For the first time on this journey home of mine, I write to you, dear subscribers, of a destination I did not enjoy. When planning this trip I had 3 weeks to kill between plans in Europe and plans in Africa and was recommended a hot diving spot by a fellow ocean lover, Beth Buchanan from work, who's now taking care of my most difficult class of now year 11 students while they do their final GCSE year of science. Good luck to her. This spot was in Egypt which happens to geographically fall smack bang in the middle of Croatia and Tanzania where I had booked in plans. Of course, you can't go to Egypt without stopping by and saying hello the the Great Pyramids of Giza and so we stayed a few nights in Cairo. And this is the destination that I'm unfortunately not fond of and wouldn't recommend to friends. In saying that, I have countless friends who have done Egypt trips and absolutely raved about them so this is merely my opinion and I'd hate to sway anyone else's opinion. I can't however lie in my own blog post as I wouldn't be doing anyone any favours. This is a country that is desperate for tourism to return but it's desperate in the most annoying of ways. People did not want to offer us help for the sake of being helpful, people wanted to help because we were tourists with potential money either to spend in their family shop or to tip them for useless things that I did not want them to do in the first place. Arguing with people about the price of a taxi or about tipping them after they practically snatched our bags out of our hands to "help" cost us a missed flight for the first time in my life. The amount of times we were having a friendly conversation with a stranger only to be led into their perfume shop 10 minutes off route was ridiculous. After these cheeky attempts by Egyptians, nothing but blatant rudeness from us would prevent it from happening again which isn't a nice way to travel. I felt that relationships between Egyptians and us were strained the whole time as either I was annoyed at having agreed to 4 times the price in desperation or frustration or they were annoyed that I wasn't paying as much as they wanted me to pay. I couldn't ever have a nice conversation with a taxi driver or shop owner or someone in a restaurant because if the conversation didn't result in a business transaction, they were disappointed at bothering with me. And I felt for them, I really did. Since the revolution to overthrow the president in 2011 tourism has suffered in a major way. And initially I'm sure there was good reason for that with hostilities between the military and the people. But since the situation has calmed down tourism hasn't really picked up and many people who's livelihoods depend on tourism have been jeopardized. If Egypt want tourists to return to Cairo then they have a lot of work to do. The city is a mess. From litter and plastic flying around your legs everywhere you go to the dirty state of all the buildings Cairo does not seem like a city that cares too much for tourism. The buildings are still in ruins or abondoned, theres a giant cloud of smog hanging over the city and you're at risk of being hit by 1 of the million cars if you step out the door. I can understand how some travellers would feel very uncomfortable here. Our activities in Cairo consisted of a Nile River cruise, a trip to Giza and a visit to the museum. That could easily be condensed into a day if you feel you must satisfy your own curiosity about the place. In hindsight, I'd skip Cairo All together. All activities were organised by our hostel and were relatively cheap. We paid $26 USD for a driver for the day who took us to the Pyramids and then all we had to pay for was a camel ride (roughly £16) and entry (negligible).
When we were visiting the pyramids we heard from our guide how he once did 2 or 3 of these trips a day and now he's down to 1 a week, another testement to the severe effects of the revolution. We got ourselves a camel and started our slow and hot meander into the Sahara. The camels didn't look well cared for, all of them branded multiple times with patterns and Arabic symbols sculptured into their hides. They had scabbed, fly ridden knees from kneeling in the hot sand and some had no humps remaining. Our guide repeatedly (but lightly) whipped our camels despite me trying my best, flirtatious request for him not to. He himself was riding a horse. These were conditions that I did not feel were appropriate for a horse and I swear his horse collapsed which he assured me was just the horses way of cooling down by rolling around in the sand. I felt very uneasy about the camel ride and I wouldn't have done it had I have been more aware before hand. There is of course the option to walk around the pyramids but that isn't really offered as an alternative and we didn't realise until we saw others do it while we were there. If you're intent on a camel ride in the Sahara then I can recommend Morocco as an alternative. If you have visited the London museum then the museum in Cairo can be missed without missing anything. The Nile River cruise that we did is not even worth writing about. Alas there are many amazing counties I've visited who's capital cities I don't like. In fact, my friend Brontë and I started to avoid capitals like the plague when we travelled South America together all those years ago. So in Egypt comes my first destination I've not enjoyed but amazingly also hosts one of my favourite places and one I would highly recommend without the stopover in Cairo. This is the destination that brought me to Egypt by Beth Buchanan's recommendation and I haven't stopped thanking her since.
Dahab, a coastal town on the Red Sea, is home to one of the world's top ten diving spots with Dahab plaza, where we stayed, becoming home to us for 8 nights. Emad, the owner, would literally welcome us home every evening after a day spent in the water and his daughter would make sure we felt like family during our stay. Paying roughly £13 a night for a private room and our own bathroom, we really felt like we were spoiling ourselves having previously only stayed in shared dorms of sometimes up to 10 people, usually for double the price at least. We had a cooked breakfast every morning, kittens to play with in the day and a pool to swim in the evenings, I can't think of a place I've been to where I've got more value for money than here. When I'm complaining later of having paid the equivalent of £5 for a full, sit down meal and drink, you know it's a very affordable place to visit.
Dahab itself has a Byron Bay feel to it with cafes and restaurants set up in hippy like shacks along the promenade. It's a very small place and you could walk the length of it in about 15 minutes. Most of the places to eat were situated right on the water. It was so lovely to wait for your meal while the fish put on a dancing show for you jumping and splashing around on the reef bed before you with the sea breeze in your hair. The temperatures of high 30's to low 40's were rarely felt due to the constant wind, unlike elsewhere in Egypt. What surprised me the most about Dahab was the lack of Westerners. Australians seem to have infiltrated every part of the world, especially where there's water involved and I didn't stumble across one other for 9 days. I've been to surfing towns in El Salvador that were almost entirely Australian and Californian populations and this being such a beautiful spot I expected the same. It's most common customer was definitely Egyptians and probably, most surprisingly, followed by Asians, from what we could see.
Will and I bargained for a €220 Open Water Diving course with the company Club Red mostly because I had a crush on the lady who took us out who we actually became good friends with throughout our stay (hi Anna). There were plenty of cheaper places though if you're looking for budget diving. We stopped asking around after about 4 or 5 different companies and were quoted as little as €140 to as much as €280 for the same course. With 70 competitors in a very small town I really had no idea how to choose apart from a brief Google and trip advisor search and what my gut told me would be an adequate company in the event of an emergency. I really didn't want amateurs dealing with me if something went wrong.
Diving became one of my favourite experiences in life and a tick box for one of my 30 before 30; a list of 30 things I want to do or achieve before I'm 30 years old. I planned to do many of the other activities offered from Dahab but we became so addicted to learning to dive that we added on the Advanced Open Water Diving course as well which ended up taking up our whole stay there. Other trips one can do from Dahab include a day trip to Petra in Jordan, climbing Mt Sinai for sunrise, rock climbing and desert safaris. However by adding on the advanced course, we were allowed to dive to 30m meaning we had a chance to see The Blue Hole which is the site that ranks in the top 10 world wide. We really couldn't justify missing out on this.
Life underwater was truly everything Sebastian from The Little Mermaid sings about in "Under the Sea". No photo or word I write could do this splendid array of colours and life justice. Everywhere I turned was a site to see and visibility in the Red Sea was astonishing so we really could see everything. Fish of every colour and size, sting rays, octopus, calamari, sea snakes, corals and reefs like nothing I've seen before. I was wide eyed and wowed from start to finish and have since been avidly looking up other dive sites to satisfy this addiction before we make it back to Australia.
If you love the water like me and you're located in London, then please, do yourself a favour and get to Dahab and learn to dive. I wouldn't recommend going there if you weren't diving as, although the beaches are nice for days off from diving, there are better beaches to be found else where. Fly to Sharm El Sheike and get a taxi for 350 Egyptian pounds (£15) to Dahab, take 2 weeks there so you can do all the day trips as well as spend 5 days diving and thank me later.
Notes for the environmentally conscious traveller.
Dahab has a real plastic problem but unlike Cairo they were very aware of it. When I requested things without a plastic bag I was praised, when I ordered food without plastic wrap I was accommodated however I was still looked upon in confusion when I ordered drinks with no straw. There's a lot of work to be done before the plastic problem disappears but I saw many steps in the right direction. Hand crafted signs graced the streets reminding people not to litter as many Egyptians would make a mess of the place on their holidays. Additionally we noticed 2 dive companies offer free clean up dives. Because there are enough people who love the ocean and rely on the ocean for business here, there's slightly more respect for the environment than other parts of Egypt.
The trick to reducing plastic usage in a country where it's unnecessarily everywhere is to anticipate it. Travel with a knife if you have checked baggage so you can take advantage of the ridiculously cheap and delicious (plastic free) mangoes. If you only have carry on, bring some chop sticks so you can have takeaway without the plastic cutlery. Pack a drink bottle that you can refill and maybe your hotel will have a water filter so you can avoid plastic bottles all together. Bring a bowl and fork from your hotel to the Friday markets in Dahab to eat your lunch from. During my beach cleans the most prevalent rubbish were bottle tops and bottles as drinking water is still an issue in Dahab. Will and I bought only the 11L bottles and refilled our 750mL ones meaning that during our stay we only used 4 plastic bottles in total. Although far from perfect, this is a much better option than buying smaller 500ml bottles multiple times a day which would equate to 88 bottles during our stay! Cigarettes were the next worst offender on the beaches and in the oceans. Always encourage your smoking friends to use an ash tray and dispose of their cigarette butts appropriately. If there is no ash tray then dub it out and carry it away with you. Also consider using a refillable lighter as these disposable plastic ones end up on our coasts and exist forever.
Plastic bags were a huge issue as well. If we ever found a plastic bag on the beach we would fill it with beach rubbish as our little rule. Just a constant reminder for you to refuse, refuse, refuse as it's super habitual for shop owners to put even the smallest of purchases in plastic bags. Shop owners would start to remember me as I'd buy my daily snacks as the white girl who didn't want bags. Hopefully this sends a message to others. Finally, do a little beach clean. 5 minutes is all it takes to clear quite a lot of rubbish. I genuinely enjoy doing these and did one every day. They make me feel so good for giving back to the ocean after the ocean has supplied me with a day of joy. Try it and I guarantee you will feel great for it. Many people thanked me in Dahab after noticing what I was doing and 2 men actually started helping me in embarrassment that I was a foreigner cleaning "their" beaches.
