Flashback: Diving the Red Sea

Before diving in (sorry) to the story of the week we spent scuba diving in Sharm el-Sheikh, we just wanted to say how thrilled we are for the people of Egypt now that Mubarak has officially stepped down. There was a strong sense of resignation and apathy when we were there – a feeling of “What’s the point?” that pervaded the few political conversations we had with locals. I remember our guide Mohammed saying that things were never going to change because the corrupt government made all the rules. The contrast behind that defeatism and the images and stories we’re seeing out of Cairo today could not be more stark. We wish them all the best.

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CPCD (Contagious Political Chaos Disease)

Greetings! We will now be turning to the phase of our trip we affectionately like to refer to as our Adventures in Developing World Political Chaos. Over the span of a couple of weeks in May, we managed to stumble into not one, but TWO countries on the verge of meltdown as their respective political crises essentially shut down big portions of both countries, leading us to wonder if we were carrying some kind of contagious political chaos disease.

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The Spirit of Santo

We arrived in the little town of Luganville on the northern Vanuatu island of Espiritu Santo with only a vague idea of how we wanted to spend our time, but we knew there were some great scuba diving spots around the island (including the WWII-era shipwreck of the USS Calvin Coolidge), a few sandy beaches worth seeing (how could a place called Champagne Beach not be beautiful?), and one crazy cave that Lonely Planet highly recommended we check out.

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Finding My Inner Nemo

Cairns (or “Canz” as it’s pronounced by a nation that seems to have a collective speech impediment when it comes to saying their r’s) was a shock to the senses after our week in the Outback. The stifling humidity and lush greenness of tropical Queensland was a stark contrast to the hot desert air and sparse vegetation of the Red Center. We stepped off the plane in Cairns and immediately began to sweat. But that was ok because the bush flies that had been the bane of our existence for a week were finally thousands of miles away. A little perspiration (or a lot, depending on which half of Lustin you’re talking about :) was a small price to pay for a “swat-free” lifestyle.

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Photos from Uluru and Kata Tjuta

A quick update before Laura and I hop on a boat and finish up our scuba diving certification course for a couple of days. We’ve uploaded photo albums from our first two days in the Red Center of Australia — Uluru and Kata Tjuta. We really do have some fun highlights to share from our week-long adventure in the outback (some of which don’t even mention flies), but they’re not quite ready for public consumption. Our brains are a little waterlogged from two days in the pool doing exciting things like pretending our air tanks have run out of air, doing underwater acrobatics to remove and replace our BCDs and weight belts, and trying to decipher the hand signals from our PADI instructor Chris (almost as difficult as understanding his Irish accent).

We’ll get the rest of the Outback photos posted when we’re back on dry land, as well as some of the happier highlights from our 4WD adventure. Stay tuned!