We unpacked the most basic essentials and went to bed. We slept for a solid 18 hours. It was great to be back in our own house, in our own bed. Now that we are well rested, we are feeling pretty good, but are not particularly motivated to work on our infinitely long list of boat chores.

This morning we went to breakfast at the hotel. Included with breakfast was a selection of juices. We tried hibiscus, cantaloupe, tamarind, and licorice. None of them had a particularly strong taste, and except for the cantaloupe, none were very sweet. The hibiscus looks like grape juice and the taste is somewhat similar to cranberry juice. Had it not been labeled, we would have assumed it was cranberry juice that was somehow not right. The cantaloupe juice is a bright orange and tastes like yummy, vine ripened cantaloupe. The tamarind juice is very dark, almost a dark brown. It is pretty good, something different than we have ever tried. Now that we have tasted the juice, we realize over the past few months we have had quite a few foods that probably had tamarind in them. We both eyed the licorice juice skeptically. It is a light tan color, and had little black things floating in it that resembles pepper. We braced ourselves, expecting it to taste like Jagermeister. Fortunately, it wasn’t nearly as bad. It definitely has a black licorice taste, which neither of us likes much. But it isn’t terribly strong, and we could have drank a full glass if nothing else was available. We also tried a new fruit. We are pretty sure it is called a greengauge. It is the size and texture of a small cherry, but inside there are tiny, edible seeds instead of a pit. It tastes a lot like an apple. They are good.

After breakfast, we booked a dive trip for tomorrow. They are by far the strictest company we have ever dived with. They needed to see our logs. If we hadn’t dived recently enough, we were required to have a refresher course before we could go out. Fortunately, a month was within their time limit, so we were OK. We also had to buy dive insurance or they wouldn’t take us out. They are also the most expensive company gone with, too.

For lunch, we went over to the other side of the complex. The shortest path is blocked by construction, so it is a pretty long walk to get to the other side. There is a fancy hotel, a convention center, the marina office building, and several condo complexes. The first floor of the condo buildings are commercial, with a few restaurants, coffee houses, banks, souvenir shops, and most importantly, an ice cream shop. More than half of the stores are still vacant. The buildings are all very nice, looking like they were built with top quality building codes. There are fountains and other attractive décor. We also realized all the mega yachts are actually live aboard dive boats (where the boat is your hotel and you spend the whole week going from dive spot to dive spot), and the ones we saw all looked to be full. There were a ridiculous amount of security guards and maintenance staff walking around, most with nothing to do. The maintenance guys were doing things like wiping off the light bulbs and sweeping the immaculately clean sidewalk. Other than the security guards and maintenance guys, there were very few people walking around, and we suspect most of them were workers in jobs that didn’t require uniforms.

We saw a map of the master plan for Port Ghalib. When they are done, it is going to be huge, and really nice. There is going to be a golf course, houses on canals, and much more. It will be a small city.

The marina office recommended we eat at The Fish Market. They had a counter with whole seafood on ice. You choose the pieces you want out of the case and they cook them up for you. We ordered grilled sea bass and a grilled calamari appetizer. They brought out a tray full of assorted salads and appetizers, asking if we wanted any. We tried eggplant and tomatoes stuffed with a bell pepper (capsicum) and mild chili pepper filling. It was really good. Then they put the calamari plate on the table. Our eyes almost popped out of our heads when we saw real, honest to God sizzling fajitas on a traditional hot plate. We did a double and triple take. Could it be? Were our eyes deceiving us? Fajitas in Egypt? We dug in. Yup, they were fajitas and they were wonderful. How we got lucky enough to stumble across Mexican food in Egypt without even realizing it is beyond us. God must be rewarding us for something. The sea bass was also really darn good, grilled with onions, bell pepper and tomato, but not fajita style. There were about 8 staff. We were the only people in the restaurant. We got amazingly good service, on top of excellent food.

Other than eating, we did some easy chores and tried to arrange a tour to Luxor, which is northeast of us. A “limo” would cost USD$375 for an overnight round trip, which is significantly more than we paid to go to Cairo. We find that bizarre since Luxor is a much shorter drive than Cairo. It looks like we need to go to a town with more transportation options if we are going to go sightseeing.