Last week, I returned from a trip to Egypt. I had beautiful holidays there, but still I returned with very mixed feelings. Here's my story:
We were staying at the Iberotel Makadi Beach, a very luxurious resort in Madinat Makadi, about 30 km away from Hurghada.
Madinat Makadi is a place where about ten hotels are located. It is surrounded by walls and protected by a guard post. The guards have guns, very strange for me as a German who only rarely sees people running around carrying firearms.
The hotel was beautiful, I loved the archtitecture and the plants and palm trees.
the view from our room
sunrise at the hotel
Outside the Madinat Makadi area, there's pretty much nothing but desert. It was a bit weird to see what luxury they built in the middle of nowhere.
While I usually enjoy sleeping in in real life, I get up very early when I am away for holidays. Almost every day, I got up at five, went to have breakfast and was snorkeling in the Red Sea at about seven a.m.
a few minutes before sunrise at the beach
The day after our arrival, I went snorkeling for the first time ever. It was pretty crazy for me, admittedly, I yelled into my snorkel several times because of a few curious fish that startled me.
A few days after our arrival we went on a snorkeling tour we booked at the hotel.
We started from Hurghada with a very big boat and stopped at three spots to go snorkeling in the Red Sea.
On our way to the first spot, we passed Giftun Islands, places "sold" to the tourists as "Mahmya". "Mahmya" is actually Arabic for "nature sanctuary".
When we went back to the port of Hurghada, we passed this spot again and there were hundreds of tourists on this island. There's a tour you can book at the hotels round this spot for about 75 € per person, being advertised as "very special", "go visit the nature sanctuary at Mahmya", in the end it's only a tourist trap, you're carried to one of several islands and the places are just overrun by people.
The picture above shows our second stop. The water colour in this area is just amazing, but you can also see that a lot of the corals round there are already dead.
While for me, who had never snorkeled the Red Sea before, it was still amazing to see the fish and corals underwater, for those having experiences in diving or snorkeling the area it is absolutely insane what damage has been done to the coral reefs already.
In our hotel, I talked to someone who was diving the Red Sea years ago and he told me the difference between then and now is just extreme.
This picture was made on our way to the third stop of our snorkeling tour. Due to the close proximity to mount Sinai region, most of the islands round there are restricted military area. These are the only spots, where no people are allowed to go and the guide on this tour told us that these are the only places where the reefs and the fish population are pretty much intact.
Just half an hour later, he did something I absolutely could not understand. When we anchored at the third stop, we saw lots of other boats and tourists, this place was again overrun by people. Going into the water, the guide started feeding the fish and in an instant, we were surrounded by masses of them.
It was an absolutely chaotic situation and while I was close to the guide in order not to lose oversight and contact to the group, I was hit very hard by others who were acting like crazy just to be right in the middle of this mess. It actually was a wonder that we didn't lose anybody, and I was pretty much relieved - and very annoyed - when getting out of the water onto the boat again.
For me, this certainly was a "unique" experience, I'll never do such a tour again. This has nothing to do with nature. And while you can see signs everywhere telling you not to touch the corals, not to feed the fish, etc., the guide who was with us did all of this, encouraging the people to do the same.
On our way back to the marina of Hurghada, we spotted a few dolphins that suddenly passed us by. One guy belonging to the team of the boat jumped into the water to film them, I was very jealous. I would have loved to have the chance to swim with dolphins.
A couple we met at the hotel told us their experiences with a tour like ours later that day. They said on their trip there were three boats hunting a group of dolphins until they had no more chance to flee. I was very thankful that "our" dolphins showed up by chance and that we did not hunt them down.
Still, I was very sad that day when we returned to the hotel. Sad to see how nature is exploited for tourism. Sad to see how the reefs are destroyed and how the fish are treated.
I made a few underwater pics with a stoneage camera, once I have the film developed and see if the pics are of good quality, I will make an article about the underwater life there.
Please follow me for part two of my trip to Egypt, where I will explain the two faces of the country in detail and tell you about our trip to Luxor and the Valley of Kings - and please leave me an upvote if you liked this one.
Please feel free to comment on this post and let me know if you've ever been to Egypt and if so, what experiences you made there, or what you think of travelling Egypt in general.
Cheers,
Ines
