Red Sea Relax

I happened to be staying in a dorm attached to the Red Sea Relax Resort and relax is exactly what I (mostly) did in Dahab. Dahab, btw, is just wonderful!


Arrival was a bit shaky as the bus from Cairo to Dahab was stopped at no less than four passport checkpoints. This wouldn't have bothered me so much except that the incredibly irritating man next to me would literally snap his fingers in my face to wake me up (it was a night bus trip from about 12am-9am). Besides the obnoxious snapping, what annoyed me was that I never got checked! I apparently do not look like a terrorist (surprise, surprise), and they did not check my documents at any of the stops.


Once I was checked into the resort, my time in Dahab was yet another vacation from my vacation. I would spend my days diving and snorkeling and my evenings having dinner with my friends, usually beach side. A lot of restaurants line the promenade and overlook the sea - you sit on cushions, lean against pillows, and hope the cats dont take any of your food.


Most of the places provided spray bottles in case we wanted to shoo the cats away. :)

So I know I raved about the seafood meal I had in Alexandria (and it truly was the best meal I'd had in Africa then) but now that I've had dinner at the Sea Bride Restaurant in Dahab, it takes the best meal grand prize. This place was AMAZING!


You arrive to a bed of different seafood on display and you select from an array of fish, squid, shrimp, clams, and lobster. They weigh the seafood you select, run the price by you, and cook it to your specifications. They start you off with a seafood soup, hummus, babaganoush, salsa, salad, spiced rice, and pita. Then they brought out our sea bass, calamari, and jumbo prawns. So so incredible! I'd recommend this place to anyone - Dahab is perhaps even worth a trip just to eat here!


Apart from Sea Bride, Dahab is also really great (and more known) for its diving and snorkeling. I did some of my best diving in the Red Sea. At Golden Blocks for instance, I saw an enormous moray eel (more than a meter long), and a sea turtle feeding for a while before it swam away. El Bells/The Blue Hole was such a cool dive! You descend down "the chimney" to 30 meters before doing a swim through into this great blue abyss. The Blue Hole goes down to something like 800 meters so all you see is this deep blue nothingness in front of you, and a reef wall on your right. Really amazing! (It's called El Bells because as divers descend the chimney, their tanks sometimes bang against the sides, sounding like church bells on the surface.) Stupidly, I thought my underwater camera didnt go to 30 meters so I only have pictures from snorkeling The Blue Hole/Canyon:


snorkeling "The Canyon"



I'm not sure if my pictures do it any kind of justice, but Dahab is really a wonderful place. Go there! lol I only wish I had had time to explore more of the Red Sea coast - I hear Nuweiba is even better! Next time perhaps, I definitely want to come back here :)