A week of sun and scuba
This was a lovely easter break, me, mum, dad and my ex. He and I did the PADI Advanced Open Water diving course with Camel Dive in the town, which was amazing. We got to go out to the wreck of the SS Thistlegorm in the Straits of Gubal in the Northern Red Sea.
From www.ssthistlegorm.com:
"It is after all a bombsite with highly visible signs of great destruction and loss. It's also a giant underwater museum, a war grave, a unique piece of military history and an opportunity to step into the past during a period when the free world was under threat from one of the most tyrannous regimes of modern times.
Sunk by German bomber planes in World War Two, SS Thistlegorm has lain at the bottom of the sea for over sixty years. Located in the Straits of Gubal, Northern Red Sea this famous vessel has been the subject of much activity and drama during its two lives as both a seagoing merchant ship and as a world-class diving site.
Currents may occasionally be strong; however, mooring lines tied by the guide allow divers to make a comfortable descent to the shelter of the wreck. Once inside, divers can explore the ship's holds where time has seemingly stood still. Motorbikes, trucks, guns and wartime cargo, never to reach its destination, lay stacked where it was loaded back in 1941.
It must be said, that even after several hundred dives on Thistlegorm, such is the allure it holds for divers, that there is always something new to see.
The Thistlegorm is truly amazing - seeing shoes and boots, cars, etc, which were cargo still on deck is unbelievable. It's so well preserved as well.
During the rest of the week we ate in a number of lovely restaurants, and paid a visit to the Hard Rock Cafe, where the staff do the Timewarp in the middle of the floor! It was another pin and shot glass to add to the collection!
The only weird thing was that arriving in Sharm you land at a military air base! On approach, we were warned not to stray from passenger areas as we disembarked! There's armed soldiers lining the route to the terminal building, and while we were there, Egyptian prime minister Hosni Mubharak was holidaying in Sharm too, so along the main road from the airport, which is in the middle of vast empty plains, there were armed police and soldiers every ten metres or so!
I stayed here at Easter 2002, and really enjoyed the experience. My room was right on the beach (you could only see the armed guard in his hut beside the fence if you walked right out onto the beach...) and it was really lovely. I have vivid memories of sitting on the terrace listening to 'You Belong to Me' (which mentions pyramids along the Nile) as the sun set on a perfect day in Sharm el Sheikh.
The best things for me about the Hyatt Regency were the pools and restaurants. The architecture of the place was amazing too...lots of little nooks and crannies, and the whole hotel is very chic and elegant, but very Middle Eastern too. The pools...wow! There are three, but they're pretty much linked! Not only was there a water flume and a lazy river, but there was a sun deck to it as well, where you could keep cool in the pool but still get the sun. There are lots of sun beds with plenty of shade available if you wanted it.
The restaurants were also something special. Breakfasts were amazing at the Cafe Fresco with all the usual 5 star hotel touches, but the food was fantastic. We ate lunch most days at the Cascades Pool Bar and Restaurant or at the Beach House. It was the usual things - salad and pizzas, but really good!
But my favourite was the Souk. You paid for a bag of tokens and picked your food from 'stalls' around the outside of the open air square where you ate. There was everything from Mezze, Turkish Delight, Baklava, Mediterranean fare, freshly made local breads and fresh stir fries. Each dish had a value in coins - 1, 2, 3 or 4: things like fresh seafood cost more coins than a dish of noodles, but it was a nice different way to have dinner. We ate there twice, and also ate at the Hard Rock Cafe in Sharm, which was a 5 minute taxi ride away.
I did my PADI Advanced Open Water Course in Sharm el Sheikh at the Camel Dive Centre. The hotel was great at providing alarm calls for the early starts and also provided packed breakfasts.
The only down side to the hotel was the fact you had to pass through a metal detector to get into the lobby. We thought it was an over-reaction and designed to stop you taking drinks in from the town rather than buying them in the hotel or using the mini-bar.
However, the car bomb blasts on July 23rd, 2005 at a shopping centre where we'd browsed through shops, and at the Ghazala Gardens Hotel in Naama Bay, which we often passed, and a concealed suitcase bomb at the Movenpick, which we'd also passed a number of times, killing 88 people, show why the security checks were needed. It also explained why the hotel's private beach was fenced off and there were armed guards at security posts on the perimeter of the fence. It's a reassurance that hotels take security so serisouly. The Hyatt is at the end of a long drive way, which also has a controlled entry system, unlike a lot of the hotels in Sharm town and nearby Naama Bay. Naama features a range of local cafes, restaurants and tourist shops, and it's not hard to see why there were so many casualties and fatalities.
But Sharm el Sheikh is also known as The City of Peace because many international Middle Eastern peace conferences take place there. When we visited President Hosni Mubarak was in town and there was a heavy police presence.
Also, I was there with my then-boyfriend and my parents, and they'd booked two double rooms, but the room he and I were given was two single beds (queen size, but quite small) and when we went to reception to ask if we could be moved to a double room they asked if we were married! I quickly shifted a ring from my right hand to me left behind the high reception desk and said we were engaged, but it didn't work!
Sharm isn't somewhere I'd rush back to, unless I wanted to go scuba diving again. The town is nothing special, although there are nearby attractions such as the Monastery of St Catherine and Mount Sinai which I didn't visit. But the Hyatt Regency Sharm El Sheikh is one of the reasons I would go back - it's a perfect place for some sun, good food and lovely weather!
