GeoCaching in Egypt

As my girl friend an me had not been abroad since September 2003 (in Turkey, during our second day there we was notified that Anna Lind had been attacked, and later died), so it was high time to take a charter trip somewhere.  The main reason for the non-tripping was that we bought an appartment in Hagaberg, Linköping, September 2004, but now we decided to go for it.

Our choice was for Egypt in November, Hurghada. We do like to go to warmer places and to flee the winter. As we flew Friday 12th November from Arlanda no snow had fallen yet.  I wanted to go to Africa, but where? After checking the cache count in Ghana (4!) and Egypt (> 100) the latter was chosen.

We started our trip from home Thursday night, but first we had to leave our Chihuahua King to a guardian.

With that done, we could start the car trip. Leaving the car on the long time parking Benstocken we got to Terminal 5 around midnight. As the plane lifted at 7 am we had a long wait ahead.  I guess I'm to old to do this so next time I will make a better planning...

Anyway, the plan lifted more or less as planned. The trip down to Egypt, over Eastern europe, was uneventful except for the fact that out of the 180 passengers a third was children! Of these a couple of babies. And one thing babies don't like is to fly; when they don't like it they make everyone aware of the fact...  Gah! Thanks for the trip being quite short, just 5 hours.

In Hurghada the international airport have been growing constantely but it worked quite nicely. One interesting observation was that the security at the airport felt lower than at the town. In the town you could see police jeeps here and there with heavily armed polices watching for terrorists and other criminals. Anyway, I felt more secure in Egypt than I did in e.g. London.

After passing the controls we got out to get a transport. We had decided to go for a taxi, both to get a feel of the town and that it could be cheaper. At least we got a feel for how good we were at bargaining. The first taxi driver we contacted offered to drive of for 100 £E (about 13 €). Actually he wanted to have 20 LE extra for the car tolls, and then I paid him and only had hundreds he had only 60 LE change... So he got paid 140 LE in all. At least I learnt something and going the other way I managed to bargain for 50 LE and did not have to pay any tolls (which seemed to be 5 LE), and that driver still seemed happy. To sum it up Egypt is cheap if you can bargain.

The choice of hotel was Triton Empire Beach, an all inclusive. This was the first time for all inclusive; previously we had just went for breakfast buffet and to eat everything outside the hotel. But one of the problems with Egypt is that a big risk of attracting stomach problems, for example by handling bills of cash, so caution with food and washing hands often was recommended.

Part of the garden just after the lobby.  Looks very green but actually required watering every day as it only rains 10 mm or so per year...  Water used is from the Nile or desalted sea water. It is actually so that many poor drink the water from the Nile while those that can afford it by water on bottle. Although you probably have a stronger stomach if you're born in Egypt... Also, it depends on where in the Nile you take up water.

Straight ahaed is the main restaurant where breakfast, lunch and dinner buffet was served.

Going left on the previous picture and then right you came to this part, where you have the pools to the right and some of the rooms to the left.  The path goes down to the beach and the sea which you can see up front.

One of the pools. The beach and the sea could be seen in the distance. We only bathed in the pools the first day when we arrived around 3 pm, otherwise we choose the beach. Temperature wise it did not matter as it was 27-28 degrees celsius regardless of choice (and 28-30 degrees in the air).

Our balcony on the bottom level. The air condition above is ours, and it was not the quite version. So during nights they where turned off so you could sleep. Night temperature was still above 20 degrees so you sweat some.

The rooms was a bit small, and only had room for two beds, and bathroom a chair with table, a refrigirator and a hall. The door in the picture is out to the balcony.

In Egypt it is rare to see women working. For example the cleaning staff was all men. But still they showed their talents. Each day we got a surprise with the fresh towels. Above is the first creation - a swan.

And the last creation was two love birds... We actually brought these birds home.
The other creations were Cobras and Boat in waves.

The first couple of days we spent relaxing, learning how it worked, and doing some business. One standing point was people going around offering experiences, trips, etc. The beach area was part of the hotel, and part of a gated area, so the sales persons was approved by the hotel. One of the trips was to go snorkling and to visit Giftun. Great, I thought! Both to go on a snorkling trip again and also as Giftun is one of the Earth Caches; GC2EGK8. So we decided to make the trip. Other trips you could make was desert trips or day trips to Luxor or Kairo. As Luxor was 350 km away and Kairo 500 km we decided not to. (The ones going to Kairo started at 3 am in the morning and got back 11 pm in the evening.)

Besides Luxor and Kairo the best to do in Egypt is to dive or snorkle in the Red Sea. Highly recommended. There are a lot of coral reefs, even close to our hotel beach. The Egypts protects their reefs.

The monday trip to Giftun I wrote a log entry for: My Giftun log
I do highly recommend doing that trip if you have the chance. Also it has a Scuba attribute so it is good for your statistics ;-)

After the full day it was time to relax again. But for the next day I decided to go out caching on my own. Before going to Egypt I had loaded the GPS with caches there. Unfourtunatly not any map as I still have not managed to get any memory extension for this; the ones I have tried has been wrong.
One thing to think about when it comes to caches is Egypt is that the distances can be quite large, and walking in near desert conditions is an effort. I started out towards the nearest one (Hurghada Sunrise) as it was only 6 km away. Hah! If you'd been a bird that is. After about 2 km walking I instead choose another taxi that agreed to drive me in that direction for just 20 LE. (He was happy so I guess I paid to much, again.) The taxi driver was a bit confunded when I wanted to be dropped of at this place; a couple of sandy hills between the old town and the new town. He even warned me that the military had used that place before as artillery exercise... and that the police guarded the radio station that was the target.  But I persisted. So he changed tactics and offered to wait for me 10 minutes. Sure, I said, but as it took 20 minutes to get this cache (climbing sandy hills is difficult) he was not there when I got back.

The hide was not difficult when you got up on the hill.  The view from the hide spot was spectacular, although I did not go there during Sunrise.
The box contained quite a lot of TBs, among them one TB that had as a mission to get back to Sweden. Alas, I did not bring my smart phone so I could not check the mission and left the TBs as is.

(One of the two hotel cats.)

After the Sunrise cache I started to walk towards the next one, El Shamseya. This was in a gated hotel area, so you had to get into that area. But this was not a problem if you looked like a tourist.

The cache and the area confirmed my feeling that it was quite a few Germans at these parts. My hotell had no germans but instead a lot of East Europeans, mainly Russians. The Russians behave as they own the world, still not used to the new freedom. While the Scandinavians and Dutch (the other larger groups at the hotel) are more low key.

Time to go back the hotel. This time I choose to go with the local bus, a cheap and interesting, and more authentic, way of travelling around.'

 Authentic Egyptian (!) Fodka (!). Did not see any reindeers but at least one camel...
The All Inclusive included drinks, with a choice of soft drinks, local beer or local booze. Alas, no wine. The last night (Thursday) we went out for dinner and tested some local Wine; I think you can skip that..  So I actually choose beer, which is exceptional as I almost never drink beer. Even though the easy access to alchohol (10 am - 9 pm, every day) I did not see any problems with drunks, although the Russian did live up to their reputation.

The ordering line at the beach "pub", that also served (to the right) snacks, pizza slices, etc during afternoon.

Thursday was our last full day in Egypt so I decided to make another caching trip; this time to El Gouna which is a less than 20 year old tourist resort about 20 km north of Hurghada. To get there I used one of the coaches, in my case the Orange line. This costed just 5 LE one way while a taxi would cost something like 100 LE.
Caches I logged there were:

• Where is the ship?
• Sunset 6 o'clock (DNF)
• El Gouna Turtle House
• El Gounas First, multi

I walked around El Gouna which took some time. Should have used the TucTucs that were present there.
El Gouna was a strange experience; I did not feel at home at all here. Felt very un-authentic... More like Palm Springs or Florida than Egypt.
Also the security was very high; the bus was searched both going in and out of the El Gouna gated area. Everybody (but me - I looked very touristic) had to show identification.

The trip to El Gouna and back in all took about 6 hours so my fiance was not pleased...  But she had spent the day together with a couple from Southern Sweden we met at the beach.

The next day it was time to go back; the trip was uneventful and soon we were back to the Swedish winter.

The temperature was 30 degrees lower outside, so my choice of sandals and short was not the best, but I actually thought the subzero temperature was nice after the hot Egyptian weather.

Going back to Linköping 1 am, after a stop in Stockholm to visit family, we decided to fetch King the next day.

To summarize my trip I managed 6 finds, amongh them my #300, and my long distance statistics looks quite nice (3752 km). Caching in these part of Africa takes some effort as it is both hot and long distance, so car is recommended. Also, remember that the number of caches is low in most part of Africa.

So where will the next trip go? Good question. I would like to top my long distance (which means Australia or New Zealand) but that will have to wait to the future.