Well, we’ve been back in Redmond now for a few days (sort of anyways, as I have actually moved on to Australia for work), and I have been a little apathetic about putting together the usual post mortem for our trip. My body is on some crazy, mixed up time zone, so wide awake in the middle of the night in Sydney seems like as good a time as any.

In a nutshell, Egypt exceeded our expectations. Feedback was all over the map when we told people where we were going, so I’m not sure we knew really what to expect. We knew we had to go at some point in our lives, if for nothing else than to see the pyramids, but I think we were prepared for the trip to be more about history and less about enjoyment and relaxation, similar to how we felt about China. And if that was all we would have gotten out of it, it still would have been well worth it.

The words and the pictures are great mementos, but neither can really convey the impact of being there. Standing at the bottom of the Great Pyramid and tilting your head back to see two million blocks, each as tall as a person, stretching skyward is something that only works in person. That the same can be said for dozens of other things we saw, from the Ramses statues in Abu Simbel to the Burning Bush on Mount Sinai, to the coral reefs at Ras Abu Gallum only reinforces why we pack our stuff up ever year and head off somewhere new.

Ask us though what we remember most about this trip, and the answer may be a bit surprising. For Ang, I know it was the colors. No matter where we went, she always noticed how blue the sky was, or how blue the water looked. And I can’t count how many pictures we had to wade through of pink sunsets and red mountains to winnow them down to the still overwhelming number we kept. For me, it is a picture I took in Philae Temple where Ang is running her hand along the hieroglyphic carvings. These are everywhere, and its impossible not to reach out and touch them, letting your imagination go back 5,000 years ago to picture the workers creating them.

That said, like anywhere, there are things about Egypt that are unpleasant – the endless requests for baksheesh and vendors always trying to rip you off being near the top. And in the back of my head, when the voice that asks whenever we go somewhere if I could ever see myself living there, the answer comes back no. But would I recommend it for a trip? In a heartbeat.

After a short flight (about an hour) from Sharm el-Sheikh, we find ourselves back in Cairo. We have a really early (5:30am) flight back to Redmond in a couple of days so are staying in Heliopolis, which is much closer to the airport. It is a bit more higher end of an area (as higher end goes in Egypt), and is where many of the embassies and the presidential palace are. We don’t really have anything pressing on our list, so figure we can use this last little bit of time to try and find a few more things to bring back with us, including some cotton things like towels and such (what better place for Egyptian Cotton than Egypt goes the thinking). Other than a handful of souvenirs, we really haven’t found much to buy here (which is good both on the pocketbook and on my back, as my pack is still fairly light), leaving a bit of room yet in the budget.

Ever up for a challenge, Ang quickly rings the till in one of the shops in the hotel lobby, buying silver cartouche bracelets for the boys with their names in hieroglyphics. That’s just a warm up though, as the real target is an area of downtown where we’re told we can find good cotton. We figure we’ll just take a cab to the subway, but the doorman puts the hard sell on taking the cab all the way downtown and we finally relent. We find out later that cabs picking up at the hotels have to kick back 10% of the fare to the hotel staff, which certainly explains why getting somewhere from the hotel is always more expensive than getting back. On the upside, we end up with a hilarious driver, who ends up being out entertainment for most of the day.

Omar drives one of the typical beat up old Fiat cabs, this one about 31 years old. He calls it his Jaguar, and on the way downtown points out some of the buildings we pass like the presidential palace (where his cousin Hosni lives), the soccer stadium (where his cousin Mohamed Zidan plays) and the local Jaguar dealer, where he gets his car serviced. His English is quite good and he seems to have a fair amount of information on the history of Cairo, so sign him up to be our driver for the rest of the day, and to mix in a bit of sightseeing with our shopping.

The latter ends up being a bust, as when we say “we don’t want to go to the places the tourists go and get ripped off so take us to the places locals buy their cotton goods”, this translates to “we’re looking for dirt cheap stuff, so take us to the Egyptian equivalent of Wal-Mart.” We take a look to be polite, but its not really what we’re after so return to the car empty handed. A shopping district downtown is a bit better, but still off the mark (although we find some fantastic ice cream which makes up for it, at least for me).

On the sightseeing front, we spend some time in the Coptic area of Cairo, which is one of the oldest parts of the city and where many of the religions that came with various conquerors of Egypt co-exist. In the span of a few blocks, there are Christian churches, synagogues, and mosques, each hundreds of years old. The churches are the most interesting in terms of decoration (they are filled with artwork and stained glass), but the highlight is mosque, where Ang has to put on a fetching green loaner outfit to get through the door.

All this pales however to just sitting in the backseat of the Jaguar listening to Omar. Between destinations he tells us some of his philosophies on marriage: “all women in Egypt are fat, or waiting to be fat when they get married”; tourism: “Sharm el-Sheik is where the women who are 50 and 60 come from Europe to have the sex with the young Egyptian man who doesn’t care that they are old and fat”; and romance: “I buy my girlfriend presents from this store because the cost is low, but I will take them out of this bag and put them in one from a nicer shop before I give to her.” We also learn from him things that interest us like how their religion works, how difficult it is for Egyptians to leave the country, and how strongly the system in Egypt favors the wealthy.

As an example of the latter, he breaks down for us how his job works. For the full day he drives us around, we agree on a price of 300 Egyptian Pounds. From that, he has to pay the hotel 10% as their kickback. He then needs to pay the owner of the beaten up old Fiat 75% of what is left (the owner provides the car, maintenance and gas), making his gross about 68 Egyptian Pounds. From that, he also needs to pay the bribes to the police officers to not give him a ticket while we waits for us to go into stores and churches. At the end of it all, he finishes up with around 50 Egyptian Pounds, or roughly $9 for the effort, while the rest goes out the door as payoffs.

Our last stop with Omar is a restaurant for one final shawarma and one final falafel. Back at the hotel, we take time out for a drink, before packing up and turning in. Our wake up call is set for 2:15am, and shortly after, for us, Egypt will be just the memories.

In the last big hurrah for this vacation, we are spending our day on a snorkeling trip in the waters of the Ras Mohammed National Park. Our travel books all talk about this area being a great place to dive and snorkel, and the weather is sunny and hot, so some time on a boat sounds a whole lot better than staying around a hotel jammed with tourists. We are awake, dressed, and out front by our scheduled pickup time of 8:15am. After a few calls to figure out where our ride was and a bit concerned that we would miss our boat, it finally rolls up at 9:15. In retrospect, this works out in our favor, as sitting out front of the hotel for an hour still ranks higher than sitting in a crowded minibus for an hour.

After a few other stops, we finally get to the port close to 11:00 (the takeaway being that in the future, we should just ask about meeting our group there, as the $5 cab ride would have been an easy trade to have the last 3 hours to ourselves) and board our boat. There are about 13 people in our group, which means the boat isn’t very crowded. However, at least half of them have little, if any, experience in the water, and after being flippered in the face a half dozen times, I make the call to give up swimming with the guide and head off in a completely different direction just to find some space.

We make a total of three stops during the day, and by the third, we are pretty much snorkeled out. The reefs are in great shape, but Ang and I agree that the places we saw in Dahab were even more spectacular, so using that as a baseline, we are a little disappointed. The bikinis and speedos are out in full force though (or at least what shows from under the rolls of flesh), so we have that going for us.

By the time we finish up on the boat and get dropped off at the hotel it is after 5pm. We don’t have the energy to go back into town, so have a nice meal at an Indian restaurant in the hotel and head back up to the room to pack. Tomorrow we return to Cairo, which just doesn’t have a vacation feel to it, so for the most part, we’ve pretty much hit the end of the road.

OK, maybe I’ve lived in America a little too long and don’t see the big picture as much as I should. But honestly, if I asked you where you would find a city plopped down in the middle of the desert, far from any sources of fresh water, loaded up with huge hotels and casinos that would be virtually empty save for the planeload after planeload of tourists, what would you say? There’s really only one place they would build something so foolish, right? Wrong. Welcome to Sharm el-Sheikh, or the place I’ve come to call Vegas East.

We read a lot about Sharm while we were in Dahab, and how it is the Mecca of tourist spots for European travels in the same way that Cancun is for North Americans. Given that, we were prepared for a sterilized, pre-packaged taste of Egypt, but here, they don’t just turn it up to 10, they turn it up to 11.

Our car pulls in around 1pm, and the first thing we notice pulling into the hotel, is that it is huge (with acres of manicured grass, just like you would expect in the desert). Land is clearly cheap, as this place sprawls forever (which will come back to haunt us). As we are checking in, Ang asks offhand if the hotel is busy, as so far, it seems like we are getting into the start of low season. The desk clerk tells us it is Russian season in April and May, which means they are quite full. I didn’t realize there was an official Russian season, but once we walk to the beach we see what he means, as there are definitely Russians everywhere. The good news is that I no longer stand out because of my pasty, white skin. The bad news is I stand out now because I am the only one not wearing a banana hammock.

We wander up to the end of the beach to see if we can see any restaurants off the hotel grounds, but soon come the conclusion that one hotel just blends into the next, and that town is a $10 cab ride away. Now I’m starting to feel a bit like a hamster in a cage, where I can’t get out of the resort, and I’m not willing to eat $14 hamburgers. It’s not the money (OK, it is a little bit) as much as it is the feeling that you’re being taken advantage of just because you’re stuck.

Supposedly the place to go in Sharm is Na’ama Bay, where the restaurants and shops are, and there are some no shows on the 3pm hotel shuttle, which opens up some room for us. It is only a few minutes by car, but a world away from everywhere else we have been in Egypt. TGI Friday’s, Hard Rock Café, Baskin Robbins, you name it, and they are all here. With our hopes set on a gritty falafel stand that could take the place of Yum Yum’s, our choices look more like a strip mall in San Diego.

Hungry, but not quite ready to settle for a chicken wing platter, we take a taxi down to the old market, which supposedly is less westernized and closer to what we are looking for. We stumble through the streets a little, looking for some souvenirs here and there, when we spot one of the locals walking by with a couple of shawarmas on a plate. We ask him where to buy them and quickly find ourselves being led through the pathways of the market to a back alley, where a street vendor has his cart set up. They set up a table for us next to some old tires and its quite the romantic dinner – a scene pretty much straight out of Lady and the Tramp.

While at the market, we also book a day trip out on the water to do some snorkeling. The area around here is part of a national park and quite well known on the diving circuit, so we are looking forward to seeing it tomorrow.

I have been remiss in my postings the past few days, but in my defense, there has not been much noteworthy to report. After our adventure to Mount Sinai, we have shifted all the way to the opposite end of the relaxation spectrum and our days have settled into a very similar routine:

8:00 AM Breakfast/Locate beach chair
11:00 AM Shuttle to town
11:30 AM Lunch at Yum Yum’s
1:00 PM Shuttle back to hotel/Return to beach chair
5:00 PM Call the kids
8:30 PM Shuttle to town for dinner

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Our original plan was to leave Dahab on Thursday, make a quick trip to Petra in Jordan, and then spend four days in Sharm el-Sheikh, before returning to Cairo. However, inertia has taken a firm hold and we like it here a lot, so opted to lengthen our stay here, and shorten our time in Sharm. We also decided we weren’t up for the 5 hour trip each way to see Petra, so are leaving that one on the bucket list for a future trip.

This will be our last full day in Dahab, and while we will miss it, I think we are ready to move on and see something new. We’ve been around long enough that the locals in town are starting to recognize us, with one of them asking me last night why I’m not brown since I’ve been here for a week. I told him that unfortunately, I only come in white and red, and the sad truth is that after almost three weeks here, we both look like we have been on vacation in Minnesota ☹

As a day that started at 11pm the previous evening, we managed to cram in a whole of activity, so pardon the long post while I try and cover it all. It begins outside of the office of the travel agent where we book the excursion to Mount Sinai, where we are to be picked up by the bus for the two-hour drive. At around 11:30 the driver finally shows up (sure glad I could spend the extra 30 minutes sitting on a bench instead of sleeping in my hotel room) in the van.

After our experience in Abu Simbel, we are hopeful that fewer tourists will mean a bit more room to stretch out in the bus and get some sleep, and with only one other couple waiting with us, optimism is high. As the van pulls up, we see it is already close to full (I swear they must have a lot somewhere with vans of all different sizes and they take the smallest one that can hold all the people to save on gas). There are no fold down jump seats like the Abu Simbel bus, but the rows are MUCH closer together so I can’t sit straight, and instead ride side saddle with my knees pointed out towards the door (which probably is for the best as with three people in the seat, there is only room for one cheek). Now on any other day, two hours wedged into a minibus after midnight would be fun enough in its own right, but today we have the extra bonus of “camel butt”.

Traffic is fairly light, and with the exception of the occasional minibus half-full of people comfortably sleeping that we pass there is nothing but the desert. This quickly changes when we pull into the parking lot, which is full of tour busses, minivans, and hundreds of tourists milling about waiting to start their climb. In my head, I had pictured a quiet climb with our small group and guide instead of a miles long parade up the mountain, so it takes me a few minutes to readjust my mindset, by which time we have fallen into line and are headed upward.

As we begin, our guide (in one of his only moments of providing useful information) tells us the trail is 7 kilometers long, ending at the bottom of 750 steps that will take us to the top of the 7,500 foot mountain. Thinking how much I would have appreciated knowing this interesting nugget about 24 hours ago before we booked this trip, I look around and wonder how some of these people are going to make it (and if they do, how depressing it will be if I don’t).

The answer to that becomes clear a few hundred yards in as we see the first of what will seem like hundreds of people offering to help get you to the top of the mountain on yes, the back of a camel (for a small fee of course). Still sore from our last ride, and recalling vividly the extra pleasure of going uphill and downhill, we opt to grind it out on foot, but there are plenty of willing takers to keep the wheels of commerce turning.

In a few places, the path the camels take and the path for people diverge, by mostly they are one and the same. This of course means there are all kinds of camel turds to step in, as well as some great views when you get stuck behind one – two more great reasons to make this climb in the dark.

A bit after 4:30, we finally make it to the top. During the climb, we managed to make up a lot of ground on people that started before us, so we get there before the crowds and are able to find a pretty good place to sit down on the rocks and wait for the sunrise. Ang claims she has seen one before (it would have to have been before we met), but I’m not convinced, and am interested to see what she thinks. We took a bunch of pictures of course, but it’s really the kind of thing that only works in person.

There is a small monastery at the top of the mountain, so with the sun up, we take some time to look around and take a few pictures while the bulk of the crowd starts to make their way down the steps. As the traffic starts to clear, we make our way down to the first rest stop (little huts they have at different points on the mountain to buy overpriced water and such), where our “guide” tells us to wait for the rest of our group to catch up. I’m not a particularly good waiter, and every minute we spend sitting around is just one minute more to get hotter, so I cajole Ang to rebel against the man and we take off on our own.

About a quarter of the way down, the path splits, with one way being the path we took up, and the other being shorter, but comprised of 2,500 more steps. Just as we are about to make our choice and continue on, our guide comes running down the trail screaming at us for leaving the group, and that we shouldn’t be on our own. The concern seems a little hollow since on the way up, our group was quite spread out from the leaders to the stragglers, and I’m guessing the real concern is that we don’t get off the mountain without the opportunity to pay him a tip. Either way, we convince him we are capable of following the dozens of other people already walking down the trail and agree to meet him outside of the monastery at the bottom.

St. Catherine’s is purportedly one of the oldest working monasteries in the world, built in 527 on the site where Moses saw the burning bush. We don’t know much about it other than what we read in our travel book, and it turns out our guide is of little help as he rambles on about some of the things inside and then tells us to go look and meet him under a shady tree when we are done. So not really knowing what we are looking at, we try and get some pictures that we can use as references when we get back to the hotel and can read more on the Internet.

Of the things we are able to piece together, there is a bush in a small courtyard that is supposed to be the original burning bush, the Well of Moses, which supplies the monastery with water, and according to legend, never goes dry, and a finger bone from St. Catherine herself. Not knowing in advance about the finger, Ang (with years of medical training at her disposal) wonders why people are bowing down in front of a drumstick.

Finished with the sights, I fold myself up like an accordion and hop back into the van for the two hour ride back to Dahab, now with my butt sore from riding a camel AND my legs stiffening up for more exercise than I normally get in a month. Finally arriving back at the hotel around 1pm, we turn the lights out, air conditioning up, and head directly to bed.

But wait, there’s more…

After a few hours of shut-eye, we motivate ourselves onto the shuttle to go into town for dinner. We decide to go a little nuts, and splurge on a big platter of grilled snapper, calamari and king prawns. For around $40, there is enough for 3 or 4 people, but we put a pretty good dent in it before admitting defeat. It is a great night, so with some time to kill, we wander along the waterfront a while before heading back to catch our ride to the hotel.

When we get to the shuttle pick up, the van is about half full, but the driver waves us into the front seat anyway, which we figure is a good thing since it isn’t as cramped as the seats in the back. I zone out a bit looking at the mountains in the moonlight, so don’t notice for a while that we seem to be taking a longer route back than normal and that we are driving quite a bit slower.

An elbow in the ribs brings me back to attention, and I give Ang a “what you doing pushing me into the door?” look. She gives me a strange look and then points toward the driver with her eyes. I am slow putting it all together, but I finally realize that the driver (who I have now taken to calling Chester) has his elbows up at chest height (Ang’s in particular), and is shifting gears an awful lot, picking up some incidental contact in the process.

After contemplating for a few moments whether the laugh I will get out of it is worth holding my ground, I shift sideways to give Ang some more room to move towards me. Ever the innovator, Chester turns his attention to a little leg work, by holding his hand as far to the right of the gearshift as possible. By the time we pull up to the hotel, our driver has rounded second and is hoping to stretch things out for a triple.

There’s little that can top what just transpired, so we decide to end the evening on a high note and get a full night’s sleep.

While we took plenty of pictures to help us remember our camel trip, this morning my body doesn’t seem to think that is adequate to ensure that I think twice before doing something similar again. And while I expected some parts to be a little sore, I am surprised by just how many muscle groups camel riding can punish.

Moving noticeably slower than previous days, we mostly plan on taking it easy today. We are leaving for Mount Sinai at 11pm to climb the mountain and see the monastery there, so need to rest up a bit for that. We do still need to eat however, so as has become the norm, we board the hotel shuttle to town and head for Yum Yum’s and a few dollars worth of delicious pita sandwiches.

With some time to spare before the shuttle back, we wander along the shore trying to pick a place to try a milkshake (the restaurants along the water all advertise them so we figured we should give them a try). We finally settle on one, and are enjoying the break when we see a cart rolling down the street marked “rice pudding”. This is impossible for us to turn down, so Ang steps out to buy one, which we will somehow manage to stuff down.

As really should be no surprise, “rice pudding” in Egypt means something very different than it does in Redmond, WA. There is some rice in it, so the advertising isn’t wrong, but it is just one ingredient, along with some noodles, chickpeas, lentils, tomatoes, some kind of secret sauce, and dried onion flakes. This all is scooped into a container and served hot, for the equivalent of about eighty cents. The more surprising part is that it is really, really good.

Back at the hotel, we try and get some nap time in to stockpile for the long night ahead.

When we left for Egypt, we told the boys we were going to do two things – see the pyramids and ride a camel. The first was amazing. The second? Not so much (although I can now cross it off the list).

When we booked this excursion, we did so as a bit of an experiment with the travel agent to see how legit he was. He was cheaper than some of the other places we looked at, and the trips all sounded the same, so we figured we’d give him a try. But before booking some of our other excursions, we wanted to use this as a test case.

The itinerary called for transportation by Jeep to an area called the Blue Hole, where we would stop for a bit of snorkeling, then switch to camels for a ninety minute trek along the coast to Ras Abu Gallum (a protected area up the coast from Dahab). There we get lunch, snorkel some more, and then do the trip in reverse.

As promised, at 8am this morning, our jeep was waiting at the front of the hotel (a good sign). Unfortunately, it wasn’t exactly what I had in mind (a bad thing), and looked more like a retired army jeep with the seats being two benches running the length of the vehicle and set up high above the wheels. It also had a low roof, so before even moving my head was already jammed into the canvas.

Around 30 minutes later, and with my spine slightly compressed, we arrived at the Blue Hole. This is a fairly famous dive site in Egypt, so for being a bit out of the way, there are lots of restaurants and convenience stores, presumably to serve the divers during breaks between dives and at the end of the day. We are amongst the first to arrive in the morning though, so we have the place mostly to ourselves.

Most dives in Dahab are done from the shore rather than jumping off a boat, so Ang is a little less excited about them. Given that, so far we have opted to just snorkel, and with the water as clear as it is here, I’m not sure that we’re missing that much. We spend about an hour circling and checking out coral and a variety of fish before heading back to shore. For how hot it is outside, the water is surprisingly cold (not Seattle cold, but definitely wet suit cold if you were staying in the water for any length of time), and we are ready to move on.

Now begins the real adventure, as neither of us has really ever been close to a camel much less ridden one. We did ride elephants in Asia, but those were fairly short trips sitting on a padded bench rather than an hour plus in what turns out to be a very uncomfortable saddle.

You board a camel when it is laying on the ground, and that part we handle like pros. It then gets up by first straightening it back legs (pitching you sharply forward) and then its front legs. I imagine we wouldn’t be the first people to roll frontwards out of the saddle during this process, but we both hang on and are soon ready to go.

The first thing I notice is that the back of a camel is really high, and that the ground below us is mostly rock and looks very hard. I keep both of these things firmly in mind as my ship of the desert starts off in the direction of our guide (a boy that looks about ten and is doing the trip on foot in a pair of knock off Crocs).

It doesn’t take too long for us both to realize that 15 minutes on a camel is probably enough and would still let us say we did it. The saddle is rock hard under my butt, and the two wooden pommels (one in front and one in back) serve only to dig into my back when we are going uphill and mash my pills when we are going down. It seems that camels sneeze a lot, so being downwind of that every five or ten minutes and catching the blowback is a special touch. The good news is that there are only seventy-five minutes left.

The trip wasn’t all bad, and after a while we start to get the hang of it, mimicking the locals we see from time to time by shifting a little more sideways in the saddle and putting a leg up crossways over the camel’s neck. Soon, there is a bit of rhythm to the whole thing, and without the noise of people or cars, the mountains on one side and the ocean on the other, its all very peaceful.

At Ras Abu Gallum, there is a small Bedouin camp where the more adventurous sorts (or the backpacking hippies depending on who you are asking) pitch tents and camp out for days at a time. I imagine it is a fairly tourist flavored version of an authentic Bedouin camp (in part, since it has its own supermarket), but since we’re not going out into the desert in search of the real thing, we’re perfectly happy with this one.

We have about three hours there before it is time to head back. After a bit of tea they serve as a welcome (it felt hot enough to have killed the worst of the nasties that may have been in the water), we spent the first hour snorkeling along the reef. While there weren’t as many fish as we saw in the morning, the coral formations were just stunning. We’re not dive nuts, but we have gone quite a few places, and neither of us can remember seeing anything like this. The cool water eventually chases us back to dry land, but the underwater experience here is something we won’t ever forget.

The rest of the time we spend with a great lunch, and for me at least, a good beach snooze. It’s then back up on the camel for the return trip. The way back seems longer, probably because my butt is a whole lot sorer, and because in my haste to leave the hotel, I didn’t get sunscreen on the tops of my feet, which are now burned and rubbing against the straps of my sandals. We finally make it back to our jeep, and I am pretty happy to have my feet planted firmly on the ground.

We make it back to the hotel around 5pm, and make some half-hearted rumblings about taking the shuttle into town for dinner. Ultimately, we break out a few packs of noodle soup and are perfectly content spending the rest of the evening in the hotel.

As slow as yesterday was, today we took doing nothing to an even higher level, so there really isn’t anything to report. Tomorrow we’re back in action though, as we booked a full day trip riding camels and snorkeling, which leaves bright and early.

Our first full day in Dahab was pretty low-key, with a lot of time spent in a comfortable chair reading and sleeping. We took advantage of the hotel shuttle both in the afternoon and the evening to go to town for lunch and dinner. In the case of the former, we found a restaurant called Yum Yum’s that sold the pita sandwiches we ate in Luxor and filled up on those. We also looked around a bit for souvenirs, but this is clearly a late night town as most of the shops were still closed.

Dahab is split into two parts, with the southern end having most of the newer hotels and restaurants, and the northern part filled with cheap flophouses for the backpackers. With a little time to kill before our shuttle back, we walk all the way through both parts. Along the way we see a ton of hotels that are half built, but with nobody actually working on them. It’s hard to tell how long they have been like that, so we’re not sure whether this place is in the middle of a building boom that has been put on hold because of the economy, or if a decade from now, it will look exactly the same, with visitors asking themselves why there seem to be so many half finished buildings.

We did a little research, both at out hotel and back in town when we returned for dinner about day trips that we might be interested in. There are a lot of choices, but I think we have settled on a day to visit Petra, a day to climb Mount Sinai and visit the monastery there, and a day to camel trek into a nation park to do some snorkeling. Even with those we will still have a few empty days here, so time will tell whether we use those for more excursions, or to simply lay out on the beach some more.