Going to Egypt-the long way there 8-27-11

So excited, Ramadan is ending finally and I can resume my travels. We decided to take the ferry and a bus to Cairo. The ferry takes an hour and the bus should take 6-7 hours. First we took a 1 hour cab ride to the Amman bus station, we got tickets on Jet to go to Aqaba and from there we will take the ferry to Nueiba, Egypt. We thoroughly checked the web for bus schedules and found that we would get to Aqaba after the ferry left for Egypt so we decided to stay in Aqaba for the night. By "we" I mean my cameraman and guide Rayan, I could not make this trip without him. He not only speaks Arabic and is a native Jordanian  he is also very protective of me, I would not feel safe traveling alone and really there is no fun in going on an adventure alone.
We had a nice evening in Aqaba even though the hotel was on the south end and all the shopping and restaurants were on the north end so we had to take a cab all around and it wasn't as cheap as we hoped. After a nice dinner and buying a few snacks for the long trip tomorrow we decided to do a little swimming in the dive pool at the hotel. This pool starts at 3 ft deep and drops off suddenly to 6 ft with a max depth of 9 ft. I'm not saying that I am a great swimmer but lets say I am a great floater. When you have extra body fat this is the one time it works in your advantage and I effortlessly floated around the pool. Rayan on the other hand doesn't have an ounce of fat on him. I asked him if he could swim and he said it had been a while but that he indeed could swim. Well Rayan did fine in the 3ft part of the pool but as soon as he stepped off to go to the deeper part he started to flounder ie: sink like a stone. I thought he was goofing around as he did not look panicked and it all sort of happened in slow motion and was surreal. He sank, came up but didn't take a breathe and then sank again. I thought should I jump in? Should I throw him the life preserver? This time when he came up he was doing the dead man's float and I thought nice Rayan, very convincing. I was still sitting on the deck chair watching him looking for signs of distress when all along the whole time I should have realized he was in distress but thought he was kidding around. Finally, he started kicking and moving his arms and somehow made it to the side the pool. Thank god he was ok just shaken up a lot. He said he didn't panic and didn't know why he sank like that. First fresh water is not as buoyant as salt water and second if you have a lean body you will not float easily. We decided to get some rest as we have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.