Back to Egypt and a day off from long Excursions

From Aqaba we sailed back down the Red Sea leaving behind the only Jordanian port and its close neighbour Israeli port of Eilat, with Saudi Arabia on our left and Egypt on our right, on to the latter's resort town of Sharm El Sheikh.

Where some rested.

Others took a morning coach shuttle into this green oasis of a town on the edge of the Sinai Desert. It was largely free of tourists partly because we heard tourism has dropped by about a third since the financial crisis but also we were told because the holiday makers party until four in the morning and rise late. The shops didn't expect much business in the morning and were anxious to extract whatever they could from us. We stopped for a drink and haggled over the price.

In the afternoon, after a leisurely lunch on board, we went on a glass bottomed boat trip to view the fish and corals. We were entertained to an array of fish of all colours, patterns and sizes swimming over corals of as many differing colours, sizes and textures. We were told that coral is an animal not a plant. It is apparently very sensitive, can easily be damaged or destroyed and can take a long time to regenerate or just remains dead in the sea, as we were shown. An undersea world completely different from what I thought I understood. I was left feeling I needed to read up on corals, as well as Greek mythology, Egyptology, the Nabataeans in between re-watching the films, 'Anthony and Cleopatra', 'Lawrence of Arabia', and perhaps 'Carry on Cleo'.

 

Robert Cole