Salaams from Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt

We left our tour for a 2 day excursion to Sharm el Sheikh to continue our diving adventures. This town is built for the European vacation destination. Resorts are lit up with blinking lights much like you'd see in Las Vegas (but at a more modest scale). Naama Bay has a long promenade that's fronted by cafes, shops, restaurants, and about 20,000 shisha bars. I've decided that the hookah must be the #2 export from Egypt, after oil.

The old market is more traditional with less glitz and glamour but more of the 2nd world charm. By this time though, the nonstop hordes of hassling vendors made those shops staffed with little pressure to buy things were a huge breath of fresh air.

Here we were trying to get a good camel toe picture, but failed miserably.

For straight up Western style shopping, Il Mercato rivals any open air mall I've seen. Not fully open when we got there, you could see the potential for some serious commerce to take place here. Sharm was definitely the most comfortable town we visited in Egypt.


The diving was whirlwind as we only had the afternoon to dive. We get off the plane and are in the water in about 2 hours. One dive at sunset, and another at night. The shore dives we did weren't the best spot (Shark Bay), but were still excellent. What a great place to get checked out for your open water cert. Pictures hard to come by at night, but we saw an octopus, another huge moray (this time swimming along the reef), lionfish, eagle ray, pufferfish.

Some of the best snorkeling I've ever done was off the shores of Sharm. The steep dropoff after entering the water (at least 50') looks like a great wall dive. In shallow waters, the lighting was tremendous. Just beautiful.


Coming back to fully explore Ras Mohammed National Park in all its glory would be reason enough for us to return one day to Egypt. Maybe on the way to Palestine/Israel?


Here's me almost crushing a fish!