Egypt, Day 2

So, it's the first day in our resort in daylight. Obviously we have to go and see what the beach looks like.



Hmm, not so keen on lying on the beach all day... Much more interested in other things, like this cunningly disguised radio transmitter.



Here's a little confusing image for my (straight) male readers, but see if you can work it out. Can you see a camel in this picture?



We were walking along the 1,5 mile beach of the holiday resort Taba Heights, shared by the five different hotels along it.



We see lovely lounging chairs and parasols, people wading and snorkelling in the water here and there... And suddenly we come across this sign:



Did you miss that? It was:



Huh? Well, we decided to walk on and check out another "sea entrance" further along the beach: the long jetty.







Once we got to the end of the beach, we continued walking up the hill.



...but couldn't go to far as we didn't have drinking water with us. So, just had a look at the view...





...and turned back.

Back at sea level... A local dove (exact species not identified by me yet)



Yellow wagtail.



Late lunch and a drink at a strange HDR'ed place in the "village" of Taba Heights.



And back to the hotel via the beach camel. If you are going to read all the posts from our Egyptian trip, prepare yourself for a lot of camel photos. I can't help it; I've always loved camels.



Most evenings we sat on the balcony watching the changing light take the colours of the sea, sky and the mountains through a fascinating show of different tones and colour combinations. And here is a ridiculously long panorama (of 15 frames) from our balcony, mainly to demonstrate Photoshop CS3's fabulous stitching capabilities! All you need to do is stack your photos one on top of the other (all photos in one file, each photo in its own layer), hit Edit -> Auto Align Layers, and after that, hit Edit -> Auto Blend Layers, and as if by magic, you have a perfect panorama without ANY visible seams. (Provided that you have done the right thing and used same manual settings - aperture, SS and focus - for all the photos and used long enough focal length to avoid barrel distortion). All you have to do is crop and adjust levels, if necessary, and that's it. It's truly an amazing tool. Click on the photo to see bigger version of it.