What a dive
James Fryer takes a trip to Egypt’s Sharm El-Sheikh, enjoys an eerie silence, gets stalked by an army of sergeant majors and arrives a little too early throw shapes in Little Ibiza.
We were somewhere around Sharm, on the edge of the desert, when the fear began to take hold. I remember saying something like, “Look at that dead camel”, as it lay turning to dust in the scorching sun, but Ahmed was engrossed in the cassette of the Quran playing from the stereo. Finally we arrived at the quad-biking base and I anxiously clambered on to a four-wheeled beast. “This is accelerate, this is brake,” Ahmed pointed. My briefing was over. He tore off, yelling like a cowboy kicking his steed, leaving me in his tracks. I pushed on the gas and the engine growled. It quickly picked up speed and, as I manoeuvred my way out of the cloud of dust, the first thing I saw was a sign that read: “Do not enter: Live shooting range”.
On the southern tip of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba lies the city of Sharm El-Sheikh, known locally as simply ‘Sharm’. What was once a humble fishing village endured years of conflict from the 1950s through to the 1980s, as Israel and Egypt each laid claim to the area, before being restored to Egypt in 1982.
Over the last couple of decades it’s grown out of relative nothingness into a thriving tourism hub with visitors flocking to enjoy the dramatic landscapes, year-round sunny weather and long sandy beaches. But what’s given Sharm its defining edge is the offer of a true adult’s playground – from snorkelling in the crystal-clear Red Sea to trying your hand on the blackjack table at the Las Vegas-style Sinai Grand Casino. In fact, there isn’t much else to do apart from let your hair down.
Half an hour meandering out into the desert, a few near-misses and a sore backside later, I had mastered the basics of quad biking and was negotiating the powdery sands like a pro, or so I thought. Ahmed had been periodically swivelling his head around to make sure I was alive, only this time he diverted from our path and took a sharp left off the beaten track. No more soft sands, only jagged rocks that looked as if they’d slice me like butter. And unlike the relatively leisurely bike ride I’d been enjoying, it now felt like I was riding a pushbike down a cobbled hillside at high speed with someone throwing sand in my face.
I yanked the handlebars to and fro, trying to ride the contours of the terrain, and bolted down a hill until the speedometer reached a white knuckle 70km/h before we pulled back and made a steep climb up, up and up onto the top of a ridge. We’d reached our destination. Engines were turned off and we sat, peering out across the golden, vast, arid Sinai desert. There wasn’t another living thing in sight. Not even a soft breeze. Complete silence. Nothing. It was beautiful.
Two hours later and I was perfecting the spit-and-swish technique – an attempt to demist my mask as I joined the hundreds of tourists at Na’ama Bay and climbed aboard a boat for snorkelling and diving. My voyage was to be with Leiloo – a yacht belonging to Camel Dive Club, one of the more reputable clubs in town. Just 10 minutes out to sea, horns were sounded and everyone headed to the edge of the deck. A female dolphin and her youngster were drifting along our bow, occasionally popping their heads up for a better view to the sound of a rapturous applause. A brief distraction for the boatload of big kids who excitedly pulled on fins and lifejackets. A dollop of toothpaste from one of the crew instantly proved to be a more effective demister.
Within minutes of arriving at a deep bay called Marsa Bareika, one of three protected areas around Sharm, lemming-style lines of tourists dressed in everything from fetching tight Speedos to full-body wetsuits jumped, fell and dived off the back of boats and into the crystal clear waters. I’d never understood what people meant by an underwater world before – until I dunked into the thriving submerged mega-city during rush hour. My smile reached from ear to ear as I saw a couple of grumpy potato cod poking their heads out from the glistening coral. A school of hundreds of tiny neon blue fusilier fish shimmered, and in the distance I could see the shadows of much larger fish (the hammerhead sharks I’d heard about?) lurking just out of range. Only when my snorkel filled with water did I poke my head up, and after a minute spent trying to clear it out, I was ready to go under again.
Bubbles of air rushed from my mouth as my underwater yelp echoed like a sonar. Dozens of stripy blue-and-yellow sergeant major fish had come for a closer look and had me surrounded. Most just bobbed gently in the current with one eye fixed my way as if they’d been caught misbehaving. A couple of cheeky chappies looked even more sheepish as I caught them trying to clean algae from me. But once they realised I wasn’t much of a meal, they drifted away. The next two hours I floated up and down the coast with eyes fixed on the ever-changing world below. A short time later and the sea emptied apart from the odd lost snorkel, and peace and quiet was restored to the fish, for another night.
Instead it was the turn of the streets of Downtown Na’ama Bay to be invaded by the now sunburnt holidaymakers. A blue-and-white chequered sputnik shuttle of a taxi bumbled down the road, over a crest where we were greeted with a sea of sparkling lights jostling for attention with the magnificent Sinai Grand Casino. But there were no Viva Las Sharm-shenanigans for us. We instead headed through the rows of trunk-lit palm trees and fluorescent flashing restaurants to the fashionable strip of town known as Little Ibiza for obvious reasons.
Just like you’d expect in the Balearic Island clubbing capital, Sharm is ever-popular with stag crawls, hen nights and generally anyone wearing a Union Jack outfit. Punters from the plethora of bars and restaurants spilled out onto the street side seating and beyond, sipping cocktails and smoking shisha while touts thrusted flyers into hands.
It’s Cherry Drops Retro House night at Pacha, but we headed to the first bar we came to – one where the name can’t be made out for two burly bouncers, but it’s clearly the place to be and was already packed to the rafters at 9pm. All the men were fixated on the football highlights on the large TV screen all evening. Girlfriends stared, bored, into their Long Island Iced Teas and pick at bowls of nuts. Meanwhile the singletons were starting on shooters and already looked predatory. For us, it was time to leave and hit the sack, but not before a we took a quick peep inside the neighbouring Sin Club.
It was midnight, the hard house was pumping and there wasn’t a person in sight. It soon became clear that ‘fashionably late’ doesn’t even come close to describing the Sharm mantra. So we passed by the in-club Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Dior boutiques that would later see chic clubbers step off the dance floor to browse designer threads until 7am, when the party would finally come to a close, and headed to the sanctuary of our hotel, happy to admit we were unfashionably tired.
Most holidaymakers seemed to alternate between staying in Sharm and taking day trips to the Monastery of Saint Catherine, Luxor or Cairo. If you make a trip north to the much sleepier Taba, climb to any high point and you can pick out the staggeringly close Saudi, Jordan and Israel. And on the main roads along the Gulf of Aqaba coastline you’ll pass hundreds of small reed huts where humble abodes are rented in summer for those seeking Goan-style relaxation.
If you travel in these parts, however, you can’t fail to spot the police checkpoints operating around the clock, particularly after the recent terror attacks on Dahab (a resort between Taba and Sharm) stole the world’s headlines. But, just as when the region was shaken by violence in 2004 and 2005, the tourism market will no doubt bounce back.
My short trip had unfortunately come to a close and a packed tour bus made the short 10-minute journey from Sharm to the nearby airport. Out of the window I saw the Falcon Safari quad biking club where I’d met Ahmed just two days before. Close by someone was tearing up the sands on a quad. Probably screaming like a banshee as they headed out into the vast desert, I thought. In a line favoured by California’s governor, I vowed that ‘I’ll be back’. We all need to escape reality every now and then, after all.
What’s On flew Air Arabia (www.airarabia.com), stayed with Radisson SAS Hotels (www.radissonsas.com) and snorkelled with Camel Dive Club (www.cameldive.com).