Egypt, I missed you
Flight Moscow-Sharm El Sheikh
Flight 5533 departs at 10.30, arrives at 14.25. The plane is large (two-story), they do not feed (because less than 5 hours) only drinks (water, lemonade, tea / coffee - no juices either).
Hotel Sultan Gardens Resort 5*, Sharm El Sheikh
We were at the hotel at about 4 p. m. They put tags on the luggage, put it off and you have to wait for it to be delivered to your room, and we were offered to go on a taf-taf (a bus that runs around the hotel). I quarreled “what should I do in a room without a suitcase” and we were loaded onto a taf-taf with our suitcases. Thanks to this, at 17.05 we rushed to the sea and managed to swim until 18h (the sea and the pool are closed after sunset). Taf-taf walks at intervals of 15 minutes until 19.30, and at siesta hours at intervals of half an hour (because you don’t want to wander around in the midday heat even after sunset! ; -))
We settled in the 4th building (the rooms start at 4). This is the closest building to the beach / sea - walk 3 minutes, but farthest from the pools, dining room and reception. And all this is uphill!!
The room is very good: everything is clean, repaired, the shower has everything (gel, shampoo, conditioner, lotion), replenished as soon as you take it. There is a bathrobe, slippers and other accessories. In general, in my practice, this is the best room filling in hotels of this type (there was an ashtray and even a soap dish : )). The guys asked for a toothbrush, they immediately brought it. There are not enough clothes dryers for everyone, but we (at my request) were put on the next morning.
The beds are good (although the pillow is hard, but you get used to it), but I had to quarrel for sleeping on a large bed (I was the only one in the room) - you see, only married couples can live in rooms with a large bed. Moreover, the receptionist apparently lost all the skills of extorting money, tk. his pathetic attempts to scare me (I found you a room with a large bed, but it is not on the first line and far from your friends) did not lead to anything and I lived in an excellent room next to my own and on the first line (the first was only a diving center : ))
In a room for three I saw 3 full beds, and it was the closest room to the sea, so this room also has its advantages))).
The hotel has a quiet area (no music, animation, children) on the beach and in the pool. There is an adult-only area in the dining room. From the animation, I liked the parties on the beach at 11.30 - foam and holly (Indian festival of colors). In the pool, the floor is sloping and rough with bare legs, it’s not very pleasant to stand on it - in half an hour of water aerobics, I rubbed my thumbs and heels into tatters.
until August 2021, the hotel was mostly tourists from Kazakhstan and Ukraine, but I think now Russian tourists will quickly make up for 6 years of lack of direct communication with Egypt)))
Food
The food is varied and you can always find something to your liking. Always had a grill, and seafood. From fruits: watermelon, figs, melon (green is sweeter, apparently local, and orange seems to be imported), guava, mango was given a couple of times.
Sea, beach
There is a small sand strip to lie down / sit in the water. On the left is a wooden pier, on the right is a plastic pontoon. The pontoon is closer to the water, so you can see the fish better from it, but getting in and out of the water is inconvenient. At the pier, corals and fish are more diverse and beautiful. Between the pier and the pontoon there is a large coral, it has thousands of fish of different types, colors and sizes. It turns out a huge aquarium. The longer you hang at any larger coral, the more fish you can see.
Excursions
Overview. It was like a company gift, so it's free. And you need to do this in the first 48 hours upon arrival, then for a fee. In Corel Travel for Ukraine, it cost $10. The bus came for us 45 minutes late, it seemed to break down and we had to change the bus. The aunt, slightly frostbitten, did not even apologize, did not explain anything, loaded us onto the bus and we went to the lotus, from there to the oil and perfume store. Here we all made a huge mistake: the guide did not set the time for us to visit the store (and consciously), but we ourselves did not think of it before. As a result, I lost track of time and spent about 1.5 hours there bargaining for a bottle of perfume (and I didn’t even bargain for a good price for myself L, as it turned out). All this time, the whole bus was sitting and cursing me, the tour, the guide, the country, etc. And no one tried to come and tell me that I'm crazy! When I finally caught myself and jumped out to the bus, the guide calmly walked around the store, and did not even think to rush me (“well, you came here for this, it must be fun! ”).
Do not repeat our mistakes, fix by what time everyone should get on the bus. After the store, we went to look at the mosque (you can’t go inside), but since it was already closer to sunset, the light on the mosque fell from the wrong side, as a result, all the photos were ugly and we didn’t have time to walk around it. Then we drove past an Israeli house and again a souvenir shop. We have already spent only 15 minutes in it, although there were papyri and various other interesting things that one could see / buy. At the end, our frostbitten woman suggested to us “we still have a sweets shop according to the program – shall we go? ”. Guess what we answered)))) we were at the hotel around 18.30. By the way, about the bus being late, she explained to us that the organizers had scheduled all the hotels for a meeting at the same time from here and the overlay occurred (in general, Egypt needs to acquire all the skills to communicate with Russian tourists again)
Lost land (kill all birds with one stone with one tour - this is how the organizers position it)
Quad, camels, colored canyon, jeeps, diving / snorkeling near the neutral waters of 3 countries. Picked up at 6.40 (since our hotel was the last to be picked up).
We drove about an hour to the place. On the way we stopped at a gas station for breakfast (which is also listed in the program). In fact, breakfast is what was given at the hotel, or bought at a gas station. (toilet is paid - 5 pounds, or 1 dollar for three). We were given a very decent breakfast at the hotel: juice, water, buns, cheese, jam, cheese, sausage, an apple and an orange. The guide asked us not to throw away the food that we did not finish, but to give it to the Bedouin children. Of course, everyone immediately stopped eating and prepared their own breakfasts for the starving children of the desert. We arrived, waited a long time for our turn - at that time we drank Bedouin tea, the guide told all sorts of stories. The uncle came up and ordered to put on a certain table everything that we brought (what we saved for the children) - as they explained to us, then there will be a distribution of everything (it is not known how much the same children will get). We waited for our turn: 15 minutes on quadrics, 5 minutes on camels (in fact, they just made a circle around the hill).
A girl and a boy rode me (the boy held the leash and hid in the shade of the camel, the girl just walked side by side in the sun). I got off the camel, the boy immediately indicated that he didn’t ride me for free, gave him a dollar. Then I remembered that I have protein bars, I decided to give them to my children (it was a mistake! ). I found 3 pieces in my house, I go to the shed where the children are sitting. There are 4 children, among them is my driver (he is the oldest and largest of all), my driver's assistant and their younger sister and brother. I think to myself, “I gave the driver a dollar, so I can do without a candy bar, ” it wasn’t there. When I went to them, they already understood what was happening and just a pack of dogs ran into me, of course, the eldest is ahead of everyone, he is taller and stronger, so he simply moved the others away from me so that they would not get anything!
They almost tore me apart for these bars. And at what, there is no question of any juniority, brotherhood, honesty. If the elder had managed to grab all the bars from me (and even if I had 50.100 of them), then the younger ones would have gotten nothing. In general, in an unequal battle, I was able to distribute the bars according to my concepts, to which the elder pouted and I think he would have cracked me if there weren’t adults from their village nearby. I suspect that if the girls did not have time to swallow the bars immediately after they received them, then this “chief” must have taken the bars from them. All in all, it was instructive! By the way, I was able to put half an orange in my girl without the need to share: she and my driver returned the camels home and each sat on his camel, so here I'm sure that she got it.
After that, we went by jeeps to the colored canyon - 10 minutes. We got out of the jeeps and it turned out that this is where we need water (a lot of water. Before that, I always carried water with me, but I decided to leave it in the jeep, because I thought that we just had a stop to admire the beauty), since the walk it's about 40 minutes walk through the colored canyon in the midday heat (I think it was about 47 degrees). We had a tenechek at the acacia (about 3 people fit) and then, when we went down to the canyon itself...
Lunch on the boat and diving. The fish were worse (not as varied as the hotel), but the corals are huge - impressive.
We went back at 17.35, we were brought to the hotel at 20.40. if we returned by boat, it would be faster and less tiring.
Mega safari.
Picked up at 8.05, back at 14.00. There were only us (6 people) on a minibus.
The road is 15 minutes and then we boarded a quad, drove for about 20 minutes. We arrived at a stylized village where they hold evening shows (nice), drank tea, rode camels (15 minutes), then lunch (since it was at 10.30, then rather a second breakfast), and back on the quad to return from where we left. In total, about 40 minutes per quad - I really liked it. We arrived at the port, took a ride on a boat with a transparent bottom (it was not in the program, but I think there was an overlay), then there should be parachutes and riding on a tablet. We arrived at the port and walked for 20 minutes in the heat in search of a toilet and changing rooms (we were not allowed anywhere! ). Finally, we were loaded onto the boat and the race began (quickly, transfer, put on a vest, sit here, quickly, take off your vest, go to another boat... ). I didn’t even realize anything and didn’t understand what happened, how I ended up in this ill-fated pill, and the captain, who had waited for me to grab the handles, drove at such a speed that I almost broke my spine from jumping on the waves. At the same time, the photographer pretended that it was cool and offered him to pose... In general, if you like this kind of extreme, then hold on tight, and if you don’t like it, then I advise you to tell the captain before you take a pill so that you don’t drive if you don’t want to, so that you sue him later.
Flight Sharm El Sheikh - Moscow
Departure at 16.25 (flight 5634), picked up from the hotel at 11.05 (for 5 hours). When leaving the hotel, there were no problems / overlays, etc. (I read reviews about the demand for money for towels - we didn’t have anything like that). We were alone on the bus, we stopped at one hotel, there was no one there, in the second one sat down 1 person. There are many inspections at the airport: at the entrance to the airport, before passport control, after passport control, before boarding the plane (all bags were checked here, and they felt you completely, with predilection). And after passport control, before going down to duty free, a dude sits and selectively “invites” to scan who he likes / dislikes.
All this just takes 5 hours, since everyone does it slowly and there are few people allocated for all inspections (most of all before boarding - 3 women and 3 men, in other places a maximum of 2 people).
In the Priority pass salon (on the 4th floor) it is stuffy (air conditioners, if they exist, cannot cope, because it is located under a roof without a partition), there are restrictions on the number of people on Wi-Fi (at first we were generally connected to the fact that without the Internet). There is no bread at all (“what is on the shelves is a decoration”) and alcohol (no, not even beer), the food is scarce and quickly ended (no wonder, because there were as many as 50 people in the salon at the same time! : )). I don't recommend wasting your time on this service. It’s better to hang around the airport and have lunch somewhere like a human being.
