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Published: November 25th 2015
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We said goodbye to our boat and crew in Edfu. Abto met us with a car for the 2-hour drive to Luxor where we could get our police permit for the 3-hour drive east to the Red Sea town of Hurghada. Police permits are required for any and all road trips outside the limits of whatever Egyptian city or town you are in. We drove over speed bump scarred roads. Past mud-brick villages and busy crossroads crowded with donkeys, horses and pedestrians. Every few miles we stopped for military checkpoints manned by bored looking soldiers. Their weapons resting against trees and walls close at hand. At most points when the officials saw two westerners sitting in the back seat they simply smiled and waved us through. The terrain flattened out into a stony desert landscape. We skirted a high, narrow ridge of sharp peaks that looked like a row of giant shark's teeth.
The city of Hurghada is Egypt's version of Cancun, Mexico. Seaside resorts clustered shoulder to shoulder for miles along the brilliant blue water. In the distance you can see the southern tip of the Sinai peninsula. Take a boat north and you'll reach the Suez Canal. Karen
and I had booked a room for 9-nights at the Makadi Garden Resort but when we pulled up to the main gate the guard told us that the Makadi Garden was closed due to construction. Instead we were directed to the Makadi Royal Azur hotel. The Azur is a pricey 4-star operation that usually goes for $180 US a night. We paid $62 a day with all meals included. Egypt has been very, very good to us. It's the same story all over Hurghada. Dwindling tourist numbers have forced the resorts to consolidate their operations so everybody is being corralled into the higher quality lodgings regardless of what they originally agreed to pay. Go to Bookings.com where you can still make reservations at the lower priced Makadi Garden and you will still end up at the pricier Azur. It's all good out here for tourists. For the Egyptians; Not so much.
We have a top floor room with a large balcony overlooking a palm tree-shaded swimming pool. When we checked in at the front desk the manager noted our US passports and told the clerk to put us in one of the select dwellings. They could have easily stuck
us in a ground floor unit facing a parking lot but they were so surprised to see Americans I think they wanted to showcase us for the other guests to see. Making the point that the Makadi Royal Azur is indeed safe for if it were not; Why would these normally paranoid Yanks be staying here? The desk clerk told us that he hadn't seen an American at the Azur in over a year.
The resorts here are populated by Germans and a smattering of Russians. The Russian numbers are dwindling due to Putin's ban on direct flights from Russia to Egypt. The Germans are package tourists who fly in and remain resort bound for their entire stay. The hotel offers day-trips to Luxor, ATV desert 'Safaris', spa makeovers, scuba diving and snorkeling trips. Meals are served buffet style in a large well-appointed dining room. The food is plentiful but boring. Same sort of food that we encountered on the Nile cruise boat. The rooms are large and well furnished. Hotel staff is professional and helpful. English is the language of commerce here although the hotel workers have difficulty understanding our American accented English so we speak to them
using German accents as if we were acting out the part of a U-Boat commander in a war movie. It works.
The beach is superb. You can snooze on padded recliners and we have Egyptian attendants who will adjust your beach umbrella and put up a rattan windscreen if the breeze bothers you. Every day the towel attendant gives you a big, fluffy, freshly laundered blanket-sized terrycloth.
There's a decent gym here and Karaoke every other night on a giant poolside stage. They have three sitdown restaurants with themes like the 'Oriental' which we thought meant Chinese food but no; it was Middle-Eastern food served in a tent made of Persian carpets. Here they served us Parker House rolls with hummus. Yummy.
The first time I saw the Red Sea was in 1973 when Rick Stites and I were assigned to an Army installation in Eritrea. We had access to an Army R&R station in Massawa where we spent our days lounging by the water and catching some rays. Soldiering is tiresome work and we needed our rest. Quite a bit of it as things turned out. It was here that I was first introduced to scuba
diving and snorkeling by an Italian banana plantation owner and his cousin Adolfo who was later eaten by a Great White but that's another story. Those were some of the best days of my life. We'd hire Arab Dhows on weekends to boat us across the Red Sea where we would camp out on goat populated islands and snorkel some of the world's most beautiful reefs. That was 42-years ago. I've been boring KJ with stories about those trips for years now and I was looking forward to showing her exactly what it was that had captured my imagination. But 42-years is a long time and I have witnessed the destruction of corals just as impressive as the Red Sea's and they were laid waste in periods of time far less than 4-decades.
We hired a boat for the day and set off to a recommended spot less than a mile from our hotel. I was not disappointed. We saw dozens of beautiful fish species and we saw them by the thousands. Huge parrot fish. Angelfish in hues of scarlet and gold. Big Grouper, Pipe-fish, Damsel fish busily cleaning the scales of all comers. Clouds of Neon Tetras and
Clown-fish haloed around amber Brain corals that measured a meter in diameter. Fan corals in sage green and lemon yellow spread their intricate branches in plates 6-feet wide. The water was crystal clear and the sandy white bottom was visible at depths of 40-feet or more. We visited 4 reefs and each one was more beautiful than the last. You could spend a month in these waters and never see the same place twice so great is the variety. The Red Sea is an amazing place.
The weather has been perfect. 80 degree days and 70 degree nights with not a drop of rain. The whole thing has been pretty close to damned perfect but it sure does make you lazy. Having people running around making your life as effortless as possible that is. I've never developed a taste for life as a colonialist. Here I see tourists treating staff like private servants. They employ a rudeness that borders on abuse. It seems to be common in other places I've visited. Places like Tunisia and Morocco and Greece. Countries that were under the boot during the Second World War. Some folks just get a taste for it.
Our
room attendant's name is Khaled Gamal. Three kids, one wife and sixteen rooms a day to clean seven days a week for $100 a month in wages. It's the same story all over Egypt. Hotels are closing as tourist numbers continue to slide. Construction projects stopped mid-stride. Streets lined with windowless buildings. They've built a beautiful new air terminal in Hurghada. A really nice place with only a smattering of daily flights. Exhaustive security screening. The flight crews get shaken down harder than we do. Gated hotels. Bomb sniffing dogs. Guards with automatic weapons. Soldiers in armored vehicles patrolling the highways and they're all there for the same reason we have TSA employees in American airports asking us to remove our shoes. To ease our minds. To create an appearance of security. It's theater. After a month here all I can tell you is that things in Egypt are fine. As fine as they are in any other place in the world like France and Belgium and the USA.
Egypt has been a surprise. Much better than we had anticipated. Wonderful people, amazing sights, incredible value and perfect climate. In the end, thirty-days was enough time for us to
Gene and Sabina
Gene is the son of a US Army officer and a German mom. He lives and works in Germany. He was the closest thing to an American we saw in Hurghada. cover Luxor, the Nile and the Red Sea.
It's time to move on.
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Len
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RedSea
Cool Mike. I recently saw some fantastic 360 views underwater along that coast. Awesome water and sea life. Must be a real trip to see it live and in person. Again I am jealous of your trip. Would love to see the architecture of Karnak and other sights in Egypt.