Dahab is lazy. I am lazy here. The main drag is lined with restaurants with plaintive names and the same menus where travellers lounge on cushions and rugs only expending energy to chase away hungry kittens from the low tables. The more active go diving, with companies that go by the same effortless names: Aqua Divers, H20 Divers…, but I just stroll, lie and drink Bedouin tea in the sun.

One of our group signed off the tour to visit St. Catherine’s and climb Mt. Sinai for sunset. They had to sign off because the tour company had deemed that area too dangerous to visit. Ironically that same night the entire bar we were drinking at broke into a brawl, pitting Bedouins against Egyptians and demonstrating a deep hostility that I don’t understand. Our guide says it is the first fight he has ever been in; the six-foot ex-Navy Australian girl that ended it with a blow to the aggressor’s face says it’s the first she’s been in “for ages.”   The next day the Sinai climber gleefully tells us it’s safer to go to St. Catherine’s than to hang with us.

All photos by author