Dahab

Today was a travel day, as we left Luxor in the morning for Dahab. Other than the flight being delayed about an hour, the trip was fairly pleasant and on a relatively new airplane, putting to rest our fears of a repeat of the dilapidated planes in Indonesia. Travel time is a little less than an hour, so by the time we reach cruising altitude, it is pretty much time to start the descent.

The airport is in Sharm el-Sheikh, about 60 miles south of Dahab, so for the final leg we need to find a taxi. Unlike Cairo, there are plenty out front of the airport, but we know from some articles we printed from Wikitravel, that we are in for a treat when it comes to negotiating a price.

The opening volley is 350 Egyptian pounds (about 70 US dollars), almost double what the article says we should pay. We manage to beat this down to 250, but there is clearly some collusion here with drivers shouting to each other in Arabic to make sure no one cuts the price too low. Irritated that we are being held hostage by the cab mafia, Ang sees a minivan from the Novotel in Dahab and wanders over to ask the driver if we can pay him to take us (since he is obviously going anyway). It looks like he will, until one of the cabbies comes over a yells at him for a while and he finally says no.

Now more determined than ever to win this battle (I think Ang will sleep on bench at the airport rather than give these drivers satisfaction), we regroup to consider our options. We know there is a bus from Sharm el-Sheikh to Dahab if we can get to the bus station from the airport so we ask about that. Half the cabbies tell us the bus station is closed (which we know is not true) and the others offer to take us for 100 Egyptian pounds, which is even more inflated that the price to Dahab.

Finally, the tide turns when we see the shuttle for the hotel we will be staying at when we move back to Sharm in a week. We tell the driver we are going to be guests, but that today we would just like to get into Sharm so we can go to the bus station. He agrees, and now we have leverage. After that, the price for a taxi direct to Dahab drops into the range we find acceptable and we prepare to be on our way, with one interesting twist. Not thrilled about having to drive all the way to Dahab for the fare we negotiated, the driver goes over to the Novotel minibus and “sells” us to the bus driver for what looks like 40 pounds.

The ride to Dahab takes about a hour (although it ends up taking us two as the driver took us along on some errands), and while it is all desert, it is more mountainous than the desert around Abu Simbel, so actually quite interesting. We try to get some pictures from the car, but none of the really turned out.

From all that we read before coming to Egypt, Dahab is an ideal place to do not much of anything. It is an old fishing village that hasn’t been built up as a tourist destination like Sharm, so still retains some of its original charm. It is well know by backpackers, divers and windsurfers, so quite laid back, and without the big resorty feel.

Our hotel ends up being about five miles from town, which is definitely a negative, as we much prefer to be able to walk into town for meals and shopping rather than being stuck on the hotel grounds, but there is a shuttle that runs a couple of times a day, so that helps. Since the next one isn’t for several hours though, I decide it would be a good idea to walk to town along the beach, which the concierge says is about four miles.

I’m way to stubborn to admit it at the time, but this was not one of my finer decisions. Parts of the beach are fenced off, and once you leave the shore, nothing is clearly marked, so taking into account a few double-backs and a pretty optimistic estimate by the concierge, I think we end up walking closer to six miles by the time we arrive. It is also quite windy today which, on the one hand, keeps it from getting to hot, but on the other is a bit like pouring lemon juice on a cut (where the cut in this case is my travel buddy who is already unhappy about embarking on this poorly thought out walk in the first place).

After a few hours wandering around the town and some dinner, we find a cab to take us back to the hotel. There is a small incident where our driver throws the cab into reverse and jumps out to rumble with another driver who thins he stole his fare, but we are becoming immune to such things, and wait patiently for some of the locals to hold the drivers back and talk them in from the ledge.

Tomorrow we will start to get the lay of the land here and figure out what all we want to try and do. The original plan was to use this as a base to do trips to Mount Sinai and Jordan, and maybe to do some diving, so we’ll see how that all works out in the morning.