Egypt Day 16: You Have a House Reef?

We happily sleep in until 9:30 am and then drag ourselves to breakfast. Oh mommy, what a spread! I was so tired of buffet food (usually not one of my favorites anyway), that I was at first skeptical. But one bite of a made to order waffle and I was hooked. It was the best food we'd had all trip (ok, objectively it probably tied the dinner at the Mena House, but at the time it felt so much tastier).

After stuffing ourselves we decided to take a tour of the pool and look for the dive center. We found the ramp that lead to the alcove containing the dive shop and wandered on in. They wanted us to do a check dive before we started any real dives with them (which we were more than happy to do since it had been a year, almost to the day, since we last dove). We signed up for the 2 pm dive and went back to our room.

Guest services called to make sure we were happy with our room and to set up a tour of the property. We said we'd be free at 5 pm, so they said they'd send a cart to pick us up. We goofed off for a bit and then headed down for our check dive.

The house reef was great! We saw some really exotic looking bright blue spotted rays. Lots of great fish and beautiful coral too. We were so happy with the diving we signed up for the night dive that night as well as the morning trip to Ras Mohammed the following day.

Back at the room, guest services stood us up. We were mildly annoyed, but decided to take a tour on our own instead. The property was huge and we found the other pool site, or should we say water park. There was a full kiddie pool with a fountain in it, a sandy spot for kids to play in (complete with plastic sand toys) and, best of all, a lazy river with inner tubes for floating around the pool site. We would definitely be back.

Our night dive was very cool. There were four of us plus the guide. It's amazing how much activity is still going on in the reef at night. It turns out that shrimp have eyes that glow red in the lantern light, kind of creepy. At the end of the dive we switched off the lanterns and shook our hands around to make the bioluminescent plankton glow, it was like stars sparkling underwater.

After the dive we got cleaned up and went for dinner, and were totally screwed. Even though the book in the room claims the dinner buffet ends at 11:30 pm they were shutting it down at 10:30 pm that night. We decided to have a drink at the bar while we decided what to do next. I got the worst Mojito I've ever had, and the bartender's manager was actually rude enough to say he couldn't make change so that Grant could tip the waiter.

Thoroughly annoyed with the food services staff we went to the room and ordered room service (the only food option at this hour). We ordered two sandwiches and veggies with 'oriental dips'. The food appeared, but not the dips. We called to complain, and get our dip, and the guy had no clue what I was talking about (his English was not good at all). He kept saying crudite is vegetables, and I kept saying yes, it is, we have vegetables, but no dip. Finally he said, ok, I'm sorry. I thought this meant dip would be on it's way, it wasn't. So the veggies were stashed in the fridge and we went to bed.

Check out Grant's blog for Day 17: Lionfish, Rays and Eels, Oh My!