Happy Life Village Dahab

... and lumps of big bouldery, bulbous rocks. Mini-mountains. Up to 400m or 500m, at first, from a distance the vast extrusion from the earth looks like one huge pile of monstrous, misshapen boulders.<br><br>Closer, the hills pull apart, streams of weaving stretches of sand separating them - threads of passage for broad-footed camels. <br><br>Find accomodation in the adjacent tourist town of Wadi Musa, and wait for the gates to open at 6.30am.<br><br>There is an autumnal chill in early ...

... must have been for her to climb all the way up and then back down again! She made it down though, and you could tell she was grateful to the egyptian men that helped her.<br><br>Once we reached the bottom we rested a while on some big boulders and then entered the monastery, we took a look around but were so exhausted that we just wanted to get back to our hotel. On our way back in the van, a chinese man sitting in front of us kept dosing off on this japanese guys shoulder ...

... in this part of the country due to the bombings about 10 years ago. I think its a bit of overkill having that much security, but, I won't complain.<br><br>We stopped at a rest stop halfway and got ice cream for 5 pounds, a lot cheaper than we thought it would be considering it was a tourist stop, which are normally horribly overpriced. It really hit the spot and we were back on the bus, and back asleep again. One of the security stops near our ...

... I teach English.&#8221; <br> &#8220;Where?&#8221;<br> &#8220;In Cairo.&#8221;<br> &#8220;How long for?&#8221;<br> Four years, so you know I know 30 is a very good deal.<br> He smiled again and said &#8220;Yes that is a very good deal.&#8221; <br> &#8220;Where are you from.?&#8221;<br> &#8220;Australia.&#8221;<br> He shook Dino's hand. They both hoped into the taxi and off we went. The fellow travelers surprised that we no longer had to wait for a full ...

... we met put it well when he said that it was like being in an aquarium. We spent a lot of time excitedly pointing out fish to one another and Dave tried to get close enough for a few good pictures with the underwater camera. Our second to last day we went to Mount Sinai, where Moses received the 10 commandants. We left the hotel at 11pm at night so that we could drive for a few hours to the St. Catherine's Monastary. We then hiked up ...

... Smiling, I then knew why I had climbed all night in the darkness. But then, as if on cue, several Oh la la's punctured the sanctity of the moment and any remaining spirituality of Sinai's sunrise was lost in a maelstrom of clicking shutters. Oh well, c'est la vie. On our final day in Dahab, we decided to head out of town to visit an especially nice reef for snorkeling and scuba. Relying on word of mouth, we completely underestimated how much effort our trip would require ...

... But it was totally worth it. For those of you who've had the wonderful fortune to grace the shores of the greatest city in the world, San Diego California, this is the small town version of it. Its so laid back and beautiful. Were not really on the red sea anymore were a little north on the Siani penninsula on the Gulf of Aqaba. When were on the beach we can see Saudi Arabia across the way. Its very pretty. Warm clear water, blue sky and desert ...

... el Sheikh. Instead it was another bit of Costa, transplanted in the desert, with a predominantly British crowd. So back north, on the eastern side of the Sinai peninsula. It took a bit of road finding to get away from Shark's Bay and neighbouring Naqb. The coastal road, that exists on the map was blocked, if indeed it was that road. We had to go back almost to Sharm to hit the Dahab road. One mountain close to the airport seemed to have strange veins of light coloured material ...

... with sunny personalitiesa nd it's cuisine, beauty, coloured fish and it's reef. The village is set up along the coral reefs of The Red Sea and in close proximity to some of the world's best diving spots including a really cool WWII wreck of a warship called the Thistlegorm, another reason to get the dive certification. The water is impossibly blue and clear, the kind of blue that draws your eyes and won't let them go. A deep, welcoming, turquoise blue that is ...

... on the ground in the shade provided by the vehicle. I guess Ramadan is much easier to bear when you do as little as possible during daylight hours. Shark Caves was another busy base for dive companies, and in our first dive of the day Matthias took us down to about twelve metres to a feature called the Golden Blocks. After a long lunch interval our final dive was at Moray&#8217;s House. Though we were only down to six metres below the surface, we saw the biggest ...