03.15.06
21st Century Lawrence of Arabia!
Interesting side note for those of you not familiar with Mr. T. E. Lawrence: he was actually born in the same Welsh village in which my grandparents live(d)! When my brother and I were younger we even attended an “adventure camp” type thing, organised by the local church, based in the very same building in which he was born (well, maybe it was just the same site as the original building. I guess it’s probably been renovated a few times over the past century).
Today we got up bright and early to ride the camels of the 21st century (i.e. quadbikes) and head off into the desert towards the Sinai mountains! After wrapping up in our durka-durka head gear to protect us from flying sand, we mounted our trusty steeds and set off. The proceedings were quite restrained, despite the best efforts by some of us to leave the long caravan of bikes and do some real off-roading, but because the whole area is a protected national park we had to stay under control at all times. We eventually reached a blue lagoon where we stopped for a nice swim to cool off, a friendly game of desert football, followed by delicious BBQ lunch. We then got back on our bikes and drove back to the base-camp, where a bus took us back to our hotel in the early hours of the afternoon, giving us a few hours to relax on the beach and enjoy some more snorkeling.
Following our last dinner at the hotel at the peaceful sea-front Grille restaurant, we took a walk along the beach and down the jetty, where we saw several lion fish for the first time in the holiday! I’d been watching out for these all week, but hadn’t seen any until now. The “feathers” on these beautiful fish are highly poisonous. They probably wouldn’t kill a normal, healthy person but it would be a very nasty experience. Apparently the fastest way to get the poison out is to dip the affected area under very hot water for around 90 minutes. Yikes! But it was nice to see them again before we left (I used to see them all over the place while snorkeling here when I was young).
And so ended our last full day of holiday in Egypt.