Week Sixty-Eight

Woops - we're up late (07.30): never mind - by 08.45 we're at the shipping company's office (on Petra Street, for heaven's sake), buying our tickets ($22 each) and passing the time (the ferry leaves at 12.00) in idle conversation. Apparently, as well as a record number of tourists (set to top 10,000 next week - Aqaba only has 17,000 inhabitants!) there's a charter plane of 200 Hungarians and Romanians in at the moment: we didn't hear any Romanian voices so far on the streets. Presumably everyone in Aqaba has a contact working at the airport. Anyway, we check out of the hotel, walk back in the already blistering heat (it induced a nosebleed in me yesterday - probably because of the abrupt change from Amman) to the little fort, which is where the minibuses south leave from (heading for the Saudi border, I believe). At 10.20 the bus pulls away half-empty, thankfully not waiting until it filled (otherwise we could've been there for hours), we're at the ferry port by 10.30, the departure hall (5 JD departure tax each, plus a little form and a stamp in our passports) by 10.40, the Duty Free shop by 11.00 and onboard the boat at 11.10.
Sunny Aqaba, with its shops and shwarma and Pizza Hut, Israel's Eilat just over the water, its funny locals on the beach and its immediate backdrop of barren desert mountains (like Antakya) gets 2/10 - there's nothing to do, but it's a pleasant enough place to do nothing. The funniest thing we saw there, incidentally, was "I Like Austria" stickers - everywhere else in the world insists that people Love them.

When we board, the crew are donning lifejackets - a little worrying since we haven't left port yet: it's just an exercise, and despite the crew's smug and relaxed looks, the captain shouts at them all - I guess it wasn't that successful. We eventually drift away from the port at 12.30 or so (the "Fast Catamaran" left at 12.20) and seriously get underway at 12.45. Actually "seriously get underway" (which possibly should be "underweigh" in the case of a boat) is a bit of a euphemism - let's just say that the "fast boat" didn't need to move that quickly to maintain the distinction. The journey's pretty dull, though Milla spots a turtle and there's another drill which alarms most of the passengers. At about 15.30 we draw level with Nuweiba ("Noowaybuh") in Egypt (by now Saudi Arabia's on the opposite shore) and stop: the boat just sits in the middle of the channel and rotates in the current - we have no idea why and neither, judging by the quality of the occasionally squawking PA system, does anyone else. The bus to Dahab is supposed to leave from the port at 16.00, but come 16.30 we're still virtually immobile in the Gulf of Aqaba. Milla asks the guy at the bar what's up - apparently we have to wait until 18.00 before docking (possibly there's another boat in the way). The sun sets, it gets colder and windy outside, and everyone huddles inside for warmth: come 18.30, of course, we're still out in the water.

We go out on deck, where it's wind rather than temperature that's the problem: inside is getting too smelly with all those kicked-off shoes. From there we watch the boat finally start moving in towards the shore - there are a couple of tug-boats, and much to-ing and fro-ing, and eventually the boat docks. They don't let us off for another fifteen minutes and then, after 20.00, we get herded onto a bus which shuttles us to a big waiting area of benches - this seems to be for customs control, and there are hundreds of people waiting with bags. We're the only foreigners and we must have stood out a bit, since a police/customs guy comes over and directs us to a separate Arrivals Hall. There's the usual X-Ray nonsense - I end up having to remove my belt to pass through un-beeping (hopefully my 5 undeveloped films will be okay) - and then we're out. Or rather we're not. There's another half-hour delay while our passport numbers are checked - us, a family of four Austrians, and six Japanese: it transpires that none of us is a listed terrorist.

We get up some time after 10.00 and things don't seem nearly as bad in the bright Sinai sunlight - then, of course, we try to make a coffee and discover that the tapwater is salty (both hot and cold): we only discover this after we've boiled a kettle-full. The guys running our camp have big blue barrels of non-salty (actually, less salty) water which they use for drinking and for watering the plants. The bad news is that the salty water seems to have destroyed our nice new purple plastic kettle - damn: now all it does is short-circuit and leak. This undermines our impression of Dahab still further, particularly since we later discover that the water in all the camps is the same.

We put everything of value back in our lockable rucksacks, padlock the door behind us (which makes it about as secure as a dry paper bag) and set out to see what there is to see in Dahab by day. Mostly it turns out to be what we saw last night: there's a gravelly beach (5m-6m wide at high tide, double that at low tide), a huge number of diving schools, a rake of restaurants and souvenir shops (new items here include pyramids, pictures on papyrus and mostly-black models of Egyptian Gods), and a couple of supermarkets. There are also an awful lot of people, mostly tourists, and a lot of them are exposing significantly more flesh than seems normal in a muslim country. We discover a laundry, and negotiate a reasonably price for internet (42p per hour), find none of the usual fast food chains (a local "McBurger" comes closest) and walk to the north end of the strip (a little headland) where the paved promenade finishes but the accommodation camps seem to carry on - possibly that's the cheaper hippy area now that the packagees have moved in. We also meet a bunch of people from earlier stops (Beirut, Bosra and Amman) and see a bunch of diving groups wading into the water (it's a big location for diving here) as well as some ferocious windsurfing out in the bay (today's pretty windy).

Failing to find a good place to develop or buy film, we put in a couple of hours of internet time, drop off a bag of laundry and go to find something to eat. With the exception of fish dishes, all the places are offering much the same stuff: we end up with over-priced pizza and chicken cannelloni at a place just gearing up for its New Year party - a strange German diving-instructor-to-be (he's only just arrived) sits down at our table (do these things happen to other people too?), so we don't linger. Instead we go back through artificial Dahab to our artificial "camp": there's something very odd about Arabs who respond to "Salaam" by shaking your hand and saying "hi", and to "ma-Salaama" with "hasta la vista" - also, like Westerners, they look somehow unnatural in desert garb.

After a short snoozze we take our remaining 40cl of Highland Park back along the beach to the headland (past the various parties, and dodging those trying to get us inside), take two wooden chairs and a table from one of the closed shoreside cafés and set them up at the water's edge. It's an oddly surreal sort of New Year when it comes - the Red Sea (full of jumping fish in the blackness) and Saudi Arabia beyond to one side, the bright lights of Dahab to the other; wet sand under our feet and a clear sky full of stars above; a boat bipped into the bay to sound its horn at midnight, the crew popped open a couple of bottles and set off again after an hour. Even more surreal were the black-wetsuited and flippered groups of divers wading into the water for a midnight under the Red Sea - their torches glowing in eerie green patches out from the shore; and a couple of mental dogs which kept running round and round us (one was a spitting image of black Anubis). A few hours pass there, while we finish the whisky and greet groups of divers wading, Sea-Devil-like, out of the waves and then we set off "home" (good timing - the tide had turned and the water was almost lapping at our feet).
Our progress is interrupted by the sound of a cat stuck behind a wall - after ten or fifteen minuntes I give up trying to help it, reasoning that we'd have to dismantle part of the wall (which we couldn't - I tried) and head back. Milla stays longer, and ends up enlisting local aid and (in fact) dismantling part of the wall - they rescue the cat, but not the kitten it had gone in to rescue. I'm pretty much asleep (03.15) by the time she gets back, so I get most of the story in the morning.

A new morning, a new year: gosh - and may 2003 be as incident-packed as 2002 was. I'm up at about 10.00 and make a couple of coffees, which we enjoy outside with biscuits for breakfast, and then Milla goes back to bed while I write. I collect my laundry at 13.15 and return with a couple of half-litres of drinking yoghurt (strawberry and mango) for lunch: then we lounge around a bit more, eat some noodles and before we know it we're watching a glorious desert sunset over the mountains at 17.00. In the early evening Milla goes out shopping/pricing while I write more (Dahab's fairly cheap, so it's a good opportunity). She returns after a couple of hours, having met some Coptic shopkeepers ("real" orthodox, who celebrate Christmas on the 7th of January - they warn her against all the other, muslim, shopkeepers), inspected the locally available jewellery (all just beads on string, apparently), and picked up supermarket supplies for an evening snack of chocolate and yoghurt. We have an early night at 23.00, though I later get up briefly at 01.00 to assassinate a pesky mosquito.
One final note is that our ISIC cards expired today, having saved us each $112 ($132-$20 cost), so well worth it: soon we need to set about getting new ones for Egypt.

I'm up a little before 09.00 and shower, yes, in salty water - the strange, clunking grinding noises of our first evening are revealed as the plumbing system, which takes six or seven minutes of violent pluttering and shaking before delivering very hot water. I've had a coffee, put my newly-clean clothes away and so on before Milla stirs. She gets up at 10.00 and we sit outside in the sun (30 degrees: 20 degrees in the shade) having our breakfast of biscuits. Bored, she goes out at 11.30 while I stay behind and start catching up ohn some of this writing which I keep complaining I'm behind with. After two and a half hours I stop for a snooze (a childhood accident to my right hand impinged on my ability to write for extended periods) and wake just before she returns bearing food at 15.45. She also returns bearing information, having investigated diving courses: firstly everyone offers PADI Open Water (18m/60ft) courses - the cheapest and nastiest; courses last four or five days, depending how many hours you want to put in each day; the cost is from $200-$300; we'll need special masks because of our impaired vision - some places can get them easily, others less so; some include a number of dives at the end, while others don't. We'll discuss these options, and what we want to do with them, in more detail later. She also ran into Troy and company, and a Japanese girl whom we met in Amman.
The rest of the day is pretty much spent writing (got to only 10 days behind, now), playing cards (I won), eating various meals (the bread rolls here are revolting), Milla showering and washing her hait, and us both hunting down and killing mosquitoes.

Up at 08.45 and the winds of last night, which we worried about, have faded to nothing: 20 degrees insidee and, by 09.15, a respectable 36 degrees outside. I wake Milla, make a couple of coffees and we sit in our usual place for breakfast. Then we lounge around indoors (doing the usual unmentionables) for a bit until Milla goes out at 11.30 and I write for a bit. Are we falling into a rut? Already? Variations from yesterday include the fact that Milla ejects me from the room for an hour while she cleans it (I spend the time writing and watchuing little fat sand-coloured jumping spiders), and I run into Troy later (and a new German friend "Lindsay", who's wearing a black leather, studded jacket and a tartan flatcap).
Other observations about the camp are its native population of five cats, shared partly with the neighbouring camps - they jump about catching insects, flee from the staff and residents, and spend most of the day skulking in the undergrowth. The "undergrowth" is a few patches of plants, islands in the sand, watered by hose connected to the camp's water purification system; drinking water for the staff (we use it for washing dishes and boiling for coffee) comes in huge blue barrels, delivered by van every few days; the sewage systems appear to be common - shared among several camps. Otherwise it's just two blocks of concrete rooms (one with and one without running water), a few common areas (a straw-covered gazebo, a filthy kitchen, and common showers/toilets).
Bed tonight, after cards (Milla won), is at 02.30 - followed by an unsuccessful mosquito hunt.

A new record this morning at about 09.00 - a cool 19 degrees in the room, but a staggering 39 degrees outside. I risk washing my hair in the salty water (after the five-minute cacophony, like someone playing steel drums, required to evoke hot water), but rinse it in cleaner water frfom the blue barrel. It dries quickly in the heat as we sit outside for breakfast, watching the cats and listening to the usual morning chaos of alarm clocks: either most people sleep through them, or else people aren't in. That's about it for the morning.
In the afternoon, after a little shopping, I put in some more serious internet time until early evening and get a week in (the website's seven, now six, weeks behind) as well as answering a host of emails since New Year. I get back to the room at 18.30, bearing chocolate, and find Milla asleep having experimented with some of our new food supplies - they seem to have been mostly disastrous, particularly a cheese-based paste called Mesh. I try it as well - it's revolting: revolting to an almost world-class standard - it tastes like a strange cross between catfood and vomit (much as it looks). Perhaps we can find someone to give it to later.
We play cards (Milla wins), drink some beer (no alcohol for sale in shops here - you have to get it from bars, in plastic bags) - local Stella: okay, I suppose, but only 4.5% and pretty bland. I write a bit more while Milla attempts to resize and refit her bikini, with scissors and thread. Bed at 01.30, after elimating the room's mosquito population.

This morning it just won't get up over 37 or 38 (about 100 in old money, I think) - goddam: I'm hoping for a 40 degree day sometime here. We do the usual until early afternoon, but manage to fit in an argument and vitriolic pillow-fight (do all couples argue as much as we seem to? Or is it the stress of travelling? Except, of course, that we're not really travelling at the moment). We go out for an afternoon beer at Tota's - a bar/restaurant in the shape of a ship (there's one in Dublin too, apparently) - and end up having something to eat there. The view from the upper deck across the bay is pretty cool: Saudi Arabia beyond, the occasional passing camel, etc.: a lot of the packagees have left, and the place seems a lot less synthetic now. It's the quieter, curious little places which are busier now, rather than the big shiny ones - and the little groups of divers are fewer and smaller (twos and threes, rather than midgets). There's a new wave, of course, but they're less family-and-lager set: a few more young professional types (who seem equally out of place, to us) without kids, who obviously have more flexibility about choosing their holiday dates.
We've been entertaining some of the local cats and leave ten of them to squabble over cleaning our dishes: I do a few hours internet time, Milla goes back to the room and sleeps a little. In the evening we play cards (Milla wins again!), I write, she eats more, and so on: in other words, a lazy time with no stress.