Questallia

Egypt Travel - Hurghada, Red Sea

This is the last part of my Egypt travel and the last Egypt travel tips I have to share. After the dusty and noisy Cairo, with its large boulevards swarming of cars, after the impressive pyramids in Gizeh and after the exhausting bus journeys, we had the chance to rest a little on the ship, during the 4 days of Nile cruise. Now, back on the bus again, heading to Hurghada, a famous resort at the Red Sea. Again, the journey was extremely long and boring, we crossed the desert without barely any stop, making plans of what we are going to do in Hurghada: scuba diving, glass walls submarine rides, snorkeling and other refreshing activities. Of course, we noticed again how long Egyptian hours are: we were told that we are going to travel about 6 hours, and after half a day, we were still in the desert. There’s nop wonder Egyptians aren’t big fans of commuting by bike.

Suddenly, the landscape started to change, we were now crossing huge piles of garbage, dwellings in ruins, lots of debris spread around on the land. We were told that we are entering Hurghada. You can imagine that we were shocked that we are going to spend the rest of our vacation chasing lizards and ants among ruins. The next thought was that if those were the 4 and 5 star hotels promised, then the submarine ride would have been a hazardous adventure, given that the submarines were in the same shape as the buildings. After maybe 30 minutes of such a landscape, we got used to the idea of getting lodged in ruins, yet the driver seemed to be unstoppable. At a point, somebody from the group noticed that we were passing by the same ruins for the second time. We asked the guide, and we got the answer we would nave never wanted to hear: yes, we were lost, the driver did not know the way! What to do now? Killing the driver was not a solution, as we were not able to find the way by ourselves, considering by absurd that we had managed to drive that huge old bus. Killing the guide? Hmm, no, as he was only an employee, suffering the same shame year after year, with all the groups. Suicide? No way! After so much suffering, we were entitled to a last glass of beer and a swim in the Red Sea, at least. So we started to make jokes and laugh, as we were in our best vacation ever. The road got smaller and smaller, full of wholes, then the asphalt ended and we were on a narrow path, when the driver decided that was not the way, and he wanted to turn back the bus. It was really hilarious to see how many manoeuvres were necessary! Briefly, after this adventure, he remembered somehow the good way, and 30 minutes later we were in front of our hotel, the Sea Gull, a 4 star, all inclusive resort, which looked all right, not as we expected such a resort to look like, but at least it had all the walls in place, it had a roof and it was clean. Luckily, the rooms were nice, the food was OK, and the local beer was acceptable. The hotel had a nicely arranged garden, the weather was warm, so we could finally relax and enjoy the rest of our vacation. We enjoyed until the next morning. At breakfast, one of colleagues in the group told us that she had some stomach disorders, diarrhea and headaches. Too bad for her, we thought. Then, one after the other, some other colleagues had the same problem. By noon, almost half of the group was affected, and I imagine how funny it must have been to see us running on the corridors to get faster to the bathroom. The worst of all was that we got scared that we might have taken some Egyptian virus and we will die so young and so far away from home. We called a doctor, we took some medicines and after one day, we were all OK, maybe a little bit thinner, but alive. Then guess what: it started to rain! The local people told us that was the first rain in the past 5 years! How on Earth were we exposed to such a coincidence: we are there for two weeks and we catch the once in 5 years rain! Yet, the rain lasted only some 10 minutes, so it did not cause too much inconvenience.

The trip back home was by plane, and it was a pleasure, because the first plane we took was a Boeing 747, very comfortable, and which, unlike the bus and all the rest, seemed pretty new. Anyway, I think that I’ll not visit any African country so soon, especially that this Egypt travel came after other interesting trips: a China travel and a Thailand one. But this is another story, maybe I’ll tell it to you some other time.