Tuesday, October 31, 2006
30/10 You are not going to believe me but I have the photos to prove it...
I am sitting in an Egyptian beach camp.The guest dining and lounge area is built of date palm trunks wit ha pagola of timber thatched loosley with with date palm leaves. The floor is covered in woven cotton mats and seating is on cushions around large low coffee tables. My hut is of woven date palm - bot hwalls and ceiling and you can see the sky the the weave. It too has mats ont he floor and a single mattress - that's it...but the view is to die for. The whole resort is less than 50m from the high tide mark. The tide does rise/fall more than about 1m. My cabin, inthe second row, is approx 30m from the water. The Red Sea is deep blue, framed by the mountains of Saudi Arabia across the strait 70km away. The haze has cleared as the afternoon breeze picks up. Being on the west cosat of the Red Sea we are facing East and sunrise is supposed to bevery special. Behind the beach camp, the mountains of the Sinai rise. It is quite amazing that the desert mountains meet the ocean with no green strip between.
Geography lesson - we drove NE from Cairo, crossed the Suez Canal, drove south down the West coast of the Sinai peninsula, turned east at Wadi Feiran, continued East til we hit the red sea on the SE coast of Sinai. The resort is near Nuweiba.
I went snorkelling in the Red Sea this afternoon. The reef is about 100m off the beach, across a large sea grass bed. Lots of sea urchins, sea slugs, pink, purple, yellow and green coral, a lot of different small fish. Only saw 3 different large fish. All very colourful. Not as much coral or fish as GBR but reef is in good condition and one of the best things was - I was the only person out there! The other amazing thing is your bouyancy. Fantastic. Don't have to actually swim at all - it's like snorkelling with a life jacket on. You just float whether you try to or not - so you can concentrate on the reef life and even in shallow water you never drag on the coral.
I am sitting in an Egyptian beach camp.The guest dining and lounge area is built of date palm trunks wit ha pagola of timber thatched loosley with with date palm leaves. The floor is covered in woven cotton mats and seating is on cushions around large low coffee tables. My hut is of woven date palm - bot hwalls and ceiling and you can see the sky the the weave. It too has mats ont he floor and a single mattress - that's it...but the view is to die for. The whole resort is less than 50m from the high tide mark. The tide does rise/fall more than about 1m. My cabin, inthe second row, is approx 30m from the water. The Red Sea is deep blue, framed by the mountains of Saudi Arabia across the strait 70km away. The haze has cleared as the afternoon breeze picks up. Being on the west cosat of the Red Sea we are facing East and sunrise is supposed to bevery special. Behind the beach camp, the mountains of the Sinai rise. It is quite amazing that the desert mountains meet the ocean with no green strip between.
Geography lesson - we drove NE from Cairo, crossed the Suez Canal, drove south down the West coast of the Sinai peninsula, turned east at Wadi Feiran, continued East til we hit the red sea on the SE coast of Sinai. The resort is near Nuweiba.
I went snorkelling in the Red Sea this afternoon. The reef is about 100m off the beach, across a large sea grass bed. Lots of sea urchins, sea slugs, pink, purple, yellow and green coral, a lot of different small fish. Only saw 3 different large fish. All very colourful. Not as much coral or fish as GBR but reef is in good condition and one of the best things was - I was the only person out there! The other amazing thing is your bouyancy. Fantastic. Don't have to actually swim at all - it's like snorkelling with a life jacket on. You just float whether you try to or not - so you can concentrate on the reef life and even in shallow water you never drag on the coral.
# posted by The Essence of Good Taste @ 12:27 PM 
