Well, in a year of travel, I too have a few of these stories.

Luxor, Egypt

After a relaxing few days on a cruise between Aswan and Luxor, I joined a half day tour of the West Bank, then checked into my hotel in the late afternoon for some R&R (rest and relaxation). I discovered wifi in the rooms and logged on to twitter to find out that Jaime at BreakAwayBackpacker had just been to Luxor and done the Balloon (Hot Air) ride I was booked to do in the morning, and was now in Dahab, where I’d just been last week. I got in touch, and he told me that Norbert from GloboTreks might be in Luxor at the moment, so I should try and contact him.

A few minutes of Twitter and Facebook stalking later, and I see that Norbert is in fact in Luxor, and just happens to be staying in the same hotel as me. I got in touch. Even smaller world, he’s in the room right next door. Two travel bloggers who are friends in the blogsphere, checked in to the same hotel, in adjoining rooms, without knowing. We attempted to coordinate a catchup, but seeing as I was just arriving, and Norbert was leaving, we’d have to cross paths in this “small world” another time.

Ibiza, Spain 

I was sitting on a beach in Ibiza several months back, just enjoying the recovery time after nights of partying.. as you do in Ibiza. I began talking to some guys sitting nearby who sounded distinctly Australian.

Turns out they are from Perth (Australia) too. One of them actually went to school with my cousins. Halfway around the world, and running into people who grew up in the same neighbourhood.

Prague, Czech Republic

An ex-girlfriend of mine (I met her in Athens, Greece) was in Prague for New Years Eve, her and her best friend just happened to be staying at the same hostel as me and my tour group of 100.

We were checked-in at the same time, but when I tried to organise a rendezvous, she gave me the slip. Apparently she had an early morning bus to Vienna. Funny how that happens with ex-girlfriends.

Pamplona, Spain

On a train near Sorrento (Italy), I met 4 Australian girls just starting out on their backpacking trip.

They caught me writing in my travel journal, and were asking about it. I let them know all about my grande travel plans, my website, and my general thirst for adventure. I told them I was heading throughout Italy before going to Spain, and in a month or two heading to Running of the Bulls.

They said they planned on going too. Cool. Normal right? You meet a lot of backpackers doing the same circuit in Europe.

“Lets meet up at Running of the Bulls” they say.

“Sure, I say… (usual sarcasm and skepticism)… I’ll find you amongst the several hundred thousand runners dressed in red and white”.

Fast-foward several months, a new country, a new city. I’d just been thrown out of the bull run by the police, and I notice these 4 cute girls dressed up to the nines, trying to get a glimpse of the run, taking photos, and talking amongst themselves.

“Hey, aren’t you that guy?” one of them asked me.

“Huh?” I say. Having no idea what they’re talking about.

“Yeah, you’re that guy from Australia that we met on that train in Italy; between Sorrento and Naples wasn’t it?”

“Oh yeah, I remember you guys now! How are you?”

“Hahaha. Small world.  We told you we’d see you again!”

And one more time, just to show you how often it happens. At the same Running of the Bulls, just crossing a street on the way to the opening day party (txupinazo) I ran into my friend Tyler who I met months earlier in Santorini (Greece) having the summer of our lives. We just happened to bump into each other in the street. He was in a hurry to get to his hostel to change into the right clothes (white shirt, pants, and red scarf) so we agreed to meetup later, but this time it didn’t happen.

Surely you too have stories like these? Share them in the comments, or share this post on your social networks. 

* flickr header image credit alanosaur

You guessed it; I’m an advocate for carefree open itinerary travel. Where you book a one-way ticket to a destination of your dreams, make sure you get the visa, and let destiny handle the rest. Come on! It’s an adventure! You don’t have to know where you will be next month, or even next week. Just take a risk. But there are a few precautions you should take.

Have enough money. If you don’t have $2000+ in a bank account (my advice for starting on a long-term trip), or a couple of low-interest-rate credit cards, then maybe plan your finances a bit before you buy that ticket to somewhere you’ve always dreamed of. But seriously, you don’t need to be rich. Just a few thousand dollars to allow you to get a return ticket if things go pear-shaped.

Click here to read the rest.

* flickr header image credit Kaushal Karkhanis

Uh Oh. Wtf have I done? was my immediate thought. I couldn’t really hear anything, it was muffled, like I still had water in my ear.

I did what anyone (with an Internet connection) would do, I googled it to see what was up. Wtf? Barotrauma. Seems a bit extreme.

I walked down to the dive shop where I go everyday to start my course at 9am, and met my instructor.

“Hey dude, I don’t think I can dive today. I’m having trouble hearing in my left ear. Maybe its Barotrauma?”

“Hahaha. How do you know about that? I don’t think so, but let’s call the doctor and see”.

I had no idea how much this was going to cost me, but I checked up with my travel insurance coverage before I left camp this morning, and I am covered for SCUBA diving, as long as the instructor is certified.

“Mate, I hate to ask, but are you certified?”

“Why are you so cynical? You don’t think I know what I’m doing? Here. Look. I have MANY certifications”

*proceeds to show me his 10+ PADI cards*

“I don’t doubt your ability, I just want to check for my insurance”

Then when the doctor arrived, he looked about 22, I felt like asking him for his credentials. There was no receipt for the consultation, so I don’t like the odds of getting anything back for that. But at $50 LE (Egyptian Pounds), I don’t think it’s worth the hassle.

“There’s nothing wrong with your ear that I can see” he said. “But you have lots of wax buildup, so go to the pharmacy and get these”

*writes down a wax removal ear drop, and an anti-inflammatory (I think.. hard to read handwriting)*

“It could just be compression of the wax in the ear. To be safe, clean your ears out, take the medication, and don’t dive for 2 days” he says.

I’m just glad there was no permanent damage. I’ve always had trouble equalizing my left ear (that I’ve noticed in the last year of air travel). I let the doctor and dive instructor know. But the instructor said you never have trouble with just one ear, it must be stress/anxiety related. He’s probably right. The doctor had left by this point, so no second opinion; he took his $50LE and ran.

Had to take the meds 3x a day for 2 days, with no diving. So I used the opportunity to study the 200 page open water divers manual; eat the food; meet the people.

Total cost $85LE ($13), including medication.

But I’m really looking forward to getting back into the water. I should be able to finish an Open Water course, and maybe an Advanced course before I head off to Giza to see some pyramids. Maybe.

* flickr header image credit Photos by Mavis. Other images 1, 2, 3.

After my introduction to diving yesterday, I decided to go ahead and spend a week in Dahab, Egypt. It’s somewhere off the Red Sea between Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia …go look at your atlas, I’ll wait.

Dahab is an awesome tourist town, a lot smaller and friendlier than the resort-style city of Sharm el-Sheikh, just my kind of place. There are only 2 main roads in the town, and plenty of souvenir shops selling their wares. Hostels/hotels and other accommodation may not be prevalent online, but you can just get a taxi or private transfer from the airport or bus station and walk through the town until you find one with a view you like, and for the right price.

Like I said in my last post, everything is a bit on the quiet side, seeing as though its off season, and the whole revolution going on in Cairo and Suez. A couple of girls got kidnapped in Mt Sinai today actually, the day after I was there. News reports mention guns, but the locals assure me it wasn’t so violent… from their guys on the ground. Everyone is talking about the football riots too, its damaging tourism, and making big news internationally.

I’d never intended to do a dive course in Dahab, but it is item #26 on my bucket list, so why not? The sun is shining, I have 20 days in Egypt, and the people here are friendly.

As it turns out, I am in one of the most sought after locations in the world for divers. Everyone knows about Thistlegorm, Blue Hole, and Canyon dives. Thistlegorm is closer to Sharm el-Sheikh and requires an advanced divers certification; which I might still get.

My first day of the course started at 9am, my dive instructor is a young but experienced deep sea/rescue diver and instructor. He’s missing a thumb. I haven’t asked why yet. But curiosity is getting the better of me. Shark attack? Snapping turtle? Or something non-diving related? He tells me he did the 50m Blue Hole dive once, the one where tourists die. 50m if you don’t know is stupid-silly depth. Its not advised to go below 30m, or 40m if you are very experienced.

I would like to see the blue hole, dive it, or snorkel it (if I don’t get the right certification), but I have no ambition of diving down to 50m to swim through the hole in the reef.

My first day in the open water course involves an enclosed dive, and an open water dive. I get taught 4 skills that I will have to demonstrate. There’s also a DVD to watch, and a chapter in a book to read, with a quiz. At the end of the course I get a multiple choice test, so I have to pay attention. That, and diving can be extremely hazardous to your health if done irresponsibly.

The enclosed dive was relatively simple. I learnt how to breathe, how to clear the regulator, how to clear my mask underwater, how to find my regulator when displaced.

We didn’t go much deeper than a few metres for the whole experience. Enclosed dives are commonly done in a swimming pool environment, but here in Dahab the beach is so wonderful and calm, it’s a swimming pool – like environment.

After 40 minutes of diving we returned to the dive shop where I got out of the gear, and went for some lunch. The food here is really good, and cheap, if you stay away from the touristy restaurants.

For the second dive, the open water dive, the instructor lead the way and had me follow; demonstrating all the skills I learnt in the enclosed dive.

I had a lot of trouble equalizing my left ear, it gets a bit funny sometimes, I’ve noticed even when I fly. I let the instructor know with the appropriate signals, and we ascended, equalized, descended; and continued until it stopped hurting. It never did clear properly.

A few times when he had me demonstrate my awesome underwater swimming ability (swim around obstacles without touching the reef or kicking up dust), I started to ascend, and before I knew it I was at the surface. Turns out my body wasn’t quite horizontal, so I was kicking upwards. It’s so hard to tell which way you’re going when you’re 19m deep.

“Just watch your bubbles to figure out which way is up”

Of course. Makes complete sense right? But if you are twisting and turning down quite deep it is easy to get disorientated, I can see how divers end up drowning.

At one stage after doing a simple 180 degree turn at the reef I managed to get dizzy and disorientated. It took 30-40 seconds before I regained equilibrium and figured out where I was. Luckily I had the instructor there.

The reefs in Dahab are really something else. I can’t compare them of course, because I’ve never dived any other reefs before. But they team with fish and aquatic life, and its only a few metres from the beach. There are dozens of dive sites along the coast too. I can’t wait to get certified so I can explore some of the more advanced dives, like the Blue Hole.

* flickr header image credit Moon Fish. Other images 1, 3, 4, 5

Mt. Sinai is on the Asian side of Egypt, the Sinai peninsula, and stands at about 7,500 ft. Sinai, which separates Africa and the Middle East, has long been a land of conflict; ruled by Egyptians, Ottomans, Britain, and Israel; but it’s part of Egypt these days.

The drive (from Dahab) took over an hour, and there were police checkpoints on the way. We arrived at the carpark by 1am, met our guide, and started out on our pilgrimage up the mountain — in the middle of the night.

Have you ever been hiking up a mountain in the middle of the night? I haven’t, until now. I thought there’d be torches, or something. There wasn’t. It’s hard to climb up rocky paths and winding steps in the dark, and freezing cold.

It’s exhilarating though, climbing Mount Sinai in the middle of the night, under a starlit sky, passing camels for hire and tea/coffee kiosks all the way up. It’s quite unsettling though, not knowing exactly where you are stepping, relying heavily on your guide, knowing that a couple of feet in the wrong direction and you will be sent tumbling down a cliff in the pitch black darkness. I looked to the summit, or where I thought it would be, but couldn’t make out anything in the darkness. So I just stepped cautiously, and tried to keep as close to my fellow hikers (with torches) as possible.

We took the slower, windier camel trek, as it’s safer to hike in pitch blackness; we reserved the 3000+ stone-carved steps (by Monks) for the daytime hike down.

Before you climb Mt. Sinai, you will more-than-likely have your bags searched and passports checked, and have to enter through a metal detector: common practice in Egypt. We were lucky, being the middle of the night, the security was a little more relaxed than usual — not that I had anything to hide.

The trek up the mountain took hours, I was prepared with scarf and ski jacket, but it wasn’t enough. The temperatures must have been around zero, or just below (with wind, as we ascended higher-and-higher). Looking behind us as we ascended, we could see tiny white/yellow dots in a trail scattered like fireflies; the hundreds of tourists making the same pilgrimage, a race to the top to beat the rising sun.

Most of the group I hiked with were couples, over to Egypt for 10-12 days taking advantage of the low-season and low prices. We discussed travel plans and itineraries, but I didn’t really click with anyone to join up for future travel. It’s a bit like that sometimes with short-term holiday makers. It wasn’t important, I was there for the experience of climbing the legendary Mount Sinai, where Moses received the 10 commandments from God.

I’m not much of a religious person, but I don’t think it matters. Myth, legend, or fact, it’s still something worth doing. Climbing to the top of the mountain to watch the sun come up, descending down the 3000+ steps to Saint Catherine’s Monastery (one of the oldest in the world) to see the ‘Burning Bush‘ that God used to appoint Moses the leader of the Israeli evacuation from Egypt.

We reached the summit before 4am, and the sun wasn’t expected to rise until 7am, so we used the opportunity to gather in one of the few huts near the top, drink Bedouin Tea, and huddle under blankets for warmth. I managed to get 30 or 40 minutes worth of sleep, while trying not to freeze to death.

As soon as the first red light started to appear over the horizon we made our way to the best viewpoints with some other 250+ tourists to watch the sunrise, and what an experience it is; whether Moses stood here to announce the 10 commandments, or not.

Right at the summit is the Chapel of the Holy Trinity, built in 1934 — I can’t but help wonder how. All those bricks.

At 7:15am my small group made our way back to our guide for the pilgrimage down the 3000+ steps to the Monastery. The hike down was difficult on the knees, but the views and photos were worth it.

At the Monastery itself, once you got passed the touts selling their religious merchandise and geodes, you could enter the grounds and the church, which has a lot of religious significance that I won’t go into here.

Let’s just say its worth the hike, the cold, and the Egyptian entrepreneurs trying to sell camel rides.