act like they do, thus gaining a sort of "status" among the touts as being with them.

 

The other amazing thing about Dahab is the shear number of places to stay and hotels being built. Not all of them are open in the winter, but more then enough are to make you wonder how some of them make any money. The places being built tend to be scattered either at the north or south end of "the strip", effectively lengthening the strip itself. What is strange though is that so many of them are nothing more then skeleton infrastructures that aren't being worked on. Apparently there is some weird tax law that allows you to avoid paying for taxes if you build on land within a certain time of purchasing it, then don't have to start paying taxes until said building starts generating money. So, land owners quickly build frames of buildings only to stop building them as soon as they qualify for this tax break. The property then sits idle until either the owner decides to actually finish building the hotel or sells the property. The end result is dozens of unfinished properties with nothing more then cinder block walls and floors laid out to represent a building. Very strange.

 

In the end, Dahab is simply a large collection of places to sleep, places to eat and places to buy souvenirs. There isn't much else to it other then the diving and snorkeling.

 

So, if you are into diving or snorkeling then Dahab must be heaven. I had floated (pun intended) the idea of taking my open water PADI scuba diving courses while in Dahab, but ultimately decided against it because of cost and lack of interest. Scuba diving looks like it could be fun, but personally there's a bunch of other water sports that I'd rather get into before scuba diving, so for now I'm going to stick with snorkeling...

 

And boy, is the snorkeling around Dahab amazing. The coral reefs are literally right up to the waters edge and within a few feet of the shore you can see hundreds of fish in dozens of different colors. My only other experience snorkeling was in Manly, Australia last year and I remember getting all excited because I saw one fish swim by. In Dahab, I had to swim around to avoid bumping into fish, it was amazing. You really feel like you're inside an aquarium with fish all around and the coral reef below. One of the best places to view the marine life is where the coral plateau ends and drops like a cliff to the ocean floor. In some case, it's a sheer vertical cliff of coral over 50 meters deep, in others it drops just 10 meters to the next "shelf". It's fun to watch the scuba divers below you as their expelled air bubbles to the surface. In general though, it's just amazing to be sitting on the shore and looking out at a rather empty sea only to find an entirely different world right below the surface. It's like in those old fairy tale movies where the main character sticks there head through some plain looking curtain or wall and sees a magical kingdom on the other side. The difference in life and color between the surface of the water and a few feet below is equally contrasting.

 

Most of the snorkeling is done right off the shores of Dahab itself. You can literally rent some snorkeling gear on one side of the boardwalk, cross it and hop into the water on the other side. Two feet from shore and you're staring a hundreds of fish and coral. However, one of the most popular places to snorkel requires a 4x4 jeep to reach and a bit of time. Blue Hole, as it's called, is one of the best places in the world to go snorkeling and diving. It's an exuisite piece of coral that has a huge "hole" right in the middle of it that descends to over 100m. Scuba divers dream of places like this. For snorkelers, you tend to follow the coral shelf line for 100-200 meters, then follow the inner perimeter of the hole, all the while being surrounded with fish and coral. Looking down into the blue hole is like looking into the abyss. The blue color just gets darker and darker until you can't make out the coral walls or the scuba divers below. Helen and I spent around 30-40 minutes snorkeling here and it was like nothing I'd seen before. While the fish were similar to those back off the shores of Dahab, the coral wasn't. The steep walls and huge hole just gave the coral so much more weight and depth. Sadly I didn't bring an underwater camera with me because it would have been cool to get a few pictures of the marine life around us.

 

As cool as the snorkeling was, I still found myself getting out of the water after only about 30 minutes or so of swimming around because of the cold. Whatever gene allows me to ski in -30C weather every weekend is clearly not the same gene that allows me to stay in moderately warm water for extended periods of time. Even with a wet suit on, I still got goose bumps and uncomfortable. Maybe it's a wet vs dry cold thing or something, but frankly I just don't like being both cold and wet, so my snorkeling sessions were limited to around 30 minutes each. The other problem was that the weather itself wasn't all that warm. This time of the year is very windy in Dahab, which is great if you're into windsurfing but not so great if you're trying to snorkel on the surface (or warm up afterwards). I think in the end I ended up snorkeling four times, each time getting more and more comfortable with the water that inevitably leaked into my mask and snorkel. (Note to Wendy: "Girth Glasses" needs to add scuba masks to our product line...)

 

Pretty much the rest of my time in Dahab was spent playing backgammon with Helen. Most times I'd roll out of bed just before noon, cook up a little omelet breakfast at the camp I was staying at, wander around town for a bit before ultimately meeting up with Helen somewhere to have some drinks and play backgammon. There are backgammon boards everywhere and in every single restaurant or bar, so finding a place to play isn't exactly hard. At night, we'd hang out either at one of the restaurants or in one of the bars. Just about every place has cushions setup on the ground either around a low table or a fire pit for people to socialize around. It's a great way to meet other travelers, have a few drinks and food and of course, play backgammon.

 

Christmas in Dahab was a little different then what normally takes place back home. On Christmas Eve, I went snorkeling with a fellow traveler staying at the same camp as me. That lasted the usual 30 minutes then I left to explore the southern end of Dahab in hopes of getting some cool sunset photos as the sun sets into the mountains with a huge lagoon in the foreground. The photo shoot didn't really turn out the way I wanted, so I wandered back into town to meet up with Sarah and Leslie, the two girls from Saskatchewan who were staying in the same camp as well. (They had been gone for a few days on a side trip up to Jordan, but returned to Dahab in time for Christmas celebrations). The three of us headed over to the local liquor store to stock up on some rum for the night. Nothing like bargaining for liquor on Christmas Eve. The price of anything in Egypt is open for interpretation and when the sales clerk told me that the bottle of run cost 35 Pounds I told him that it cost 30 Pounds and this wasn't the first time I had been in here. He sort of laughed, lightly "punched" me on the shoulder as if we were good friends and then smiled while saying "Yeah, your right, 30 Pounds..." Right, nice joke my friend... Anyways, with rum in hand we headed back to the camp and preceded to enjoy Christmas Eve by having drinks around the campfire with a few other Alaska Camp customers. When then rum ended, we all headed over to a local bar that offered your staple dance music and drinks in a semi outdoor environment. We lasted till sometime after 4am, not because the dancing and music were particularly good, but more because we didn't really have anywhere else to go... For my male readers, you'll be sad to learn the the female to male ratio in Egyptian bars is around 1 to 50, it's not pretty if you know what I mean... For the first time in 29 years, I slept outside on Christmas Eve and awoke the following morning beside the campfire for Christmas Day.

 

The plan on Christmas morning was for a group of us to head over to the Hilton hotel to enjoy their huge brunch spread. In the group, there was Sarah, Leslie, Helen, Katrina, Dave and myself. We rolled into the Hilton, a short 3km taxi ride from Dahab, just after 11am to learn that the buffet closed at 11am! Who ever heard of a brunch buffet closing at 11am, let alone on Christmas Day! Too bad, because I could smell the French toast in the air... /sigh

 

So well all piled back into a taxi cab who's driver definitely wasn't in the Christmas mood. The run from Dahab to the Hilton is supposed to be 5 pounds. It's a fixed route, there's only one way to get there, no traffic, nothing. However, like everything else, the price is always open for discussion. This driver didn't take too kindly to us giving him 5 pounds for the ride and decided to throw the 5 pound note on the ground, curse something in Arabic, get in his car and speed away. We all just looked at each other, looked at the money on the ground, picked it up and couldn't stop laughing as we walked over to a restaurant for breakfast. You'd think he'd have at least cursed but still taken the 5 pounds. He didn't even give us a chance to give him more money, just threw it on the ground then sped off... Welcome to Egypt... ;)

 

The rest of the day was really spent eating, drinking, playing pool and playing backgammon. I don't think I've ever drank on Christmas Eve before, let alone Christmas, but I made up for it this year... ;) As a Christmas bonus, I met up with Abdullah, Momo and a few others of the Bedouin from Petra whom I'd met earlier. They were down in Dahab for a few days to "celebrate" Christmas as well. It was fun to see those guys again and even though they got into a fight with some local Egyptians at the bar on Christmas Day, to which I had to hold one of the Bedouin back from joining in the fight, we still had a great time together. (I swear it takes so little to start an argument or a fight here in Egypt. Just wait ten minutes and someone will be angry with what someone else said... I still believe sexual frustration is at the root of the problem because it's never good to have a bar full of drinking guys with no girls to keep their attention. That is a perfect recipe for arguments and fights, even on Christmas Day!)

 

Other then that, there's not much else to say about the two weeks I spent in Dahab. It is one of those towns where time really does slow down and where people arrive expecting to stay only a few days but find themselves still there weeks later. There's really no reason to stick around, it's not like it's got some crazy beach party scene or anything like that, it's more like that it's so easy to do nothing, that doing anything, such as leaving, just seems like too much work...

 

Kenny