Mumbling Underwater Joy
Trip Start
Mar 21, 2005
1
307
354
Trip End
Ongoing
Dahab,
Red Sea and Sinai,
Egypt
Monday, April 21, 2008
Below, the shelf of multicolored soft and hard corals descended into the depths of the Red Sea, hundreds of meters to black. Scuba diving in such clear waters was like sky diving in freeze frame.
For a week, I stayed in Dahab, in Sinai, where I dived, relaxed, and climbed Mt. Sinai under a full moon. In the end, I completed the Advanced Open Water Diver course, dove under a full moon, and went wreck diving at the WWII Thistlegorm
Dahab
.Dahab was a relaxed town full of restaurants with seafront cushion seating under thatched shade. Phil and Owen, who I met on the ferry ride from Jordan, both had come here a decade earlier, when the place was just a few Bedouin shacks catering to backpackers and a couple of dive shops. Backpackers, as the original colonizers of beautiful and remote places around the world, are then followed slowly by more and more visitors.
Dahab's evolution was the same as that of Van Vieng in Laos or Thamel in Kathmandu. Slowly, the burgers, the candy bars, the massage parlours, the souvenir shops, and so on arrive. Later, once all is deemed safe, the larger resorts arrive. Dahab is just at the point where new concrete resorts are rising on the outskirts of town. Phil and Owen could not recognize the place, for better or worse.
All I could do personally is avoid the bottled water, plastic packaged foods, and the souvenir shops, and focus on SCUBA diving. I'm not going to judge other people's choices, but realize that each choice we make affects our surroundings and that we as a collective create our world, while traveling or at home
Diving Thistlegorm
. And the world is becoming full of plastic bottles, candy wrappers, and other junk (a conservative estimate would say tourists generate over 100 million plastic water bottles of trash a year).At the same time, Egyptians from elsewhere in Egypt cannot visit Dahab or Sharm, they are just for foreign tourists so that these places can charge "tourist" prices as well as for "security" reasons. This form of segregation tourism felt strange and perhaps resented by Egyptians, yet those Egyptians who might want to come were not there to say how they felt.
Still, Dahab offered a good atmosphere and relaxing on the pillows near the beach after a dive with dive buddies was great. The Big Blue Dive Shop was also great, with friendly staff, good equipment, reasonable prices, and a care for the environment. I also found a good (mosquito free) room at Pearl of the South Hotel, where the Egyptians at the hotel were relaxed, liked Bob Marley, and friendly.
Of course, each SCUBA diver also affects the reef, and the damage was apparent in places. Still, the reef seemed healthy and the major damage was confined to frequently-used narrow passageways and the practice dive area in town
Ferry to Egypt: Moving
. I could only do my best to avoid touching the coral by controlling my buoyancy better and so on, with the thought of course that its impossible not to cause some damage in one way or another: we do that just by living. Buoyancy control was one of the advanced courses, but it was more like a circus game, with Adel my Egyptian-English instructor having me pass through hoops and engage him in a Matrix-like combat scene underwater. We kicked and flipped in slow motion. We also went to the Canyon for a deep dive and Blue Hole for a drift dive, always surrounded by multitudes of fish and coral.
My final dive in Dahab was a night dive under the full moon, which I did with Nathan, who I met in Jerusalem a few weeks ago: small world. The corals were in a feeding frenzy and a Spanish Dancer floated in the dark: scarlet and satin. The moon above shone through the waves and lit the coral in moonscape.
After six shore dives, I went to Sharm with a group to dive the Thistlegorm wreck and Ras Mohammad National Park: today was the one biggest splurge of this journey. Only advanced divers could go there, as the wreck was at 30 meters depth and required maneuvering through the wreck with underwater flashlights
Fishing Boat
. These three dives were the climax of the week of diving, two "top ten" of the world dives, for what that's worth. At four in the morning, we left the dock and slept while the captain boated to the wreck. As the sun rose, we approached the site. My dive buddy Jenny and I suited up and descended with two other pairs and a divemaster. For the first dive, we circled around and over the Thistlegorm, a large British freighter ship sunk by a Nazi bomber, when North Africa was a major campaign ground. We passed the guns, the captain's cabin, the wreckage where the bomb hit, large tanks, the propeller and more. At one point, I was surrounded by hundreds of fish as I floated motionless.
On the second dive, after an hour break, we descended to enter inside the ship, where encrusted motorcycles, guns, boots, tires, and other supplies found their graves. We went from room to room, exploring around the cargo holds. Finally, we entered the captain's cabin and even found a pocket of air left by dozens of previous divers: we talked underwater for a bit, then slowly ascended back to the ship, leaving the blue image of the Thistlegorm below.
The water on the way back towards Sharm was incredibly clear and multi-colored, with coral everywhere and the Sinai mountains in the background. After an hour, we reached Ras Mohammad National Park. Our dive here was between Shark and Yolanda Reefs. The diversity of coral and fish here was extremely high, with moray eels waiting to eat them and a Hawksbill Turtle floating along the reef with us. Clownfish families lived among the tentacles of Magnificent Anemone. A White-spotted Pufferfish hovered above the sand, where a Blue-spotted Stingray relaxed and a Scorpionfish lay, camouflaged.
I was in awe and found such amazement and peace floating and breathing underwater, with the sound of "mmmmmnn!" coming out of my mouthpiece.
