Once a Bedouin fishing village, the small town of Dahab is now firm in the grip of tourism. The main bay’s waterfront is lined with restaurant after restaurant, with the occasional café thrown in. The other side of the road is just as densely packed with shops and tour agents. With Egypt’s tourism crippled anyway and low season on top of that, most of the places are deserted. A restaurant that could seat 100 is now serving a guest or two.

After more than two years of dive-break, I went for a refresher dive yesterday morning. Just repeating how to assemble the gear and the basic skills like mask clearing and regulator retrieval. Following that, I added a nitrox course to my dive education, which now allows me to use different gas mixes for diving (e.g. 32% oxygen instead of the 20.9% in the atmosphere). The main purpose of that is to lower the nitrogen concentration in the body, which allows for longer bottom times and is also said to decrease “post dive fatigue”.

Just a few days ago, I gave to a friend my definition of what the difference between a tourist and a traveller is. A traveller has a lot of time but only little money - while with the tourist it’s the other way around. I pride myself on being a traveller. Moving at a slow pace, using local infrastructure and eating whatever it is they eat in the country I’m visiting.