I've been in Egypt two weeks now and it's been generally completely enjoyable,with very few problems other than inevitable persistent touts who can be as irksome as the flies are in places like Luxor and Cairo. I'm on my own now - I've got another week to go and leave next Thursday. It's never much fun travelling alone, especially on days like today when I'm stuck in a small coastal town on the Red Sea waiting for a bus that never comes to get down to Aswan.

Anyway, we started the trip back in Hurghada, which is approximately half way down the Red Sea coast, as that's where our Central wings plane from Katowice dropped us. It's a so-so resort with little to recommend it - just an old Bedouin village that's been developed into a sprawling mass of hotels, restaurants and apartments aimed firmly at the package tourist market. The nouveau-riche of Russia seem to like it though, and many of the signs and menus are in Cyrillic there. No one seems to have a good word to say about the Ruskis here though, probably because their hard-drinking ways grates with the Egyptian tee-total culture. That and they are by and large the equivalent of Brits abroad in Spain here - boorish, arrogant and affluent, with little interest in the culture or people. Not that we discovered much Egyptian culture there, lying on the beach and generally enjoying the novelty of being able to sunbathe and stroll around in shorts in early February. A comfortable 21 degrees, it was pleasant but a bit blustery by the sea and not really swim able. We gave the place two nights before taking a katermeran to Sharm el Sheik, just 45km away over the Red Sea in Sinai.

The crossing was smooth and fast, and we were whipped into a mini-bus on arrival which took us directly to Dahab - on the east coast of the Sinai peninsula. A kind of backpacker shangri-la, Dahab contains most of the facets of what for me makes an ideal destination;

(a) it's Cheap (plenty of camps for between 1 and 5 pounds a night)

(b) it's right next to the sea

(c) it's in a gorgeous location underneath the mountains

(d) there are loads of restaurants and bars within stumbling distance of your room

(e) there were no package holiday idiots

(f) you can buy lots of lovely fresh seafood at bargain prices.

(g) it has some of the best snorkeling and diving in the world.

I loved it as soon as we arrived. we found a room with balcony fronting onto the sea at the top end of the market - 10 pounds for the room per night. It was quite a good price. I could have stayed there for the next two weeks; we ended up staying there for five nights in the end. Some of the highlights:

- Snorkeling. Diving requires you to do a course and was a bit pricey so we decided for the budget option, a 3 quid bus trip with snorkeling gear provided to a place called The Blue Hole, but to be honest I'm glad we did. I remember snorkeling on family holidays as a kid in Wales - all that sea water in the nose, spitting on the mask so it doesn't fog up, getting cuts on your hands and feet, pointless ping-pong balls and for what? to see some uninspiring pebbles if your lucky, and more often some used condoms or turds floating past. Great. But snorkeling in Sinai is not like Wales. To put it mildly, it's mind-blowing. I was expecting some interesting coral reef out there, obviously. I wasn't expecting a massive array of sea life floating around me from the moment I put my mask underneath the water or a huge canyon about 50m offshore which made me feel like I was floating in space when I looked down. The sheer variety of fish and sea life was astounding; fish that I never knew existed floated and swam right beneath my eyes - Napolean fish, green and blue Parrot fish, the deadly Stone fish which hides menacingly in the coral, (they can kill a child with one sting) Lion fish which are eerily still as you swim past and look like birds (they can administer an electric shock which can hospitalise you), Arabian Angel fish, Emperor Angel fish, White belly Damsel fish, Butterfly fish, Red Snapper, Cornet fish, lack Surgeon fish, Pipe fish, massive pointy Sea Urchins (I trod on one accidentally and was limping for two days), something which was huge and ugly and menacing and may have been a Sea Cow, Potato Cod or Turkey fish - and various annoying jelly fish. And they were only the ones I later identified. I swam along the reef for over an hour, long after Natalia had gone in complaining of cold - it was a bit chilly - and surfaced later around the edge of the Headland, out of sight of the crowds of people I'd started with. I cut myself a bit on the sharp coral coming back to shore but hardly noticed it in my elated state. We did plenty more snorkeling in our time in Dahab, but that was the undoubted highlight as it was my first sight of coral reef. I'd recommend it very highly to anyone.

- St Catherine's Monastery and Mount Sinai. We set off early one morning on an organised trip to the interior of Sinai, which took us an hour and a half northwest from Dahab. The landscape is stark and lifeless, in contrast to what is below the waves, but also beautiful and awe-inspiring. The rocks are of a reddish hue, and look particularly impressive at sunset. The trip we were on was supposed to take until sunset so we could see Mount Sinai in all it's glory at that time, but we had already decided to come down before then - mainly because up there at over a thousand metres it wasn't particularly warm. it was sunny though. The significance of Mount Sinai is known to most people - it's where Moses received the Ten Commandments from God in the Bible - and St Catherine's monastery, at it's base, was built up around the patch of land where the Burning Bush incident happened. There still is a bush there which they say is the same one, so it's doing well after two and a half thousand years or so, especially in view of the fact that it burnt down. The monastery itself is interesting and fortified, which makes it look more imposing, but it's also very touristy, and after an hour or so we headed away from the crowds and up the mountain. Amazingly, after ten minutes' walking, we are the only people in sight, and we only see the occasional camel with its Bedouin owner - all of which offer to ride us up the mountain. The camel is the least comfortable mode of transport known to mankind, so we refused all such offers, preferring instead to hike it. The hike was great and not overly taxing, but the camel owners got a bit annoying, and it wasn't until we were over half way up that they started to peter out. They looked bewildered that we didn't want to take a camel; why walk if you don't have to? They've probably got used to Russians. The last part of the hike did get taxing as we ascended 365 steps to the top - one for every day of the year for the poor monk who did penance to build them several hundred years back. The view from the top was amazing; how could it not be, gazing down from Mount Sinai onto the surrounding rocky peaks, nothing but ochre-coloured mountains in every direction and utter silence, broken only by a random chant from a Jewish guy who was also at the top. The peak is only 2200 metres but it felt quite chilly at the top so we set off down before darkness (quite a few people waited for sunset which was madness in my opinion). The way down was steep and difficult - steps all the way - and we got down just as sun was setting. My calves ached for days after that 2 hour descent, but the views were magnificent and we got some great pictures.

- The Coloured Canyon. This was the final place we visited at the end of our stay in Sinai, after we'd moved to a smaller backpacker camp area to the north called Nuweiba. Nuweiba was strange in that it was utterly deserted. This area in Sinai is lined with camps all the way up to the Israeli Border, and were always popular with fiscally challenged Israelis, but since the bombings in this area in the 90's and in 2005, they have been scared off, so all of these places are now ghost towns except in high season. Nuweiba was great for one night, and we were there for Valentine's, so perfect for a romantic evening, but not really enough to keep you there for longer. The reason for going there was to see something called The Coloured Canyon, which was an hour distant by 4x4. We shared with a couple from Jordan who were living in Israel. When we got to this spectacular canyon, which, as it's name suggests, is colourful (multi-coloured layers of sandstone rock giving it distinctive patterns which look like they've actually been painted on), we were confronted by a large tour group of Russians. We hastened down the valley to get ahead of them, which spoilt the experience somewhat; stopping only to take snaps, we were a bit hurried. The canyon itself was stunning, and became more stunning as it narrowed and heightened, until it was possible only for once person to squeeze through narrow gaps and fissures, which at times required getting down on all fours and crawling, or scrambling down on your arse. Eventually the gorge widened again and we were out in the open, able to appreciate the way the sunlight played with the dappled sandstone to create brilliant effects. We were met by the ruskis, who smoked and posed in their designer gear and ripped off sunglasses before trudging off to a tour bus and no doubt getting pissed somewhere.

We were off on a bus up the rest of the coastline to Taba and then Cairo after we returned to Nuweiba - Taba was in the news a few years ago because terrorists bombed the Hilton Hotel there. Now it's quite deserted like the rest of that coastline. The Gulf of Aqaba narrows at its northern end where Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan almost meet. We headed west from there though to Cairo - another five hours on the bus. I'd love to have carried on further into the Middle east but it can wait for another day - plenty more to see in Egypt. I'm off now to get a plate of fried calmary and relax - it's been a funny old day, as Arkwright used to say. Man Utd are currently thrashing Newcastle again, so I might also try to track down some beer