Jeddah, The Red Sea, and Beyond

   The last several days have been full of fascinating adventures in Saudi: two and a half days in the major city of Jeddah (4 million), snorkeling in a well secluded cove north of Yanbu, wandering through Old Yanbu town at 10 at night, and all the while teaching very enjoyable classes, enjoyable students, and enjoyable curriculum. Man, it hardly gets any better. Well, ok, the temperature could relax a bit; I think it's made its point.
Jeddah seen from the air is exciting for first-timers like us, but in the end it looks like any big city except with far fewer high-rises, so I'll spare you the photos from the plane. Mall life in Jeddah is quite impressive if you like that sort of thing and many many do, but after seeing Starbucks and MacDonalds and TGIFriday's for the umpteenth time among the abaya shops, sports shops, and so on, I opted for the souks of old Jeddah, markets dating back a long long time, well into the Middle Ages. And perhaps the oldest commodity traded there has always been dates, and did I find a date shop. You wouldn't see this next to a Starbucks.
The people in the shop were most welcoming and, quite frankly, I was stunned by the variety of dates, spices, and assorted sweets. Dates rolled in sesame seeds (that's my order he's selecting in the photo), dates with almonds, dates in honey, dry dates, soft sweet dates, more dates than you can imagine. The whole thing was such an enjoyable experience, I thought about applying for work.
   Predictably, the souks are colourful in ways that North American-style malls aren't. Shops featuring beautiful bolts of cloth in all colours sold by men in stunning white thobes, less upscale shops specializing in rugs and wall-hangings, quite classy gold shops and silver shops, high-end shops with walls lined in an incredible variety of men's perfumes, steaming restaurants and food shops down crowded alleyways, all ready to sell you what you need. A wonderful relief about the souks, this with the crowded markets of Beijing still ringing in my ears after two years , is that no one is shouting about his wares, no one is badgering the window shoppers, the strollers, or the foreign geezers. I was never hassled nor harried, although one somewhat desperate looking fellow did try to sell me a pretty dodgy looking watch, but with the lowest of voices and the gentlest version of prodding hopeful insistence I've come across in a market. Here's a colourful shop window and below you see Rose and our good friend Marsha Phelps, new grade six teacher, trying to decide on which new abayas they'll get from one of about a dozen abaya stalls we saw when we returned to the souk late in the evening after my reconnoitering visit in the morning.

   The snorkeling adventure went much better this time, although Rose stayed home to get caught up with school work. She'll get her trip in a couple of weeks when Borden and Anita take us, the couple we originally tried to go with two weeks ago. The trip up the coast was eventful in that the low-lying and quite rugged mountains were well within view, camels grazed along the roadside but did not find us nearly as interesting as we found them, and as always the speed of most drivers was enough to make me happy we were only going 120km an hour.
   This spot is a fairly secluded cove about two km off the main highway, a multi-laned road much like the new sections of Hwy 10 near Toronto except for the fact that the strip of land which separates the two sets of lanes does not include a turn-off for drivers coming from the south, as we were. It was clear from the tire tracks in the sandy divide that one is expected to simply drive down into the divide and up the other side in order to cross the other lanes and get onto the road leading into the beach. A bit unusual, but look at the money the country has saved by not creating intersections.

    Besides the water being a lovely temperature for swimming, besides the geographic delights of the surrounding area, what mattered most was the marine wildlife, both the long gone and the very much alive. If only I'd had an underwater camera, I could show you the gorgeous colours of the coral, of the zebra-striped fish and gold fish, of fish dappled in all the colours you can imagine. But you'll have to settle for this crab I found. The other photo is of some exposed rock along the shore and you can see how most of it is actually the bones of ancient sea life, a fossil hunter's dream. By the way, if you click on the picture of the beach, you'll get a better look at those dark spots in the water, many of them quite close to shore; those are all coral outcroppings and each one is its own little underwater world. I'll try to get pictures to show you what I mean when we go in a week or two.












    We finally made it into the older part of Yanbu, where so many of the locals do their daily buying and selling. We visited a brass shop with a very colourful owner who was quite friendly and chatty, willing to lay out many many rugs for our consideration or tell us the story of the various items we showed the least bit of interest in. He's been in the same spot for 21 years and is the type of shop owner who makes going into the town a much superior experience to shopping at the mall. Our prize purchase is a cloth we're using as an end-table cover, a lovely piece of work which cost us all of 25 riyals (about 6 dollars). You can see my foot in the photo by which I cleverly create a sense of scale (note the fancy pj's purchased that same day).
   For those of you wondering about the school and what the teaching is like, we're saving up some photos and stories in order to have one whole blog be about our school life. As I mentioned in my opening, we are quite enjoying the staff, the students, and the teaching. Rose is even insisting I take a photo of the school cat Elizabeth, or as Rob Phelps calls her, Lizard Breath, to include in the blog about our working day. I feel I should get permission from the various people in the photos before I use them in my blog.  Perhaps the school will be the focus of next week's entry.