October 2004
If I close my eyes, I can still feel the swelling of the water, and I see the incredible coral descending down to the sandy bottom. I just spent four days near Marsa Alam in Tondoba Bay – a part of the southern Egyptian coast that I have never seen. Most people haven't seen it because it is still hard to get to. There is no phone service there, and hotels are just beginning to pop up. Egypt Air doesn't fly to the new airport which opened up last year because it is private and charges too much, at least that is what I was told. So we flew to Hurghada and then were driven four hours south to Marsa Alam.
Next time I visit, I want to make the trek from Marsa Alam, another 300 kilometers south to see the camel market on the border with Egypt and the Sudan. This time, though, I went down there, to see the coral and to lie in the sun. The coral and the fish were spectacular. I still can't get over how beautiful that world is when you put your face in the water. It all looks so harmonious and beautiful and the range of colors stand in stark contrast to the arid desert landscape above.
We went out one day on the boat to a place in the middle of the sea where the coral forms a cove of sorts so that dolphins have used it as their "home". It is now designated as a "protected area" so that part is for the dolphins and part for the people. Since the sea was quite rough the day we went out, the dolphins didn't appear. In that place there is a coast guard boat and you are required to wear a life jacket. I had never worn one before when snorkeling, but once I was in the water, I could see why they made the rule. It was rougher than any place I had ever snorkeled, but also the most beautiful. Even just a short time, fighting the current was worth being able to see it. As everyone kept telling us, the coral in Marsa Alam is still virgin. And it's true. While it's not easy to get there, it is definitely worth the trip.
On October 5th, the day we left Cairo, the traffic to the airport was impossible, and our taxi driver took us through parts of Cairo I had never seen before, trying to find routes to get us to the airport on time. The sun was a bright orange circle as we finally drove into the airport, on time. The flight to Hurghada was not a problem and soon we found ourselves with our luggage looking at a boy under the age of twenty, holding a sign that said, "Blue Heaven Holidays". I joked to my friend, a couple of hours into the drive, that maybe they actually meant that we were going to see the blue heaven above, not below. It was quite a car ride!
The road itself was following right along the coast, but as it was dark all I could see were the lights of boats on the water. At one point I was trying to figure out what this red boat on the horizon was doing. I was thinking that I had never seen a boat like that before, when I suddenly realized that this was the rising crescent moon. After an hour or so, I realized that maybe the best strategy to survival on this particular drive would be to close my eyes and go to sleep and try to forget that as a general rule, it is not a good idea to drive on Egyptian roads at night. The drivers seem to have the opposite idea that we do in the States which is that they shine their brights just as they see a car coming, which in my mind acts to blind the driver, but probably in their mind it is done so that they can better see the driver coming at them and make sure he is awake! Our driver spent his time going fast and then slow, flashing the lights, and beeping the horn erratically. I wondered if he did this partly to keep from boredom on the straight desert road.
Next thing I knew the driver was putting a tape in the machine and we were hearing the most unusual music I have ever heard. It didn't resemble either the Arabic music I hear in Cairo nor the Bedouin music that the Beduoins sing in the Western Desert. As my friend put it, "this sounded like a cat in heat had been handed a microphone and given a background beat:". I'm afraid that's not a very flattering description but after hearing the tape three times in a row, she noted "that even he got tired of it". I guess next time, if there is one, we'll provide some tapes for the driver, for variety's sake, if for nothing else.
For the first hour of the ride from the airport in Hurghada to Marsa Alam, the driver's mobile phone rang constantly. I tried to understand the Arabic but couldn't. My Arabic is not good yet, but now I usually can understand a number of words here and there. But I could tell that this accent was totally different from any accent I had heard before. The only time I thought I understood what he said was when he told the various security guards at check points along the road that we were two Russians in the back seat and I thought I heard him say to someone on the mobile something about Port Said, which I wondered about since that town is at the complete opposite end of the country. Then suddenly the mobile phone stopped ringing. I learned later that the infrastructure for mobile phones hasn't hit Marsa Alam yet and so only when the wind is blowing the right way, and you are standing in the right place, might you get a signal!
Finally at 1am we drove into the Bedouin Valley Hotel. After driving along the coast for four hours, passing about five different glitzy hotel resorts separated by miles of bare coast line and only about two towns, my friend exclaimed, "We're leaving the coast!" I replied, "Well, Bedouins are desert, not coastal people..." But fortunately our hotel was only 300 meters from the beach and we learned later that this is part of a project by the Egyptian government to create eco tourism in the south and to protect the coast line. We had wondered what was going on when trying to make reservations because unlike the rest of Egypt all the prices were quoted to us in Euros and we were told at first that no discount would be given to foreign residents of Egypt. Normally as residents all hotel and plane reservations are half price for us. Eventually we were offered a discount at the Bedouin Valley Hotel and I could see why in the morning because there were only four other tourists (from Germany) staying there!
By 1am, I was exhausted and ready to go right to bed, but we sat down with Ayman to eat a few pieces of meat with lots of rice at outdoor tables under a thatch roof and listen to him talk. He told us that he had developed tourism in the Sinai and in Hurghada and was now starting the same process down here. (I think we might have offended him by mentioning that we hoped this would be done differently. I realized in retrospect that he is quite proud of the development in the Sinai). In my mind, the allure of Marsa Alam was that it was different from Sharm and Hurghada – that it still had its natural beauty.
Ayman explained that tourism was a project of the Egyptian government for political not just economic reasons. The quick buildup in the Sinai was an effort to get Europeans into that area. Now they were doing the same in the south. "Almost all our staff here is Bedouin" he said proudly.
The Egyptian government considers the Bedouin to be a problem because they are a different culture and follow different customs. Tourism here is a project of the Egyptian government to help with this problem. The Bedouin have networks all throughout the country and their main means of survival is smuggling. "What do they smuggle?" I asked. "Everything" he said, "From peanuts, to arms to people...". Later I found out that the Bedouin have no rights in Egypt. They do not have citizenship, are not allowed to own property and see their roots as based in Saudi Arabia not Egypt. Apparently there is a project to give them I.D. papers that are Egyptian but as far as I could understand they still do not have the rights of Egyptian citizens and still cannot own land. And it was interesting to see that the Bedouin we met here seemed completely different (from looks to speech to just about anything you can think of) from the Bedouin I have met in either the Sinai or the Western desert. And yet, I think, they are referred to as one group. And perhaps there are ties linking them. At least that's what Ayman seemed to imply.
In my mind, October is the last good month for snorkeling because I think the weather and water turns cold after that. For Europeans, weather in the 70s and colder water seems to be not such a big issue. And divers wear wet suits anyway. So, I guess the diving season was just beginning in Marsa Alam, not ending. In any case, it seemed to be the time for the owners and managers of the hotel to take their vacations. Over the next two days the owner of the hotel left, the manager left for a week's vacation, and the two people who seemed to be the ones organizing our trip – an Egyptian man, Ayman, who spoke perfect English and his German wife who had been making all the arrangements for us, left as well! The last night we were there by ourselves with the dive master, a young guy in his twenties and a number of Bedouin staff members who did not speak English. The other guests were the four Germans, five Swiss boys and three young Egyptians. I had lots of opportunity to practice my Arabic with the staff!
One day we came back to the room and sitting on the full length of the bed was a crocodile made out of towels, his mouth held open by my deodorant stick! The next day I had a beautiful swan with a necklace made out of towels and on my friend’s bed there were three small swans sitting in a circle. The older man who cleaned the rooms was pleased by our surprise and delight, he made sure he was nearby when we came back from spending all day at the beach so he could see our reaction. All the staff were very helpful, although sometimes they didn't know the answers to my questions. When I asked the second morning whether lunch would be served at the beach again or if we should come back, I was told that I should come back to the outdoor cafe at 2pm for lunch. Later I ran into Ayman's wife who informed me that lunch would be served at the beach at 1pm. As I didn't have a busy schedule planned, the change in lunchtime and place, really didn't matter!
Our second to last night, a large group arrived at the hotel for dinner. No one mentioned to any of us "regulars" that dinner would be at 9:00 instead of earlier and that this evening it would be a buffet. The other nights we had always wandered up to the outdoor eating place some time between 7:30 and 8:00 and they always had seemed eager to serve the dinner and get it over with. The whole experience was a lot more casual, than even I am used to, but essentially it worked -we ate, snorkeled, lay in the sun and rested up. The odd part, though, is that it was a much more expensive a vacation than other ones I've had in Egypt. They obviously are geared only to Europeans, not to Egyptians.
Over the days I realized that this operation must make its money is from the dive center which is connected with the hotel but located on the beach. It seemed that daily bus loads of tourists dropped off, were wading out to boats ready to take them diving. And sometimes boats would arrive and anchor to let their load of snorkelers and divers swim for a couple of hours. On the boat that took us out snorkeling we did meet two groups of Egyptians one young group and one older. Both groups included graduates from AUC. There were hammocks on the beach and one Egyptian man, who said he had done the sound design for the Youssef Chahine film the Immigrants and won an award for it in Johannesburg, invited us to come down in the evening to the beach, where he said it was pleasant to lie in the hammocks and look out at the sea and stars, but my friend needed to grade papers and I didn't feel safe walking the 300 meters down to the beach and being there on my own in the dark. It felt odd because in Cairo I always feel safe to go anywhere by myself, but I guess that is because of the guards that are everywhere and the fact that the streets are never empty of people and light. Somehow with the Bedouin village just behind the rise in the land, and the fact I had not seen one Bedouin woman the whole time I was there, made me feel that it probably was not appropriate for me to be walking around by myself at night. And I didn't want to be dependent on someone I had just met that afternoon.
We were hoping that for the ride back to the airport on Saturday, we would not have the same driver. I had met an older man at the beach when I was trying to find someone to unlock the place where my snorkeling equipment was being stored, who was introduced to me as the driver. But we ended up with again with a young boy, so I realize now that the older man must be the Bedouin man in charge of setting up the drivers. He makes a bundle of money, (400LE a person one way) but I imagine the young boys don't get much of it.
The drive back had better music, only one flat tire which was quickly fixed and happened while we could enjoy beautiful streaks of red clouds behind mountains on our left and on our right light green aqua water. The wind, which seemed constant down there, and was welcome at that time of year because of the intense heat, had not let up the whole four days. All in all, it was a great vacation, but probably not everyone's cup of tea! I'm glad, though, that we weren't in the Sinai. Because of the lack of communications in the south, and our lack of Arabic, we only found out about the bombs in Taba when we got back to Cairo on Saturday morning.