| Postcards
HURGHADA Dear I--, El Dahar is my favorite part of the town: the roads curl in a way the strip in New Hurghada doesn't. People (okay, men) are out on the streets, smoking cigarettes, sipping hibiscus tea, or tempting tourists like us into shop like "Spice Girls" (for real) where they hawk fine-ground ochre and sienna powders in burlap bags. The silence underwater is unnerving. At Shaab Petra I was nearly stung by a lionfish, poisonous quills aquiver, stalking the glassfish that swirled around us like a rainstorm slowed to visibility. Thank god the instructor caught my collar and pulled me away. I was too caught up watching the dumbshow-- forgot I was participant and observer. Ironic, isn't it, that the humpheaded parrotfish and hundred-year-old corals might not survive divers like us, whose fins and dials drag on the stones. Hurghada |