Dahab, Egypt: If Justine Was a Chip, She would be 'Sea Salt'

So our 10 month backpacking trip is winding down, and on the Red Sea of all places. We have decided to splurge and have settled on a hotel with a pool, mini fridge and TV. All this luxury for only the small Egyptian fortune of 180 LE (incl breakfast feast). That is about 35 dollars Canadian.

We haven't done much other than swim, snorkel and contemplate getting that massage we have dreamed about for the last 10 months. The busy season is just about to get going, so we are enjoying less of the crowds and more of the corral bliss. The corral and fish life here is truly amazing and we have been snorkeling and enjoying the warm waters and aqua colouring.

The town is quite small, and there is no Four Season, or Hilton. And as such, the package tourists are not quite the same. Life here is pretty laid back and enjoyable. We have had a couple of dinner feasts and enjoyed some nice sundowners on our deck looking over to Saudi Arabia over the Gulf of Aqaba from our deck.

Our trip here from Luxor was an 18 hour episode on a bus that had seen better days. There was supposedly aircon....but was not quite up to Western Standards. After our long journies in S America(Chile and Argentina), we have come to appreciate the comforts of a luxory bus at basement prices. This definetly wasn't one of them.

We had heard that Dehab was laid back and a bit of a chill spot. So, that is what we were expecting upon our arrival here. To our surpise, we almost caused an international incident.

After 18 hours on the bus, we arrived in Dahab. There was no signage, no announcement, and we were two of the last 4 people on the bus, so when the bus was rushed and boarded by 6 young guys, we thought they were just getting on. But, to our dismay, they were touts trying to get us to agree to their hotels, and if not, to their cab rides into the town. We managed to get off the bus, and collect our bags, but they continued to swarm, yelling and being quite pushy. We tried to remain polite, and asked them to give us room....but they just wouldn't back off.

As we started to walk through the loading area, they just continued...and we kept telling them to back off. Suddenly, one of the guys seemed to realize that we were getting annoyed at some of the others, and took it on himself to try and push them back. The next thing we knew, there were punches flying! One of the guys took two solid punches to the face and was staggered before the rest of the group began pushing another guy back. The hurt guy regained his footing, and quickly recovered his lost flip flop, and began to run away from the group. As he hurtled over a concrete baracade toward the taxis, we thought he had had enough and was getting out of there before things got out of control. NO! He reached down, picked up a bottle, smashed it on the concrete baracade, and rushed back into the scrum! Swinging and yelling in Arabic, he slashed his offender, smashing the bottle in the process.

We were moving QUICKLY away from this, trying t0 descern where to go. The taxis were out, as the fight was right near them, so, we were making our way to the road. The crowd was enraged at this point and groups were trying to hold back both parties. The bloodied guy went to his truck, opened the door and retrieved something from under the driver's seat.

This was the last we saw. Another tout was beside us, hailing a passing cab (pickup truck), and shouting orders to us to get out of there. Our bags were thrown into the bed of the vehicle, and we dove into the back seat (Justine with her big pack still on got wedged in), expecting to hear gunshots in our wake.

We really have no idea what the hell was going on there. It was scary, and we were shaken up about it for hours afterwards. All we can say is that we are really happy that we haven't been privy to more of these types of episodes, and that it occured near the end of our travels. Hassle certainly has gone to extreme here in Egypt.

Thankfully, that was the only time we saw those guys during our entire stay (quite possibly because they were all in the hospital for the rest of our stay). And, the relaxed atmosphere of the rest of Dahab made it quite easy to shuffle the incident to the back of our minds. Ignorance is bliss for all those who would like to believe in pixy dust and peaches.