Freedive Dahab - photos and stuff

[island_sands]

Originally Posted by samdive

Glad you had fun Sara! how did the training go?(PM or mail me if its a secret!)

hi Sam! - the statics went well but unfortunately my ears packed up and i couldnt equalise
Going back on Sunday to give it another go....

[saver]

Very nice photo..
Thanks sara..

--SAVER--

[Apnea_Addict]

Hi everybody,

I am in Dahab at the moment. I will training with Lotta tomorrow.

I plan to give a account of my experiences later. Stay tuned !

Holger

[BennyB]

Go for it Holger! Looking forward to hearing your adventures.

Cheers,
Ben

[Sergiu]

Originally Posted by Apnea_Addict

Hi everybody,

I am in Dahab at the moment. I will training with Lotta tomorrow.

I plan to give a account of my experiences later. Stay tuned !

Holger

Sweet, cant wait to get there (in about two weeks)! May do the safari week (not sure right now) but for certain the training week that will follow. Did you meet Flo and Emese? Two nice gals that turned from white to red skin by now - i bet!

[Apnea_Addict]

I am not sure, if you all really want to read it > I just write what really happens here.

To put things in perspective: I am here in Egypt for the very first time and haven' t travelled outside of Europe and the USA so far.

In Order to write more relaxed. I start with yesterday today and tomorrow I'll wirte about today.

It took me a lot longer to get here, then expected. My plane was delayed for over three hours in Hamburg already since the one they wanted to use broke down the day before (this was Condor).

The trip went that way, that we had to go Hurghada first, and the fly back to Sharm el Sheik. In Hurghada most of the people got off. I'm always curious so I was looking at the tourists that left there and I could guess what it would be like in the hotels. For sure the hotel area looked crowded with hotel and condo setups from up in the air.

There was another delay in Hurghada since Condor wanted to take now people back to Hamburg and they had to make sure, that everybody was on the right plane, but it took a while to get the numbers straightend out.

Then arrival in Sharm el Sheik. I was a little confused what to do after entering the airport building it didn't take long to get yelled at for the first time. But luckily this was a guided trip so there was somebody from the Orca traval company to get things sorted out.

The next surprise > luggage carts are not free but a Bakschisch is collected for that. In my astonishment I paid way to much.

I was waiting for the luggage to arrive. On of my bags > the one with ALL the clothes in it didn't come. Great. I wasn't too worried. Everything is well insured and I was certain to able to buy clothes. But still > nice thing if you don't even got swimming trunks and want to gut diving the next day early in the morning.

Lucky again my transfer was still there since I still needed to go to Dahab. An hour ride but about 100 kilometres I guess.

So far so gut. The driver was speaking Englisch and his only job was to get me to Dahab ( in a minibus ).

The road to Dahab is very well paved. But that also means speeding (max Speed about 140 km per hour). Speed limits seem not to mean anything. The driver flashes his lights at every upcoming car > no idea what that is for.

By this time it is getting dark > earlier than at home. But we are still on the road. The driver stops some place. He wants to get some water. This is courtesy of the hotel since they know I have been "on the road" for a long time.

The place where he buys it is nothing more than a shed with a refrigerator. Some place I would have never entered on my own I think.

One can' t help to notice that the road is blocked every once in a while. There are some people (soldiers) patrolling and checking the cars.

At one block the driver gets into a longer discussion with the guys there. Well, he says "is it okay, if we take the policeman to dahab ?". I say "yes" since those guys got Kalaschnikow carabiners and I just want to get there and not get into any trouble. So now a whole bunch of them gets in the bus. Some have not showered in while I guess (I am just writing what I thought at the moment, I didn't say anything of course). So now we got a whole car full of guys with guns, which are not wearing uniforms or anything. And it is night, very dark, no other towns just somewhere in Egypt. Well I was still confident, that everything is okay and it probably was. But the "police" didn't mind the speeding of the bus either.

After they got out the driver apologized > obviously he wasn't all to happy with that either.

Finally in dahab at the inmodivers divers home but more of that tomorrow.

Holger

[Apnea_Addict]

I just wrote for half an hour what happened yesterday and then the computer "ate" the whole text .... Fu....

sorry, more tomorrow > Yes, I have met Aniko

Holger

[Apnea_Addict]

Oh there it is ? never mind

[SanderP]

Good to hear you arrived safely. Waiting to hear about the diving. Dahab is said to be the freediving Mecca of europeans. I bet the Blue Hole provides some great diving. I'm definetly going there in the near future.

[Sergiu]

sweet! good account of what is to come for my trip in two weeks time, i will have to travel overland from Cairo to Dahab - gotta have bakshish with me plenty!

serge

[Apnea_Addict]

Hi everybody,

more news from Dahab. I have to tell you > it really is a dump. But maybe you could call it a half-decent one.

One thing for sure. It is becoming another tourist trap...You get the usual shops selling tshirts and you got the guys on the street trying to convince you that the bargain of your life is just around the corner in the next store.

What was really new for me though, was the fact that every car on the cities street suddenly mutates into a taxi when a foreigner is out and waiting. I was just standing in front of the hotel waiting for Lotta to pick me up and every few seconds I heard " taxi ? taxi ? " and that regardless of the car that was passing by. Okay, on milltary car passing > they didn't say anything and neither did I. Most of the cars on the road are pickup trucks made in by Japanese Companies.

Freedive dahab is located at the Jasmina Hotel which is not the one where I am staying so I was glad for the ride since I didn't know the right way yet.

Lotta is doing training dives with me and Anton from Russia. He is from Moskow and trains with some other russian freedivers. But his English is not really good so he did not take a regular course. And I am mostly here to see what it is like to freedive in the Red Sea and how my body copes with it.

A big issue is dehydration. You have to drink much more water than you are normally used to and it's still not enough. The effect is that after a day of freediving and being out in the desert you get really tired and maybe even have a headache. Equalization may also get worse.

So you see us running around with 1,5 Liter Bottles of Water. Too still boost that you can get some extra rehydraton powder at the pharmarcie.

This is a good example of how the local ecomnomy is working here. As far as Lotta heard the phamarcie can not charge more than the official price for the medicine which is 2,5 egyptian pounds. That price is even written on the package. But if you walk into the pharmacie as a tourist you will get charged more. A customer of Lotta's got charged ten egytian pounds and when I asked myself for it at another pharmacie as a test I heard 5 egyptian pounds. When Lotta was arguing with guy on the counter I said she will get "special prices" but others won't. When a talk with the police was suggested, he just said, that he has got no problem with the police or America. We don't know what America has got to do with this but the guy had to get the point through that he hates America, probably because of their low prices for medicine.

Dahab is very nice at night when the lights are switched on and you can stroll along the beachfront where you will find restaurants where you can leisurely dine while listening to the surf.

It was very rough out there and also very windy which I heard is normal.

Money can be changed at a bank or pulled from a maschine that acceptes credit cards and Maestro cards.

Tomorrow I'll write more about the blue hole.

best wishes
Holger

[Apnea_Addict]

Or I meant to explain > Dahab is a dump in the places where people find an unoccupied house and throw all their garbage just in there. Makes a perfect dump.

And another medical issue that is really common is the "pharaos's revenge" striking not just americans, but also swedish, russian and german people.

I heard several warnings about not to eat salads, not to drink some fresh pressed juice, to avoid anything with or on ice...But I also heard, that it does not really matter what you eat. One guy was seem with a lotion to desinfact the hands before eatring. This is probably a good idea since the possiblity to wash the hands is not always given.

Once you got it > normal medicine from Europe, especially Immodium is not to work to much of an effect. Better idea is to get some local stuff. Which one I don't know. But it is better not to go alone to the pharmacie for the mentioned reasons.

And when you got it > better do something right away. I heard from somebody who started the treatment to late and had the whole thing going on for up to three weeks after the return back home.

[Florance]

Originally Posted by Sergiu

Sweet, cant wait to get there (in about two weeks)! May do the safari week (not sure right now) but for certain the training week that will follow. Did you meet Flo and Emese? Two nice gals that turned from white to red skin by now - i bet!

hehe

We are NOT red, but very brown and glamorous

I know who is APNEA ADDICT finally from tonight's barbeque in Laguna.
Its great to be here in Dahab..I dont wanna go home again, and for the first time I can say I have seen a good looking local

Yesterday Christian and myself luckily passed the 3* AIDA freediver test, thanks to our lovely and funny teacher, Linda

regards to everybody.

Florance/Aniko/

[Apnea_Addict]

Originally Posted by Florance

hehe

We are NOT read, but very brown and glamorous

What can I say > very true

The first days weren't so great but slowly I can see what makes people come back to dahab time and time again (like building up an addiction).

best wishes
Holger

[BennyB]

Great to hear your adventures Holger, hopefully the bad bits are just from the initial shock of getting to a place like that, which i'm sure everyone goes through. Once you get a feel for the place it should improve dramatically.

Keep the liquids up, plenty of water, enough salt on your food and get into the bananas to keep your potassium levels up (good for cramps). I ate quite a lot of carbohydrates in Nice at the recent comp and still managed to lose 3.5kg's in 6 days!!!

Keep the dive stories coming, hope you get plenty of opportunities to test your ears at depth, and have a brilliant time!

Cheers mate,
Ben