29. Sinai, Egypt - 5 March to 16 March 2010

It felt good to be out of busy, bustling Cairo and on the hectic highway towards Sinai, where in no time the drab urban landscape changed to one of desert with occasional apartment complexes in the middle of nowhere. We were heading for the Suez Tunnel - just another tunnel - but definitely a different experience if you are lucky enough to sight a ship seemingly cruising through the desert, only visible from about the deck upwards, and then silently gliding above the entrance to the tunnel as you descend beneath the canal.

We drove down the barren but beautiful desert coastline of the Gulf of Suez towards Sudr and strewn along the beaches were countless 'resorts' many of which looked either uninhabited or only half built, but always with huge and elaborate gated entrances. The one we chose was well beyond its past glory days of perhaps five star rating, and had a beautifully marbled reception area totally deserted apart from one employee who was happy to show us a room overlooking the beach. There were obviously no other guests and it would have been off-season, so we felt the room rate was a little high, and enquired about camping within the resort complex. This we could do at a very reasonable rate right on the beach. It was quite a strange experience, but we did feel completely safe despite the fact that all around us was a 'ghost resort' which was obviously once very luxurious and frequented by Israeli and European holiday makers, with swimming pool, bar on the beach, thatched umbrellas, beach chairs, but all in complete disarray now, as well as the neglected time share units further back from the beach. We did learn later that many tourists have stopped coming to the Sinai for holidays since the unrest of the 90s and more recent events. We also learned later that there had been a devastating storm which came in from the Red Sea about 6 weeks ago which did quite a good deal of damage along the coast and would account for some of the mayhem along the beach.

We travelled inland to St Katherine's Monastery the next day and camped nearby, but unfortunately the following day the Monastery was closed so we were unable to explore inside, and feeling unfit after months of car travel and too little exercise, and one of us with a head cold, we had decided not to climb Mount Sinai - so not a hugely successful visit. But we enjoyed getting a feel for this biblical site which is of huge significance to Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This part of Sinai also has a spectacular rocky desert landscape which can appear red, orange, brown or pink, depending on the light, and it defies imagining the hardships suffered by all those who have made the long and arduous pilgrimage for so many centuries.

We spent four nights on the eastern Sinai coast at Nuweiba at a very reasonably priced resort, which did have other guests! It was situated right on the beach looking out over the Gulf of Aquaba, and on a clear day we could see Saudi Arabia. It was warm enough for good swimming and relaxing on the beach.

On our way to Ras Mohammad National Park we stopped at Dahab, a very popular Red Sea diving destination, with plenty of tourists and where we had lunch and a good look around. Ras Mohammad is on the very tip of the Sinai Peninsula, and we had a magnificent campsite right on the beach, discovering on the very first afternoon that snorkelling a few metres off the beach revealed beautifully coloured coral and huge numbers of coloured fish - we saw the biggest parrot fish we have ever seen. There were very few people and we thoroughly enjoyed the luxury of snorkelling off the beach at our leisure. For two nights we had the company of two fellow Aussie campers from Melbourne which we enjoyed, and we met some friendly locals, one a Bedouin with a European wife and his children, and another Egyptian who was a diving instructor and whose wife was from Denmark. On the last day when it was windy and not suitable for snorkelling, we went in to explore Sharm el-Sheikh which is so full of resorts and tourists that we soon retreated back to our campsite at Ras Mohammad.

We had rung the Libyan Embassy in Cairo once while we were in the Sinai to be told there was no information about our visas, and that we should phone again in a few days. We decided to travel back to Cairo to visit the Embassy in person, which would be just over two weeks since we applied for the visas.

We drove back up the coast towards Sudr again, but this time stayed at the Moon Beach Resort, known for its location on this windy coast as a perfect wind sailing destination. We got a very reasonably priced room, and once again saw the results of the huge storm that had hit this coast a few weeks earlier.

We thought a visit to Suez might render some great photos of the ships passing through the canal, but there was to be no ship for two hours, so we continued on to Cairo, and Salma Camp at Giza once again, after a wonderful Sinai visit, in stark contrast to the traffic and city bustle and rush that is Cairo.