Good morning to you! I'm sitting in a shaded back room of an internet cafe/phone recharge store in the oasis town of Siwa. A few days ago I became officially certified to teach the English language (guard your children everyone) and then set off with 6 friends (including Ryan) on a 9-hour bus southwest to Siwa. I am under the impression that the trip is actually 6 hours, but let's not underestimate the driver's need for cigarette and junk food breaks. The bus was overbooked so we took turns standing in the aisle for a couple hours until the first stop. From that point, it's been a gloriously smooth trip. While many Siwan residents drive cars, have high-tech Korean cell phones and speak English, Arabic and a local language, there are dirt roads, many mud buildings and donkeys with carts in place of taxis. I love the bicycles everywhere, the relative lack of noise pollution (donkeys braying instead of car horns) and the slow pace of life. Last night in an outdoor shisha bar clustered with palm trees, the owner and another Siwan sat by the fire with us, describing Siwa's contrast to the fast pace and "businessman" nature of Egypt's cities. While I'm still aware of my white skin's projection that I am cash on legs, people in Siwa have been slightly less pushy than Alexandria and Cairo. We took an unforgettable Sahara desert safari yesterday with a well-known Siwan guide in town named Ahmed. He blasted Greek music for us in his jeep, drove us over dune peaks that felt like roller coaster drops (yes, I screamed), took us sandboarding (like snowboarding) down the dunes, served us mint tea as we bathed in a 104-degree hot spring, and showed us a fossil site he just discovered - It was covered in seashells and sand dollars molded together over the 18 (or 80?) million years since the Mediterranean Sea covered the desert.
Our itinerary for the next few weeks includes the ancient temples of Nile River cities in southern Egypt, the beach bum towns along the Red Sea, and some of the group may take a ferry to Petra, Jordan. Then Ryan, Noelle and I will land in a hostel in Cairo and search for apartments and jobs. Luckily at least 3 of our Egyptian friends are helping us with the search.
Sharm el-Sheikh was an experience that I simply have to gush about...Our program included a 4-day weekend in this Red Sea tourist town with lodging at a 5-star Marriott hotel. We figured the currency conversion must also apply to hotel stars, because the hotel quality was more like a 3- or 4-star (still, not complaining!). Our whole group spent some quality time together on the cheap boat trips out to coral reefs to swim and snorkel, but the real heart stopper was the night dive I magically stumbled upon. A friendly guy working for the Sun n' Fun tour group set Ethan and I up with his Dive Master friend. Around 9 pm we were wading into warm black waters with the immense weight of scuba equipment and huge flashlights hanging from our wrists. Ethan and I each gripped a dive guide's hand for dear life as the vibrant creatures of the night popped out in front of us at unexpected moments. The poisonous, stringy, eerie-looking lionfish were particularly surprising. The exoticism of their red and white striped bodies is exaggerated by the striped eyes. Ethan's guide stroked the pufferfish to provoke its needles (crazy man) and the moray eel's tail to make it slither around in the coral for us to see. The giant moray eel we stumpled upon was quite possibly the most terrifying thing I have seen up close. My heart jumped out of my wetsuit as I took in its enormity - over half a foot wide and God knows how long. Its yellow eyes looked menacing and I felt the warring urges to get closer or to speed away and never look back. The rarest creature we saw was a Spanish dancer - a glowing blood-red flat oval-shaped animal with a wavering, dancing white outline. I remember seeing it in Finding Nemo when the manta ray swims over the busy reef on Nemo's first day of school. The guide scooped it up and nudged it away from the reef so we could watch its entrancing dance, the hypnotizing red against the black ocean's undulating surface. I died of happiness many, many times. We descended as far as 18 meters (about 60 feet) as we explored the maze of coral reef. I keep having flashbacks of the underwater sensations and can't wait until my next night dive opportunity.
I better meet my friends for breakfast now and plan our bike ride through the oasis today! Much love to all of you!
i remember the spanish dancer from finding nemo!!! i always wondered what that was because i thought it was incredibly fascinating and rare! my eyes watered up reading about your diving adventure because i just know that you are continuously dieing of happiness through out this experience of yours-in a good way, of course-i am just feeling and sharing in your happiness. but freakin awesome dude about the spanish dancer! tots def jealy ; P
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