Day 176: Hurghada (23/07/2011)

We left Luxor, which by any measure, is a repository of some of the most amazing things you will ever see.

From there we caught the bus to Hurghada on the eastern side of the Gulf of Suez which, perhaps being a little harsh, is horrid.

The road across the desert from the Nile to the Red Sea, wound through bleached desert and down mountainous ravines and kept us mesmerized for four hours. We passed periodic check points but despite the simmering revolution, the worst we experienced, was hitting the fiercely efficient speed humps at speed.

As we checked in at the Luxor Hotel we resumed our ‘Sole Resident’ status and with it the exclusive attention of Ashraf, the lovely, extremely helpful and multi-lingual hotel manager. Dropping our possessions at reception, we were blithely unaware that our passports were not amongst them. Furiously disembowelling the bags drew a blank and before the recriminations started, Ashraf was on the telephone to St Josef’s Hotel in Luxor where, depending on your perspective, the stupid tourists had left their passports at reception, or the stupid receptionist had forgotten to hand them back.

He arranged for them to follow on the midnight bus and by morning they were waiting at reception. The hollow feeling in the pit of the stomach is enough to ensure that it will not happen again.

Hurghada was growing very quickly. Since the tourist industry in the Middle East has tanked, construction has stopped and every street is lined with half-finished buildings. The remaining indigenous population is tiny, swollen in good times by a huge influx of seasonal workers from Aswan and Luxor and by the conspicuously absent tourists, both down by at least 90%.

Feeling that we should at least give it a chance, we booked on a snorkelling trip to the local reef. The high light of the trip was meeting Milosh and his Serbian friends. After an 8am pick-up, we were still sitting in the baking heat at the quay-side at 10.30am, with a turf war unfolding between rival boats about whose customers were waiting to embark and who had right of way leaving the harbour.

The Italian contingent was the first to decamp to the shore, noisily demanding refunds with much shaking of the fists. The captain tried to placate them but the rot had set in. Then there was some close quarter manoeuvring with boats shaving past each other at wood splintering speeds. The Italians re-boarded and then the Finns got off. There was lots of shouting in Arabic and it all looked about to kick off when suddenly we were heading out of the harbour. Some of the Scandinavians were left behind but it was probably for the best; there’s nothing you want less on a snorkelling trip, than to be swimming amongst a crowd of circling Finns.

When we finally got to the reef, a sad realisation dawned. Boats from all along the coast were converging and a small flotilla formed around us. We rounded a headland to the sight of an assembled fibreglass fleet at anchor. The water was undeniably azure and the sands beneath where dazzlingly white but the coral was dead in vast stretches. I asked the captain how long snorkelling had been popular here. Ten years was the reply.

It will all be gone in ten more and in a bitter harvest, the sea will then be as devoid of life as the land is now.