We woke up, Hannah as always earlier than me, and headed out looking for breakfast.
“Where do you think we should have breakfast?”
Screeeech, “TAXI!”
“No thank you, I don’t know is that place alright?”
Screeeech, “TAXI!”
“No thanks, It looks ok.”
Screeeech, “TAXI!”
“No Thanks Mate, There isn’t much to chose from.”
Screeeech, “TAXI!”
“No Taxi, I know its only a small town.”
Screeeech, “TAXI!”
“No thanks we can walk the 200m from one side of the town to the other.”
Screeeech, “TAXI!”
“Nope. You know there are more Taxi’s than people here.”
Screeeech, “TAXI!”
“No Taxi mate, its crazy.”
Anywhere we walked on the road someone would come to a halt and yell out Taxi hopefully before driving up the next person walking along and asking them.
We had to get some money so after breakfast we looked around for some ATM. We found plenty but as luck would have it none of them worked. We had bills to pay because the Egyptians are not the trusting type so mostly you have to pay up front for everything. We finally managed to get some but it took all morning and was a total nightmare.
Once back our hostel manager met us and asked us if we wanted to do a diving course. We had made up our minds that it was probably too expensive so we weren’t going to do it. We had nothing to lose though by checking out the prices. In London we had been quoted about 250pounds for a course but when we got to this Diving school we managed to bargain down we could get it for 180 euros. Much cheaper. We said we would think about it and walked to every diving school in Dahab, which is a lot, and no one was cheaper.
That afternoon we went out to this place called the blue hole. It was totally amazing. Right up against the shore is a coral drop off which goes down to 80m deep! The water is really clear and the fish and coral are absolutely amazing. I snorkeled down to about 10m deep at one stage and was swimming with the scuba divers. I couldn’t go any deeper though because my ears were on fire.
After that we decided to do a scuba course.
“We would like to do a Scuba course.”
“Ok fill in these medical forms.”
“Sure no worries”
“Oh you have to answer no to all the questions.”
First question. Do you or have you suffered from Asthma. DOH! I leave it blank. Do you suffer from allergies. DOH, I say no. Not going to be many cats under water. Or grass pollen. The rest I was fine with. My nervous twitch and random acts of falling to the ground and thrashing about wasn’t really all that bad. I mean after a few minutes I am usually alright.
As I hand back the form I hoped he didn’t notice my blank space.
“You missed a question.”
“Oh yeah that one, I sort of have asthma. Not all the bad, I mean I haven’t had it in a while.” I wheezed.
He saw the cash drifting away from him fast and he didn’t like it.
“Well I’ll call the doctor and see what he says then.”
I sit around breathing as normally as possible, shoo-ing the cats from my feet and trying not to stir any dust up so my breathing would be totally normal.
“Have you had asthma lately.” He asks first.
“Well kinda about 7 days ago but that was only because I had a cold and you know how colds bring out asthma in people. Even when they don’t have it all that bad.” I mean today was Friday and I had asthma ages ago like Wednesday or something.
“Hrmmm.” He pulls out a stethoscope and start examining me and looking in my ears with a rather gross looking ear examiner. He poked around my left ear for a while and it felt a bit like burning. My ears were fine. That time I was surfing and landed on my ear and now I can blow air out of it doesn’t mean anything, does it?
Anyway he asked for 35pounds and cleared me for diving.
The next day we met our instructor.
“You like to dive, ya”
Hannah nudges me and whispers, “we got ourselves a Muller.”
“Yes very much.” We replied.
‘Very good, ya.”
We nodded, it was very good.
“Ya, so to begin with ya, we will do some theory ya, and then after that ya, we will do our first confined water dives, ya”
“Ya” we both said.
We then turned to our fellow student, “So where you from?”
He was a middle aged man, “Wienna”
“Hey that’s sounds like a place I have been to, its in Austria called Vienna”
“Ya, I know I come from dare.”
“No not Wienna, Vienna…”
He shrugged.
For the rest of that day we did our theory.