Dahab is a small beach town on the Red Sea about an hour north of the more famous Sharm el-Sheikh. After my hectic month in Egypt I needed a few days to unwind, and I got it here by visiting Dahab. I was also able to do a day of diving at nearby Bells and the Blue Hole, which is a dive I did over 20 years ago when I was here last.
I was in a wonderful one bedroom beach front Airbnb. Unfortunately, it was really windy when I was here and I didn’t spend too much time on the patio.
Dahab is a really chilled place. There a number of beach front bars and restaurants, a small, efficient downtown just off the beach and a lot of open space just north of the town.
Visiting Dahab and Diving the Blue Hole
In January 2001 I spent some time in Egypt. It included a couple of days of visiting Dahab and diving. On one day we met some camels, loaded our dive gear on the camels, rode about an hour north and then did two dives at the famous Blue Hole. There were no buildings or other divers there, just some bedouins camping nearby. Between dives we went over and had mint tea with them. After the second dive, we packed up our camels and rode back. Below are two picture from that time.
Now there are a small string of shops and resaurants in the area and a modest, but very active diving and snorkeling scene right by the entrance. It’s one of the biggest changes in visiting Dahab.
The first dive we went down two really tight tubes call Bells. The name is from the sound diving tanks make when they bump up against the walls of these tubes. After all the cenote diving I’ve done in Mexico, it wasn’t that big of a deal, but one of the beginning divers with us had some troubles.
After the Bells we did a really relaxing drift dive before ending it at the Blue Hole. We had originally walked from the Blue Hole entrance a couple of hundred yards to the Bells entrance. Our second dive was a relaxing dive north from and then back to the Blue Hole.