Our Trip to Dahab

We had an extra long weekend in honor of Eid Al Adha. Eid means feast. So this is a feast that honors Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son. Still, Muslims make a sacrifice at this Eid. Often, they will purchase and sacrifice a goat or sheep and share the meat with the poor as an act of charity. We could see many goats in the streets in preparation for this holiday. So, to avoid hearing the bleating pleas for mercy, we left town and went to the beach.

This is our crew: Paul, Carren, Regina, Zach, Rachel. Paul is a friend who teaches at a British school. Regina and Carren are teachers at my school. Jade, Paul's roomate, is taking the picture. He is a teacher at yet a third international school.



Dahab is a small city on the Sinai peninsula. It's kind of the bohemian option instead of going to the more well known Sharm al Sheikh. There are lots of little cafes with pillows and couches along the water. The weather was hot and sunny during the day, even in December, but the water was a bit cold. There were beautiful fish and coral to see, so wearing a wetsuit enabled us to stay in the water longer. I never knew how buoyant wetsuits can make you! Snorkeling in a wetsuit was just like floating along the current.



Here is Zach with his diving instructor. (I took a one-day refresher diving course. For any divers out there, this is mostly because my initial certification was Naui, and now I'm Padi certified, like everyone else. -Z)


It was always a big treat coming back to the hotel to see how the room cleaner had arranged the towels. Here are my two favorites. Can you see the glasses on one of the swans?


Dahab means gold in Arabic. Our Bedouin guide on our desert day hike told us a folktale alluding to the belief that there was once gold in the mountains.

sinai, thanksgiving weekend

We went for Thanksgiving weekend to a little beach camp on the coast of Sinai between Taba and Nuweiba. Being almost winter, there were very few tourists, but there are a whole series of camps with huts on the beach that other times get crowded. Our friends Rebecca and Walid rented a car and we drove out with them at dawn Thursday morning, which took around 5 hours. We came back a day earlier than they did, and a car with driver reservation we'd made fell through, so we wound up on the bus back, over 7 hrs.

The desert we crossed is big, as Walid and I are motioning, but it's not really very flat.


Here's the crew: me, Rachel, Walid and Rebecca.


The huts are simple, with rug-over-sand floors and a foam mattress on the rug, but the whole idea is you're there for the beach.


Sunset over the beach.
This "castle," built starting about 15 years ago, was where we ate a very nice Thanksgiving fish dinner.

Morning: tea, coffee and beach.


Looks like we'll be going back to Sinai next week for another longer weekend.

trying video

A very very short video of the beach.

sunset from the window

food update

We found black beans! The panic is over! These from one of the upscale stores with a lot of imported goods, imported from Minnesota.
And molasses, called black honey in Arabic. From the local bodega. Crocodile brand.

And ketchup. Okay, we'd found ketchup at an upscale store, but it's nice to realize it's just downstairs at the bodega, and in classic glass bottle style.

The strange thing about living in a country where the summer heat is oppressive and the winter cold mild is that produce feels the same way about it, and there is generally better produce in the winter. These were our first purchase of strawberries for the season. Yes, even here, without giant megacorp agriculture, we get some crazy multi-strawberries.

We've heard peaches aren't far behind.