Suddenly I Sea

Looking for a change from Cairo, we decided to head south. Luxor is known for more fantastic tombs and ruins, but we wanted a sunny, beachy part of our Egyptian adventure, and with the Sinai too far out of the way, we settled on taking a bus to Hurghada with the intention of continuing on to Luxor. The overnight "VIP bus" seemed like the best choice and while being comfortable enough, it was difficult to sleep during the Islamic prayers being blasted throughout the bus for the first two hours of the drive (which began at 1am - nice). Once we arrived at 7, we showed up exhausted at a hotel that we knew from our guide book, but had not yet contacted. Luckily they had a room for us at a reasonable rate, so we began calling the 4 Seasons Hotel (no, not that Four Seasons) home.

Hurghada is a Red Sea resort city strung along the east coast of Egypt, near fantastic coral reefs for snorkeling and scuba diving. One of the first things we noticed as we rolled into town was all the Russian. All the shop signs and restaurant menus are in Russian, and we heard it spoken almost exclusively in the streets and on the beaches, a language that we agreed sounds like a record being played backwards. It turns out Hurghada is a quick, cheap flight from Moscow, making it a prime destination for Russian beachgoers. The biggest benefit to us was the fact that the street vendors hassled us in Russian rather than English, making them easier to ignore. At the same time, the Russians weren't always pleasant to vacation around. More than once we saw them display the most appallingly rude, hostile behavior toward waitstaff over really trivial issues. I hate to make such a sweeping generalization (apologies to the many Russian fans of the blog!), but we were a little scared.

The other defining features in town are the blocks and blocks of unfinished hotel and condo construction projects, with staircases leading to nowhere and naked pillars reaching upward, awaiting the next floor. The whole effect is kind of spooky, like everyone left the city in a hurry. In fact, that's close to the truth - our snorkeling guide whom we befriended told us tourism to the area has been cut in half, owing to the recession, so all construction has been halted for the time being. The builders literally stopped where they stood and haven't returned to work since. It's strange to see the state of the world economy illustrated in such a tangible, visible way.

Despite these idiosyncracies, Hurghada remains a cute beach city with a lot to do, although I have to admit we didn't do much. For a complete switch from bustling, noisy Cairo, we chose to slow way down in Hurghada, spending 3 full days on the beach and the 4th day snorkeling. We learned that Hurghada is very much a clubbing town - the Egyptian spring break destination - but since that's not really our scene, we slept late, brought a picnic lunch to the beach, read our books, and enjoyed seafood dinners. Ahhhhh. We've got sunburns on our sunburns but it has been really nice.

The snorkeling on the Red Sea reefs is spectacular, and if we'd had more time I would have been interested in getting scuba certified. The water is crystalline and so many shades of blue, and the reefs appear to be pretty healthy. We made two stops on our snorkeling trip, and at both saw hundreds of different kinds of fish, urchins, anemones, and some other weird things we couldn't name. Our last stop was on Gifton Island, just off the coast of Hurghada, where everyone else sunbathed but where our sunburns forced us into shade - we're still at the beginning of the trip and learning to moderate our sun exposure!


Hurghada was gorgeous and relaxing, but our time in Egypt keeps ticking away, so we couldn't stay on the beach forever. Once we'd had our fill, we boarded another bus for the long, hot trip to Luxor...