Hurghada-Not a Disney Princess

Isabella Bonifacio-Sudnik

Traveler in Egypt-July 9thThe morning heat dove into the sea as I boarded the white boat, carrying my snorkeling gear. I sat at the front of the ship facing the breeze peering over towards the splotches of fluorescent turquoise in a navy plain through my cat-eye sunglasses. The wind was fresh and tangy doing the salsa with my short brown hair. The wind stopped dancing with me when the boat was docked near a reef in a cerulean diamond cove.

I felt like a penguin with asthma wearing snorkeling gear. You might have thought that I’m an alien, wobbling with bright flippers and biting onto a round plastic tube under my lips. Warm water greeted my skin when I jumped off the wooden planks. But oh my goodness, the Red Sea was so revoltingly salty. I swam around awestruck despite the taste. I had never been so close to a reef, only seeing them on google images. They all looked like they’d scratch me with their assorted textures and tear my skin open, turning the Red sea red. The tide carried my limp body under the waves between schools of fish. I saw much zebra-like fish covered in black and white stripes along with many other creatures varying in color and shape. Flat fellows eased across pale gray sand a fifteen-foot fall below me whilst puffy red and black ones brushed against green coral. I would have been enchanted to be Ariel so I pretended I saw what a mermaid would.

In reality, I didn’t always feel like a Disney character. That was my first time snorkeling and I made the huge mistake of eating salted mackerel and mickey mouse shaped pancakes for breakfast. My throat was still haunted by the taste of sickening sodium and choking on the horrid saltwater months later. Toilets were emptied onto my group and I wished I could forget seeing the toilet paper and clumps of fecal matter being picked apart by the mouths of all the fish. The boat made me extremely nauseous from the repetitive swaying. I laid down on padded benches as people swarmed to spectate dolphins over the ledges. My sister Julia spoke with a Serbian girl around my age. She seemed interesting but I was too dizzy to speak. The mango I ate once I got back to the Hilton rescued me from mental suffering. Mangos were a fruit I ate regularly in America and this one was more juicy, stringy, earthy, and larger than the ones grown in the western hemisphere. It was a refreshing 9/10. If I saw the beauty but couldn’t feel it, the experiences were unforgettable in a bad way.