travels cont...

After my final lung squeeze in Dahab (a fairly decent one), I decided to spend my last week not doing any deep diving and instead finally do what I'd planned to the whole time but had been rather distracted from and spend some time relaxing and playing with fish. I managed to persuade buddies to come with me to some of the local dive spots to finally get a feel for the place outside the big hole.

I discovered the timid little eels at eel garden. It was a bit of a cheap thrill. You have to practise very quiet duck dives to get down there before they notice you and become shy, retreating back under the sand. While out of the sand they just look like grass really, so not particularly stimulating. However the dive spot was quite pretty with lots of fish and colourful coral.

Wendy came with me to the Caves which boasted some interesting lighting effects for photography and had a couple of moments of pretty coral. The caves actually went back in under the beach which was quite odd. There was a curious barracuda and some Russian mermaids.

Lighthouse (aka Light Howse) was full of incompetent scuba divers doing intro dives with dive masters swimming above them holding their tanks. It's actually quite scary to watch them as they have absolutely no idea what they are doing.

Wendy and I also dived the canyon. I'm absolutely scared of doing swim throughs. It really doesn't matter what depth they are. Fortunately we had a brilliant day. The sun was shining, although that's really a given for Egypt, there was no wind whatsoever and the sea was so flat it was reflective. We struggled to find the canyon after poorly selecting and following some random scuba divers who strangely enough obviously did not intend to dive the canyon despite diving at the site. The surround area is fairly dead an uninspiring so I don't know what they were thinking. Eventually we found the big split in the rock below us. It was 18m under and we could see it perfectly from the surface. The part of the canyon that we managed to have the nerve to swim through is about 25m deep and roughly 10m long. Being me, I completely screwed it up. I swam very close to the bottom worrying about hitting my head so was 28m under. I'm used to dynamics so started swimming along and hit the end. Now instead of then swimming up I looked up and couldn't see the hole to get out, thought I hadn't gone far enough (but had actually gone a little too far) and that I just couldn't see clearly (my eyes are useless and it was a little dark), so I turned around and went back the way I came. Luckily Wendy recorded the evidence on video so my stupidity can be retained for all eternity. I then had to do it again properly and almost did the same thing again, but I'm pleased to say I did manage to do it sucessfully eventually! There was some nice coral nearer the shore where we were a bit out of the way from where the destructive scuba divers would swim to. Wendy and I agreed that coral and goldfish get a bit boring though.

I'm proud to say I made it out of Egypt without really getting sick. OK, I did have 8 hours of fever and headache, but it made me stay in bed (note bedroom, not bathroom) for my rest day, so it wasn't all that bad. Patti managed to accidentally drink some fresh nile water and not get sick, which was just as well since she was on a feluca, which tend to not have toilets.

My last week in Dahab was a bit up in the air. I didn't know when I was leaving as my flight from Cairo to Madrid was cancelled and I'd been moved to the next day, which was just one of the worst things in my world at the time as it would leave me with only one day in the western world prior to entering back into another backward sandy place. Plus there is too much fantastic art in Madrid to get around it all in a single day. Fortunately my travel agent managed to get me out of Egypt earlier rather than later and I was saved with three days in wonderful Madrid. I'm still unsure if Madrid was so wonderful due to the contrast with Dahab or because it's actually a fabulous place. I arrived at about 4am and got ripped off by a taxi driver who I didn't have the willpower to fight with and I didn't think my 2 Spanish lessons (one done in the airport in Cairo late at night) would help me much for this argument. Once the hostel owner had figured out who I was and actually let me in and I'd climbed the three flights of stairs with my 40kg of gear I went to sleep and managed to sleep right through the changing of the guard at the royal palace, which is special because it only occurs on the first Wednesday of each month, while I happened to be there, sleeping obliviously through the whole thing.

I had great plans for my extra day in Madrid including some me time and pampering (I'm in desperate need of some work on my hair and unfortunately still am). Anyway, I ended up spending three days walking all over Madrid, truly exhausting myself with no time to stop at all. Madrid is a beautiful city with a lot of interesting history. I did a couple of walking tours of the city (the centre isn't all that big, similar size to Wellington). I visited the palace which has a very awesome armoury. I got my Picasso fix for the year at the Museo Reina Sofia. I saw so many of the masterpieces I studied in art history at uni at the Prado. I visited the Caixa Centre, a hovering brick building by reknowned architects Herzog & de Meuron. I went to the compulsory tourist flamenco dance show. Plus I visited a few other galleries that seemed significant. As I was on my own I took up a challenge I found at the tourist information centre to take snapshot photos of a list of random monuments around Madrid. Being me I took it to heart and did both of the tours on offer and saw a few more things than I would have otherwise and ended up walking all over Madrid and exhausting myself a little more. They gave me a couple of free gawdy t-shirts in the wrong sizes for my efforts (more stuff to carry). I wish I'd had a few more days there, but definitely intend to head back to Spain at some stage in the future.

After just about killing myself carrying my gear back down the stairs, up the road to the subway, through the very narrow entry onto a train, up and down some stairs, onto another train, then yet another walk and another train I made it to the airport, which is new and very flash and thankfully, where there are trolleys. It was designed by Foster and Partners (the airport, not the trolley) which unfortunately has nothing to do with the firm I work for (Foster Architects – Ang and me vs Sir Norman with his hundreds of staff in offices around the world). After surviving the first of many interrogations (because I was flying to the USA and EVERYONE now wants to bomb them because Americans are just so annoying) I was hoping there would be some shops where I could buy some nice Spanish couture with my remaining 20 euro, but I was departing from a satelite terminal which was much less exciting and only gave me boring chocolate and alcohol options. Neither of which are particularly condusive to freediving training, yet everyone knows that freedivers consume vast quantities of preferably dark chocolate while no one is watching – full of anti-oxidants – we ignore the fat. Most freedivers could do with a bit of fattening up anyway, then they'd stop complaining about how cold it is when the water is “only” 26 degrees. We're lucky to have air warmer than that in New Zealand.

After my three days in Madrid I was already suffering water withdrawals and despite immense fatigue I managed a swim, spa and bath in my flash airport hotel in Miami before passing out.

Dahab photos
Madrid photos