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16 March 2011 Ras Muhammed

3/24/2011

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We continue to marvel the wondrous location of our campsite: 10 steps from the edge of the water in our private coved-in beach. We pack the car for what Willie calls “dive-crawling”. Our first stop is at a beach where several other people are snorkeling – clearly a popular place as there are mini-vans that brought tourists.  I sit on the beach while the 3 guys go in. I am intrigued with a woman, bare feet, with a head and mouth covering, who is reading from a book which could be the Koran and my thoughts are that she must be a very devoted Muslim. She is part of a group – 2 middle-aged men and another woman with a headscarf – fully dressed but enjoying the beach. The woman walks my way and then addresses me in a thick English accent asking me whether I think it is ok for her to keep a shell she picked up from the beach. She sits down next to me and we have a very interesting conversation. They are from Yorkshire in England and are visiting. She’s been raised in England and they have a small business. Her every word revolves around her belief and she shares very interesting facts with me – many about her own struggles with racism after she hears that I’m originally from South Africa. She tells me a little of her family and my appetite has been whetted to hear more about her when they had to go. I am disappointed and really would have liked to spend more time with her.

Picture

I go into the water after the guys report that the coral and fish are beautiful. I am carried into a different underwater world – a world that silently continues to exist; filled with incredulous beauty and life; a world I never knew of and words cannot express my gratitude for the privilege I have to experience this.

As I surface from the underwater world I notice that Fatima is back and is talking to Hugo and Andrej while her husband is having a conversation with Willie. She comes to me and I give her my e-mail address. She tells me that it is not a coincidence that we’ve met and that we will hear from one another again. I will be so happy to continue my conversation with her and to get to know her and her family better.

On with our dive-crawling and the next stop is where several boats, hovering slowly over the coral reefs, can be seen. Willie and I go in first and I get smashed on the shallow reef a few times before entering into deeper waters. What we see is breathtaking – a never-ending lush, colorful underwater coral garden with fish – big and small, different shapes, sizes, colors, everywhere – as far as the eye can see – a magic, silent, unseen, underwater world – magnificent, brilliant, wonderful, dazzling, bravura fall short in describing the beauty!

We see two new species of birds and suddenly a very unusual bird appears from nowhere – we could not identify it, except that it kept on saying, “I’m hungry, I’m hungry…!”We are still working on it.




We go to Sharm-el-Sheikh to buy food and find a dead tree on an empty lot. The American cowboy and African farmer conquer the tree and we leave Sharm loaded with a wood supply for a long awaited evening fire. We have our first “braai” (barbeque) – with Kofta (a kind of spicy sausage), onion and potatoes in foil with pita bread to round it off. We watch an interesting, controversial documentary (quite bizarre – watch a movie on a laptop on the edge of the Red Sea in the Mount Sinai desert!) on the true location of Mount Sinai: Saudi-Arabia or Egypt…? A perfect day at a perfect place!

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    Author

    Caren

    "There is something about safari life that makes you forget all your sorrows and feel as if you had drunk half a bottle of champagne - bubbling over with heartfelt gratitude for being alive. One only feels really free when one can go in whatever direction one pleases over the plains, to get to the river at sundown and pitch one's camp, with the knowledge that one can fall asleep
    beneath other trees, with another view before one, the next night." -
     Karen Blixen - Out of Africa, Kenya
    'Of course as I am reading this, I know that you DO get your visas and the container DOES get released, but oh the internal struggle we face even though we should trust (as Hugo does) that God has His hands on all things and is constantly taking care of us.'


    From a Friend:
    :) Crazy to think that we are ALL made of blood, bone and water yet we speak in so many tongues that getting along together becomes a massive task within itself.

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