Hangin' at the Red Sea

Well, I've been living here in Saudi a whopping 2 and a half weeks.  (I swear I feel like I've been here for months)  And I've been lucky enough to hit up the Red Sea twice already.  

The Red Sea is just flat out gorgeous!  The water is such a beautiful color of blue, it's clear and in the summer it feels like bath water.   (click read more to read about where we went...)

                                   

Our first trip out took us to the Sharm.  There are quite a few "resorts" located here.  (I put the word in quotes because they are certainly not 5 star stateside resorts...but they are nice enough)  :)  

We went to Dolphin Bay.  We had a small beach and there was almost no one there.  (later in the day there wasn't anyone there!  we had our own private beach!)  The girls played in the water and the grownups chatted.  Matt took the girls, along with the other two dad's and boys, out for a boat ride...leaving the three moms...alone.  :)  Nice.  It was a lovely day and we had a great time. 

Our next trip found us at al-Hasi beach.  The day after Thanksgiving...yeah, can't say it's all bad here in Saudi!  Hitting the beach at the end of November...works for me!  :)  The beach is about an hour and a half drive from our house.  And along the way you get to see....sand.  :)  We did see some camels and a couple of herds of goats.  At one point, the road wasn't even lined to dictate where the lanes should be.  As we got close, we had to cut across the dirt median (dividing the highway) to make our way to the road we needed.  I'll say again...road rules are purely suggestive here!  Once we arrived, all the men had to go to a building and hand over everyone's passports or igama's (which is the residency permit...the girls and I are still waiting for ours).  This beach is monitored by the Saudi coast guard.  

After that was taken care of, we drove right onto the beach and parked. (hey Cali friends....jealous???  LOL)  We set up a huge tent and settled in.  A bunch of people went scuba diving and snorkeling...Matt snorkeled.  I didn't go this time...maybe next trip.  One of our friends said he hadn't seen so many different fish outside of an aquarium!  The girls found broken coral rolling around and some divers gave the girls some fantastic shells to keep.  (we are going to have quite the collection by the time we leave!)   

On a bad note...we all got burned.  Matt, me and the girls.  Yes...we used sunscreen.  So what happened??  Well, we guess that the Saudi brand sunscreen isn't as good as what we get in the states.  :(  Lesson learned.  Time to get a mass shipment of sunscreen!  :)

All in all, it was an absolute blast.  Can't wait for the next beach trip!