Egypt Day 18: Chillin' Like a Euro-Villian

Feeling a little waterlogged, and with my ear bothering me a bit from the diving, we decided to spend a day lazing about the hotel, rather than diving. We were, after all, saving up our energy for the big dive day tomorrow! So we slept in a bit and had more of that yummy breakfast.

Today we gleefully skipped off to the water park after breakfast - it was time to float. We figured the lazy river tube float would be good practice for our upcoming Tahoe float. This was a great little river they set up - it took about 15 minutes to get around the loop and there was even a fork and some shady spots.

After our strenous floating we napped by the pool for a bit before heading off to lunch. Back to the Waves for more sandwiches and beer. We then went back to the room to blog a bit more (we were getting a little crispy at this point). Then we decided it was finally time to depart the resort.

We hit the lobby and discovered that there was a free shuttle at 8 pm to Naama Bay, so we had about an hour to kill until then. We wandered down to the Lebanese lounge to have some tea and wait for the shuttle. $5 US for a tiny little glass of tea was very overpriced in my opinion - in any country. Sadly, we didn't see the price until we were done. Ah well, live and learn.

The shuttle system was awful. They run 2 shuttles at the same time, but there is no line or order to boarding, and there are hordes of people waiting. So you just stand around in a large group and then elbow into each other trying to get on the bus and not get left behind. If you don't get a spot on the shuttle you have to take a cab. People who get there early sometimes don't get on the bus and people who show up at the last minute often do. Very annoying - but we scored a spot.

Naama Bay is unreal. I consider it Egypt, sanitized for your protection. It's like Disneyland showed up in Egypt. There are neon palm trees and all the standard US chains (McDonalds, KFC and Hard Rock to name a few). We found one relatively authentic Middle Eastern restaurant (but only because Dave told us about it) and had dinner there. Watching all the half dressed women walking by was shocking to me, I'm all for dressing like that in countries where it's the norm, but not in a country where it's offensive to the vast majority of the local populace. Here it didn't seem to matter.

After dinner we found the camera shop, but sadly the housing they rented did not work with our camera, so we would have to dive without taking pictures. We browsed the two dive shops in the town and caught the shuttle back. Upon arriving in our room we were treated to quite the surprise. Guest services had left a card to Mr. Goodale and Mrs. Garcia (no one ever turns to page 23 in my passport to see my name has changed) congratulating us on our 5 year anniversary. It was accompanied by a beautiful chocolate mousse dessert with the words 'Happy Birthday' written in chocolate on a piece of marzipan next to the dessert on the plate. It was quite lovely and gave us quite the chuckle. In our bedroom we discovered that Sameh (our housekeeper) had left us a cobra, made from a beach towel, on our bed. All in all we were feelilng quite special.

Check out Grant's blog for Day 19: Rough Roads and Deep Diving.