Scuba Duba Doo!

First off, Michael gets credit for the blog title. I asked him for something clever and that's what I got. We're now certified Advanced Divers!! Whoo hoo! For the lay person this means that I can use a compass to swim in a square while 45 feet under water, I have felt the drunken feeling caused by too much Nitrogen in the blood (110 feet under), and I have been doing homework for the last three nights. The diving here is fantastic. Today we did one called "The Blue Hole." We started by entering the water and dropping almost vertically through "the bells." It's called "the bells" because it's a passage so narrow that your air tank will probably hit the rocky walls and make a sound like a bell. When you 've made it down about 100 ft you have to remember to add air to your BCD (buoyancy control device) because the bottom is still nowhere in sight. You swim along a wall of coral reef with countless colors and spectacular fish ascending slowly along the way. Finally you swim over the top of the coral reef, and you're inside a giant cylinder of coral 200 feet across and 400 feet deep. Around the edges are more fish, shrimp, starfish, and divers, but when you swim across the middle, you lose sight of everything. It's just an abyss. I love it here! Dahab is a really chilled out place. All of the restaurants serve seafood, pizza, pasta, and hummus. Most of them have "bedouin style" seating--giant pillows on the floor--instead of chairs, and are right on the water. And everyone who comes here wants nothing more than diving and beer. I can hardly wait to dive tomorrow!

p.s. On our last day in Luxor we went to the West Bank. There are hundreds of tombs there at the Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, Tombs of the Nobles, and in the artist's village--Patty this was before your warning. You're not allowed to take photos, but for a little baksheesh, this guy didn't have a problem with one measly picture. This is the tomb of Joe Schmo...you can imagine what the pharoah's tombs were like!