Author Archives: Eric

Port Ghalib Chores & Commentary

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First thing this morning, we called to check status on our bag. Yes, they would ship it a second time. It would go out today, to be delivered tomorrow to the front desk of the hotel, where someone was always on duty. It didn’t sound like they were going to charge us for the shipping. We had the front desk talk to the agent to confirm shipping details. We went to the front desk later in the day and told the next crew to be expecting our bag tomorrow.

Thanks to guidance from one of the dive crew, we found a tour company that offered tours to Luxor. Two good things today! It is a group tour package, with bus, tour guide, hotel, food and admission to attractions. While it is no by means cheap, it is probably overall less expensive than the “limo” when you factor in hotel, food, etc. The tour leaves the day after tomorrow, so we booked another dive trip for tomorrow.

We got to work on chores. Eric gave Kosmos a Continue reading →

Diving Marsa Mubarak in the Red Sea

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We dragged our gear over to the dive boat at 0800. We managed to get onto the nicest of the three dive boats at the hotel, and, except for the boat in Port Douglas, is by far the nicest dive boat we have been on. It has a big cockpit area for the dive gear, a large salon with plenty of tables and seating for everyone, and an upper deck full of couches for sitting in the sun. There were about 20 divers on board.

The dive spot we went to is called Marsa Mubarak, and it is in the Port Ghalib bay, near the entrance. We lounged for 40 minutes after we were moored before we finally suited up and jumped in. We headed north. The dive spot is quite pretty, but not spectacular. The hard coral is sort of in scattered mountain formations here and there instead of in a wall type formation. The landscape is dominated by a light pink soft coral that looks kind of like a geranium, ranging in size from tiny flower tops to large ones. At several points along the dive it actually looked like a flower field more so than a coral reef. There was also a lot of fire coral, which is bright yellow and looks like distorted pieces of lattice, like something that you would see in a Dhali painting. There were two especially large hard coral rock formations that the dive master referred to as “cleaning stations”. There were zillions of tiny fish swimming about, including glass fish and some goldfish. Those two spots were very pretty.

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All in all, there weren’t a lot of fish out and about. We did see a few large fish, including a grouper and a couple parrotfish. There were quite a few unicorn fish with the horn thingy on its forehead, and a lot of orangespine unicorn fish, which doesn’t have a big horn, and is pictured below:

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We also saw quite a few Continue reading →

Mexican Food in Egypt?

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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.

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After breakfast, we booked Continue reading →

Getting Ready to Return to Kosmos

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Another week has gone by since we wrote the last post, 18 days into our stay in the USA. We are absolutely thrilled to report that Eric’s mom went home from the convalescent home a few days ago. Her rapid improvement has been nothing short of amazing. Yes, she is still very sick, but seeing her get so much better so fast, it is easy to forget how sick she really is. We now have a lot of hope that she will beat the cancer altogether.

Now that she is doing better, at home, and her treatment and care strategies have been more or less situated, Eric’s parents have urged us to go back to the boat and continue with Our Plans. Once we got their blessing to go, we booked a flight back to Egypt. We leave in a couple of days.

In the beginning, Eric’s family was opposed to our trip. Now his parents are our biggest trip supporters and blog fans, which makes us happier than you can imagine. Eric’s parents enjoy hearing about our daily life and travel adventures via the blog, which are much more detailed than we could ever go into verbally. More than ever we feel they are traveling with us.

Though we are sad to be leaving our families, we are ready to get back to our own house (Kosmos is our house now), and to the slow paced cruising life we love. Our last few days at home have become more hectic than ever. We are trying to Continue reading →