DAY 8: CAIRO

We woke up after sleeping for a very long time and decided on a trip to giza zoo! We were followed and hounded by hundreds of little small children and efyptian locals, as a result mr fat and smelly zoo keeper rescued us for a private tour of the zoo. This resulted in us having photos with lions, baby aligators, camelions, bears which we fed, hippos, peacocks, and an atempt with an albino anaconda!! clearly kim ran a mile hence no photo of her!! we gt back and went to bed!

Day 9: Cairo

left at 5am for a 9 hour bus journey to dahab :D 9 hours of the desert wasnt exactly our idea of fun so spotting a wild camel was a highlight of the trip, the rest involved watching the half of 3 films and more sleep! In the afternoon we were taken to lunch by the corrupted guys to a local but expensive seaside restaurant where brim had 2 delicious crabs! we watched the 2 hour introductory dive video for our course during which kim fell asleep and no amount of poking could wake her, this was the result of drug abuse due to hard desert life! Brim went for a quick swim at 8 in the evening beore we chilled out and went to bed!

Day 10: Dahab!! :D

We hit the dive centre at 9am and met wael our instructor who classed us as trouble from the momment he saw us :p (still dont agree!) was nice as we were doing the course with peter and daleen who are slightly quieter but just as funny! we spent the morning at the lighthouse going over theory and doing our first confined dive, skills 1, 2 and 3. in the afternoon we did our first open water dive to 12m and sighted our first lionfish and soft coral seashorse! we had an awesome day, plenty of laughs and resulted in u sgetting very excited about future dives! It was D+ harveys last night during which harvey cut off all his crazy long hair, we chilled round the pool and then headed to another overpriced restaurant where we ordered a tomateo soup between the two of us! we then ate cake before heading to totu for all of 10 minutes, empty as only 10pm so went back for an early night!! (yes this is correct!)

Day 11: Dahab

in the morning we completed confined skills 4+5 and then had a nice chill out before our second open water dive. we reeached 12m and swam around before seeing a rare and very dangerous giant baracuda near the shroe on its own hunting for food, it was 2m long!!! we then swam to and in front of the dive centre and brim being the adventurer made our first platform of rocks for a bit of diving. the whole dive centre and wael could not fathom why we were carting around big rocks! at the hotel pool we played our first game of extreme water polo and had noodles and mango ice-cream for dinner :) the evening was spent chatting and doing more homeowkr before hitting the sack.

Day 12: Dahab

we did open water dives 3 and 4, in dive 3 we reached 18 m and saw the corla reef for the first time, down for 20 minutes, different world! After both dives we became fully qualified to be let lose in the great oceans as buddies on our own! look out world :p we then went swimming by the dive centre again and made an amazing platform again, lugging more massive rocks in the water and slotting the into palce, yes we have photos to prove it! unfortuantly our favourite red rock was not up to standard and the great grey rock took its place. we went back to the hotel and continued exteme water polo before discovering a great restaurant with great prices, then back to the hotel for mroe homeowkr for our adventure dives.

Day 13: Dahab

we hit the dive centre again for 9am for our 1st adventure dives. deep dive was the canyon-this was our first dive to 30m WOW!!!!! we swam over coral to the canyon which we could see bubbles rising from and descended through a crack before swimming the length of the canyon, with rock 20m up either side of us!!!! our 2nd dive was the blue hole-a drift dive. we entered the water by jumping fully kitted from rocks (professional!!!!) and descended down through the rock to a wall of blue sea on one side and a huge pure coral reef on the other. there was no visible bottom ( apparently up to 600m deep!) we saw jellyfish, cleaner wrass fish 9which swam into waels mouth) another lionfish and many more species. after entering the blue hole we swam across it engulfed in the deep blue fish bowl! as it was our last night we went all out and got dressed up (even brim wore make up!) and we drank round the pool with the crew before heading out to the restuarant from the previous night for another great dinner! everyone was in high spirits so we headed to totu and danced like crazy for the night, encircled by admiring/entertained egyptian/random foreign men!!!! we finally hit the sack after 3 am....kim ended up sleeping on a sunbed..long story!!!!!

Day 14: Dahab

we woke up and headed to the lighthouse for a final swim, hitting some big waves and a goodbye to our wael before we had to head back for a lengthy journey back to cairo! we boarded the bus and unfortunately said goodbye to those extending their stay in dahab. we finally managed to watch a full film and after no food since a bowl of cereal at 8.30am we were starving upon our arrival at 11 so got food and fell straight to sleep!

Day 15:

Egypt got up and left by 5am for a flight to Heathrow :( very sad times! however, we were on the same flight as andrew so had a whole lot of laughs and jokes (mainly at his expense re: men wearing speedos!) went out seperate ways for lunch as uncle doug wined and dined his darling neice and kim and andy headed for a scummy pub lunch and some random giggles. we headed back to the airport, checked in and disovered our seats for the 12 hr journey were well apart and with the full plane could not be altered-NOT HAPPY! brim sat between two LARGE men! (virgin airways are crap!)

Egypt over!!!!!!! more goodbyes said to new friends and the two we met at heathrow again......but the next phase was not long off!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1