Catch Up

What a busy few days!

Wednesday went to the public beach with Mahmoud and had a terrific lunch.  Down to the hotel beach after and dinner is Kasanias.  Top local family run restaurant, lobster for £6.50.

Went off to meet Mel and the ex-pats in Papa’s in El Gouna for a quiz night on Thursday.  Drank copious amounts and for the first time, the Brit team (us) won!

El Gouna’s marina area is something out of a Bond novel.  Multi million pound yachts all moored next to glitzy shops and bars.  It’s a secure community and the taxi driver, after saying he’d wait, decided to go off and get some more business.  He then couldn’t get past security when he returned so that was the taxi out of the window. Had to wait for the bar to close (4am) and travelled back with the staff in their minibus.

Up at 9am as I had my Emergency First Responder course – felt like … well, you can guess!  Managed to get through the day though and passed the course.

Saturday I was off diving for the day and 10 minutes into the first dive at carless reef the divemaster tank-slapped and shot off ahead.  I switched on the video camera and followed and suddenly I was nose to nose with a gorgeous turtle busy snacking on a fish.

A couple of minutes and a Moray eel later we were swimming alongside the dropoff and the instructor pointed to what I thought was a tuna swimming about 5m below us and 20m away.  I watched with interest until i realised it had a sharp dorsal fin and white tips on it.  It was a (small) white tip reef shark.  Just after that I watched a dolphin shooting away into the distance. Great stuff to see for the first dive of the day.

The second dive was less eventful, shallow diving over a couple of lagoons with nothing much to see except schools of brightly coloured fish and a few large parrot fish.

Sunday was, I think, a day of rest, meaning I didn’t get up till the afternoon and wasn’t feeling great.  Went to Barclays in Sakalla and tried to open an account. Off to Peanuts for a few scoops then met Amgad later on and went to Kasanias again.

Monday, penultimate day before leaving, was spent in Sakalla trying to open an account with Barclays still.  Didn’t get much joy so went to HSBC and opened an account in about 10 minutes.  Met Mel, Rita and Emily in Dahar and had a few scoops in El Hambra before dinner in Mandarine and then onto Cacao where we proceeded to get well and truly leathered and decided to stay on another week to get everything sorted.

Up at 11 on Tuesday to check out of hotel and moved all my stuff to the apartment when Amgad came knocking on the door and lent me his USB dongle to look for flights on the internet.  Booked a flight for next Monday with EasyJet, so now I can relax and get things sorted.  Bit upset about not spending Christmas with the family.

Went off to Sakkala for a wander then met up with Amgad again and took a trip to the Government shops in Dahar where I bought 2 small tables, a kettle and a water heater.  As I write this the bawab and plumber are in the bathroom fitting the heater.

That’s about done with catching up, see you all soon.