What was once considered a hippie hangout, Dahab still maintains a more laid-back atmosphere than Sharm El Sheikh, but long gone are the true vagabonds. Instead the town is full of young travelers looking for inexpensive accommodations, cheap food, sun and sand, and a party. I can hear the rave music blasting through our hotel window, as I type this now.

Dahab also boasts some excellent dive sites. The blue hole, a vertical canyon about 100 meters deep, being it’s biggest attraction. Most divers only go to about 30 meters, and only a few as deep as 60 meters. But without an advanced PADI certification, Mike and I were shut out from diving altogether.  That said, one good thing about diving in the Sinai is that most dives are shore dives, which means the coral/sealife is accessible from the shoreline (ie. you don’t need a boat to get to the dive site).  So instead, we rented a 5mm wet suit (it was cold, windy and overcast today), walked into the water and snorkeled the reef.

Dahab was supposed to be a quick one night stop, before heading to St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai. Unfortunately, it turns out the monastery is closed Friday, Saturday and Sunday this week. So, we’re going to hang in Dahab a few more days, maybe do some more snorkeling and enjoy the bedouin lounges (photo).

The last time I tried snorkeling without a life vest was in Jamaica about 12 years ago. I nearly drown my friend and I in my panic, mind you, it was in 4 feet of water. Since then I’ve always stuck to the life vest. Yesterday, though, Mike and I snorkled (without a life vest) in the Red Sea at Ras Mohammed National Park. We were told snorkeling and scuba are both outstanding there. And it’s true; the main beach and Yolanda Beach have amazing reefs.

Basically, the water is about three feet deep for about 50-100yards, and you can snorkel the whole way seeing fish and coral. But then all of a sudden the ocean floor drops down immediately to about 30 yards, and all you see is a “wall” of coral that follows the coastline. It’s quite spectacular to see the shallow water plunge down into an abyss. Due to the large amount of plankton in the water, it’s said there are over 1100 species of aquatic life at Ras Mohammed which is at southern most tip of the Sinai. I’m not so sure we saw quite that many different types of sealife, but no doubt we saw at least a hundred.

Between the scuba diving and snorkeling, some of the fish we saw were barracudas, box fish, surgeonfish, blue spotted stingray, lionfish, rabbitfish, titan triggerfish, yellow margin triggerfish, clownfish, raccoon butterflyfish, and my favorite, the masked puffer fish (pictured here).

The Sinai peninsula has some of the best diving in the world, so we decided to check it out. From Cairo we flew to the Sharm El Sheikh, which from first impressions is much like a developing Cancun or Las Vegas and filled with German and Russian tourists. We weren’t so thrilled with the way this town looked, but after a few days, we settled into the convenience of having everything readily accessible to us. Not to mention, Cathy and Walid knew the general manager at the hotel we stayed, and we were upgraded to a suite. While we were on our Nile cruise we met a nice Canadian couple who just happened to be heading to Sharm and even staying in our same hotel. So, after a day of scuba diving, we met up for a beer and some apple flavored shisa.