We slept in late trying to enjoy the little breeze coming through the front door but failing miserably in the heat, we eventually got up and went out for breakfast. Walking into town to get something to eat, I got a bit overwhelmed at all the talk of more diving, especially because it didn't feel like we were enjoying our very recent success as much as we should have been, and I had a bit of a cry. The Advanced Open Water course consisted of five different dives, two of which were mandatory; a navigation dive and a deep dive to 30 metres. Djalma was really keen to do a night dive and I felt awful for being such a big girl and not wanting to do it because I was afraid of the dark still – ridiculous I know but I really didn't want to test my limits that much. In the end we decided to take it a bit slower and do some less taxing dives which worked out quite nicely in the end.
When we got into town we spent time chilling out in an internet café/restaurant and Djalma left me there while he went all over town getting ingredients for an Egyptian feijoada. He bumped into Clare and Lil along the way and invited them over for dinner and then came back to collect his tired but slightly less emotional wife to go back to Matt's and start the dinner. The heat was intense and there was barely a breeze in the air, we were slick with sweat by the time we got back and then had to get straight to work in the kitchen. I managed to chop three massive onions before I passed out on the couch and slept solidly for two hours while Djalma sweated away in the kitchen, by the time he had finished he looked like he had bathed in baby oil! Linda dropped by hoping to see Matt but found us instead and helped us to shell the mountain of beans for the meat/bean sauce. She had to leave before dinner was ready and so Djalma made her a vegetarian version for her to eat before she went off to do a night dive. Soon enough Clare and Lil arrived with beer and pudding, by now dinner was almost ready and it was good to have more help shelling the bean – the skins were so tough that it would've been quite unpleasant to eat them with their skins on. Everyone helped themselves to the different dishes on the hob and we all sat outside in the enclosed garden drinking beer, laughing, talking and sweating, it was a lovely, fun, relaxed evening, my favourite in Dahab so far.
Djalma and I had a date to climb Mt Sinai, courtesy of Careca and Elke (thank you!) and so headed off early to get the bus to the bottom of the mountain. It was slightly cooler there but climbing up kept us more than warm and so we didn't need the fleeces we'd brought with us until we got to the top and had stopped. Our guide up the mountain was shocking, a short skinny Bedouin with almost no English to speak of, he charged off (doing this climb every day had made him super fit) and lost Amy and her new friend in the first three minutes not realising until a good twenty minutes later. He sent someone back down to look for them which was hopeless because he had no idea who he had lost, while waiting for them to catch up, hopefully, they rode by high up on a couple of camels and so we started off again. We stopped several times to rest, much needed – although you have to be relatively fit for diving it's not an energetic sport by any means, we made it very slowly up the seven hundred odd steps to the summit very slowly keeping our place in the enormous queue to get to the top. I've no idea how somebody calculated the number of steps, in some places it was moderately safe rocks to step on and in others more like a bumpy ramp, but we made it and found a spot near the edge to lie and wait for the sun to rise. We were absolutely shattered and tried to cuddle up together to keep warm, the sky was light well before we saw the sun, which appeared about fifteen minutes after the true sunrise, hidden by low-lying clouds and a heavy mist.
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| From 10 Dahab |
During the time that we were cuddled up Djalma overhead an annoyingly loud and talkative Brazilian who was commenting on everyone that she saw, at one point she commented on us 'oh, look at those two lying together, oh, but look where they are – so close to the edge, no I'm better off here. Hmm, look at his hair, that can't have seen water in at least four days.' she had fallen victim to the assumption that no-one else can understand you, so you can what you like as loud as you like, oops.
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| From 10 Dahab |
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