SHARM EL SHEIKH, EGYPT (4/6/2007)

From: Sherman Rootberg (BiggiRoot)
Date: Apr 6, 2007 7:02 PM
Subject: Friday, April 06, 2007

Friday, April 06, 2007

SHARM EL SHEIKH, EGYPT

From the pictures I have seen and from what I’ve heard, I expected a small sleepy little Arab town with a few bars and restaurants. What it really is, is a new modern town with the amenities of home and hundreds or maybe thousands of hotel and resort rooms going up.

Everything from Days Inn to Ritz Carlton. All beautiful resorts. The road is a brand new one. Four lanes divided and almost up to American standards. There is a beautiful new terminal building at the airport. This all goes on for many miles and there are also casinos, apartments, stores and offices. Everything new and classy. Most new buildings have an Arabian facade.

The harbor we are is also new. This is a passenger harbor only. Besides the dock for the cruise ships, there are also dozens of large yachts tied on buoys and parked in rear only docks. Upon closer look, we can see that all these private yachts are pretty much the same. There are larger ones and smaller ones but within the same size groups they are all the same. These are commercial boats. The hotels must either own them or they book the trips on them. It looks like they are going out on mostly day trips or fishing trips. We understand this is a very new in spot for vacations for Europeans. Israelis have been using this for vacations for many years and are most welcome or at least their shekels are.

We booked an afternoon 4 wheel drive tour into the desert and mountains. We traveled in a caravan of about a half dozen Toyotas. They were really truck bodies outfitted with closed rears and rear vertical seats rather then the horizontal facing seats found in cars and SUVs. Those rear seats were a little firm and too close to the ground but that didn’t bother me one bit. That’s because I sat shot gun while Bobbi and another couple were delegated to the rear. There was plenty of room in the rear though. It was meant for six passengers.

We followed the new main highway to it’s end about half an hour down the road. At that point we were past civilization and off on a dirt road. We were now in real desert. There was rarely anything at all growing. We could see mountains on our left and a body of water on the right. Sharem means many bays and there sure were. The road way was a path that had been made by a road grader. Some spots were okay and others very rough and all washboards. The air conditioning was very good or we would have been in really bad shape from all the dust if we had to open windows.

A couple of hours out we made a stop at a place where Bedouins were cooking us flat bread on a rock with fire under it. It was just flour and water but it taste good to me. These people were the lowest class to the Egyptians and not well liked. They all live in falling apart shacks on the desert. There was a place for a pit stop here. Pit is the watch word. It was the usual disgusting Arab filth hole excuse for a washroom with no toilet nor any water or paper. A woman guide explained some things to us about the Bedouins. I asked Bobbi if we could play Bedouin when we got home. It is really a good game. Here is how it works. The woman has to have and take care of the children, clean the house, do the cooking and laundry, take care of the goats and make the tents. She is also the one who gets groceries and makes trinkets to sell. The mans job is to help make babies whenever he wants, take care of the camels and sit on the couch and nap or watch the woman do the work. That’s because taking care of the camels is so difficult. In the morning you untether them. They go and eat by themselves and return at sundown. The goats do not and must be taken care of.

Twenty minutes down the path was a two story brick building that was supposed to be a museum. It had three books and a couple of tortoise shells. I was told there were real washrooms that were filth holes too.

We went further and further out into the desert. There were rough areas but never any reason to have been in a rough riding 4X4. A nice van or SUV would have been fine. Any car could have easily made the trip. After some time we spotted camels in the distance. We had been told that the Egyptians didn’t like camels. They were big and scary. They never had them. The Bedouins had them and used them to raid and attack the Egyptians.

As we got closer we could see there was a big bunch of camels. Then we could see other large bunches of camels. When we got really close we could see many bunches of many camels all over the place. We could then see they were being ridden by white people and Japanese. The we could see all the buses parked in the shade out her in the impenetrable desolate desert which turned out to be half a mile from a highway.

They were on tours from hotels for these camel rides. The camels were being led and controlled by kids. Mom was too busy at home and dad can’t be bothered. The kids were all over us begging for anything. They would ask for your watch, pen, money or anything they saw. There were a couple of pretty little girls with light skin and hair. We wondered where they came from.

Bobbi had brought chocolates they give us nightly on the ship. If you gave them one they would try to grab more. They were cute but obviously were nasty little suckers. When you had nothing more to give they holler at you and obviously call names.

That’s another thing we notice with the Arabs. Almost all the other peoples we have seen, rich or poor, smiled and waved happily. These people never smile or act friendly unless they are adults selling you something and then not always.

From there it was about half a mile to the highway and about 45 minutes back to the ship. This had been very interesting. This was the most desolate desert we have ever seen. Nothing. No plants snakes or anything. Just lots of flies of many kinds. Rarely there would be an Acacia tree. That’s a very thorny bush like tree that only a camel can eat the leaves from. They said that wherever there is an Acacia tree growing, there is water near by. A camel will hit the ground with its foot and can detect water and will dig for it. We did see spongy looking damp sand by one.