SHARM EL SHEIK - EGYPT
Trip Start
Apr 30, 1982
1
8
21
Trip End
Dec 23, 2005
SHARM EL SHEIK,
Egypt
Monday, February 20, 2006
two years ago, at the end of the year I bought a last minute AR flight to Sharm el Sheik, Egypt.
Naama bay is very pleasant, it looks like a mix between Switzerland and Las Vegas.
Luxury hotels, beautiful gardens, plenty of handicrafts shops, bars, restaurants, McDonald's, neon lights, a beautiful walk along the coast and a hill on top of which it's very good to watch to sun going down, the lights of the bay switching on while sipping a fresh beer.
Unfortunately on same bay two hours after my air take off to Milan, one week later a french aircraft crashed down and more than two hundreds tourists lost their lives!
The day I passed in Naama Bay I took a boat excursion to Ras Mohammed, the sea park that allows you to snorkel a couple of times, to watch the rocky coast and a channel with mongrove trees
bar at Dahab
. The day after I took the first bus to Dahab a nice hippy seaside resort at about 100 km north of Sharm.
I found a cheap hotel along the coastal road, about two km long full of arab bars and restaurants, soft beds where you can smoke the egyptian narghilè after eating seafood and admiring the nice sunset.
At 100 meters from the narrow stone beach there is the coral reef and you can snorkel admiring plenty of coloured fishes of any shape and corals or dive deeper and deeper as this is the place for divind with dozens of schools and instructors.
I took some interesting excursions paying much less than in Sharm (50% or more).
The first to the Mose's mountain over St.Caterina monastery to watch the sunrise on the top afer a night climbing under millions of stars, trying not to fall down on the rocky path and avoiding dozens of camels going up and down with stupid tourists on them.
It was really cold and we stayed frozen awaiting for the sun while the locals were renting hot beverages and wool covers.
Unfortunately the monastery was closed!
The second excursion was to the white and red canyon and an oasi in the desert where we had our lunch.
The red canyon is amazing and it remembered me the Gran Canyon in Arizona.
We went down from the hedge and walked some kilometers in the narrow valley through pinnacles and some opened stoned spaces.
I also went to a berbere gipsy village on the sea hitchhiking from Dahab, after a two hours stop at Blue Hole, a little stone bay where hundreds of divers come to go down the deep and dangerous waters (many indications of youngsters died).
I passed the evenings meeting a lot of friendly tourists coming from all over the world in the pleasant bars and restaurants along the coastal road and a Happy New Year night in a crazy discoteque inside a big ship staying on the road.
Go to Dahab and let Sharm to common people!
