Dahab, Day 1

Luxor, Egypt

 

There's not a lot to do in Dahab other then go to snorkeling/diving, out to eat and out to drink. It's not very big at all, maybe 1 kilometer along by about 100 meters wide. Everything is right on the water, with a sidewalk running along the edge of ocean with buildings on one side and open air restaurants on the other side. Everyone who is in Dahab, except for the locals that work there, is on vacation.

 

After checking into out hotel, or "camp" as they call them in Dahab, Gassam, Fawaz, Rob and I headed down "the strip" and popped into one of the restaurants to grab a bite to eat. The restaurants all have huge multi-person sofa chairs that surround big tables. While all the seating is technically on the beach, since there really isn't a beach it's more like on a platform that is built right to the edge of the water. They've all got the whole umbrella, fire pit, music thing going so it's pretty cool to just chill out at these places, even if you have to keep ordering drinks.

 

We all had lunch at this one place called Karizma then just wandered around Dahab, exploring the main strip and repeatedly turning down offers from the restaurants touts trying to drum up business. At times it's crazy how many of them are on the boardwalk. Since the restaurants are one right after the other, and most are empty, they are desperate for business. Over the following weeks the touts would learn to recognize me and understand that I wasn't coming in for drinks or seafood, but for the first day I, and the others, were fresh meat and nothing looks better to a restaurant tout then four hungry guys...

 

As night fell, we hit up the local liquor store since it's always cheaper to pre-load on alcohol "at home" before going out. The liquor store carried basically one type of each of the main liquors, so at least I was able to get some rum. We picked up two large bottles of rum and some coke to mix it with before finding an "unmonitored" part of the beach surprisingly close to the action. I saw unmonitored because there's really no part of the scant "beach" that you can just sit down on and have some drinks. Someone owned the beach chairs we were sitting in but didn't come over to ask us about the bottles of rum and drinks we had. No complaints from the four of us.

 

After finishing off the rum, we headed to a local bar called Tota's, which has a huge ship's hull as it's front facade. But what's better is the outdoor lounge outback where you can relax on cushions that surround a fire pit. Since it's essentially protected from the wind, it offers a great area to just lay back and stare at the stars while smoking a sheesha (water pipe) and having drinks. Definitely need a place like this in San Francisco, even if I don't partake in the sheesha part...

 

At Tota's, we met up with two other travelers from Saskatchewan, of all places. Leslie and Sarah were on a one month tour of Egypt and we all hit it off right away. As Tota's started to slow down, we headed over to a second bar called "The Tree", where we befriended Helen, the Australian bartender. While "The Tree" was equally dead it at least provided a few more drinks and entertainment to end the night.

 

Kenny