From sunrise over Luxor... to the Red Sea

We travel by road convoy from Luxor to Hurghada - 2 of these leave every day. Given that we are covering long stretches of uncontrolled territory this is the only way safe travel (and I use this term loosely) is possible. Between 20 and 30 minivans and coaches travel with 3 police vehicles, one up in front, one in the middle and one behind. There is a scheduled stop somewhere in the middle. More on convoys later...

We arrive in Hurghada early evening but as it is dark any visual delights or disappointments will elude us until morning. The kids make a dash for the pool and are ecstatic when they discover we have our own bit of Red Sea.

We wake early to catch our bus to our snorkling boat and my thoughts en route are one of disillusionment. Hurghada has gone from small fishing village to burgeoning resort town in the last dozen years or so - it's a gold coast in the making with barely any discernible Egyptian charm. And a lot of development is incomplete - I understand that the price of steel tripled in Egypt this year and building projects have gone bust.

The turquoise water (where did the "Red" come from?) turns my head back to the matter at hand but my initial thoughts of snorkling are less than enthusiastic, I don't know how to snorkel for starters, and our "safety" talk before we took the plunge did NOT involve so much as a "can you all swim?". We were however shown a chart of fishes and marine life we would see and what not to touch. I decided against asking what would happen if we did touch something we shouldn't - what is a holiday anyway if not an adventure?

Well, despite my skepticism it was FABULOUS. Holly and I picked up the breathing right away, probably helped by the fact that on first jumping in the water there were 2 dolphin several metres away and if we wanted a good look we needed to put our goggled faces into the water. Man, what a day we had. I'm a fan of snorkling forever! We visited 3 sites including a real desert island and arrived back exhausted but happy.

The next day was completely free and if memory serves, the day I finally got my act together and wrote my first proper travel blog - the one about Aswan and Abu Simbel. And I think we are almost finally caught up...

We got the 1.00pm convoy from Hurghada to Cairo last Tuesday. I want you to take a look at the last photo I've added. The one taken from the inside of our minivan (don't be lulled by the winnie-the-pooh) and note that you can see four other similar vehicles outside our front window. You might think, "So what? It's part of the convoy or something". The thing is we are not parked or even stationary... we are travelling at speed this way for about 200km! The photo quality is actually pretty good - if you want to know what speed we were travelling you should zoom in on the speedometer. Crazy bloody Egyptians! Fortunately this shot was taken on the first leg of our 6 hour journey - the 2nd driver excercised no such restraint, but at least we were up the front of the convoy this time!

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