Long-awaited vacation in Egypt

27 November 2018 • Travel time: with 03 November 2018 on 11 November 2018

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A long-awaited holiday in Egypt

Coral is a paradise in reality, it is a separate world with its inhabitants, it is one of those travel elements for which it is worth discovering our world. And how lucky we are that one of the most beautiful coral reefs in the world is located 3.5 hours from Ukraine. This year, Dasha chose a hotel with the most beautiful underwater world from all our travel experiences. This underwater world even defeated the Maldives (but only underwater, the color of the water, islands and sand in the Maldives is better). So, meet our vacation at Dreams Vacation! I could write forever about what I saw during the current trip under water, but in addition to the sea, the whole trip was a solid five.

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Over the past year, we have taught Misha to swim well, motivating him with kinders and the fact that he will swim with us in the Red Sea.

By the time of the trip, Misha feels more confident underwater than fish. The departure was early at 5 am.

Memorable flights with AzurAir

“Dear passengers, we are preparing for takeoff, but our engineers can’t close the door! ” A wave of laughter rolled through the cabin, the door was closed in 20 minutes and the plane flew away safely. The weather was clear, but the GPS did not want to catch our coordinates in any way. According to the outlines of the coastlines, I was able to determine the course of the aircraft and, starting from the meanders of the Nile, it turned out to calculate Cairo and the pyramids! A lot of passengers rejoiced at my topographical resourcefulness, as many rushed to the portholes of our side to look at the Pyramids. Then there were unforgettable landscapes of desert mountains, the Egyptian sea and a soft landing.

We got to the hotel at about 12 am, it was still two hours before check-in. The manager put bracelets on us, starting our all inclusive. The guy hinted that if you need rooms nearby, then there are right now, but with increased comfort. I was surprised to say that we have paid for cheaper rooms, but we cannot move into more expensive rooms without additional payment. The manager said in a kind voice that, of course, you don’t need to pay extra for anything, and at 14:00 he will gladly settle us as close to each other as possible. Super! Things were left at the reception. Taxi, where do we start our all-inclusive? Misha and I changed in the toilet and drove to the slides. Mother-in-law with Dasha moved to the bar. Two more couples were staying with us at the same time. One couple looked very upset. We call it “The Syndrome of the first day, the first trip to Egypt”. In fairness, people from a four-star hotel expect a real four-star, not Arabic. But the Egyptian stars are far from the stars that are in Europe and in expensive resorts. But in fact, this whole syndrome disappears as soon as you discover the world of fish. When you see people with Day 1 Syndrome, it's important to step up and fix the situation.

- Are you a little upset? I asked.

- I, very directly. - The man answered. – We are in Egypt for the first time, but we didn’t expect it a bit. And they don't want to move in.

- So the bracelets are on your hands, these are the keys to the world of all-inclusive! Start with aqua park slides, lunch in an hour, then check-in and the sea!! ! Do you know that this hotel has possibly the best coral and fish in Sharm? And we can also use all the services of the five hotel, which is located on our territory. By the way, the territory here is very large and beautiful. By the way, all the shortcomings that you can now imagine would be in absolutely all hotels, including fives. We are already in the fifth hotel in Egypt and believe from the Internet on the pluses this hotel is all right.

After my speech, the couple's mood improved markedly. Their daughter was running nearby, who, taking advantage of the advice, ran to the water slides. When a few hours later we met these guys at sea, it was funny to remember the bad impression. The woman could not believe her eyes that everything was real under water, and this is really not a photoshop on the Internet. Of course, choosing a hotel with the best coral from the first time is a fiasco, in other hotels it may not be so pleasant.

The hour flew by quickly, the first slide was not very fast. Let's go see what's going on with the others tomorrow. Lunch was not as varied as it happens in other hotels, but nevertheless absolutely everything was delicious, there were always two types of meat and fish fillets. There was even sparkling wine. Settled, now quickly on the sea! The sea from us is at the other end of the hotel. Those who wish and those who are tired can drive up in a taf-taf typewriter. But we need to explore our territory. Everything is green, flowers, bridges, heaps of pools of various shapes and depths, islands with palm trees among the pools! And a park with exotic birds!

Eyes run up, but first the sea! It takes 10-12 minutes to walk from our room to the sea. In November, the scorching heat is no longer there and the road to the sea is a walk through the Gardens of Eden. Our hotels are located at a height, you can go down to the sea either by elevator or by admiring the panorama on the stairs. But our panorama is very interesting, you can see the beautiful first beach and a rather mysterious pontoon, that is, an underwater pontoon. The view of the pontoon caused both admiration for the unusual and surprise. And how is it in general. The whole thing turned out to be in the ebb and flow, apparently there are such seasons when it is generally surface.

Coral skies

During our first visits, Misha swam with goggles, but for some reason he did not want to let his head go to the fish. But just a couple of days later, Misha, already with an adult mask, made swims with me to wild corals, where there are no people, for up to 45 minutes at a time. Although, there weren't too many people. The length of our coral reef to the right took 40 minutes (both ways) of swimming, and to the left I swam to the neighboring hotel only once, my route took more than an hour both ways. There were hundreds of fish, fish and fish. Almost the entire coral wall is alive, with the exception of places near the pontoon itself.

There is much less living coral in the shallow water behind the wall, but there are more exotic representatives of the underwater world - starfish, pepper moray eels, stingrays, sea snakes and... and... octopus!! ! When Dasha and I saw the octopus, we could not tear ourselves away from it. He defiantly changed color under the coral, and then under the sand, gracefully swam and hid in his house. I wanted to look into his house, but he stuck out his eye from there and how could I understand that I was not invited to visit. But I’m not sure about the sea snake, I remember well the color and characteristic features of the creature that was hiding in the corals, but I can’t find who it was on the Internet. But the black and white striped coloration points to a sea snake.

Misha most of all admired sea urchins, they were in short supply and two species at once. Swimming in shallow water was, of course, a little dangerous and not without injury, but it was cool. At a depth along the endless coral ever-living wall, almost the entire assortment of the Red Sea swam.

There were three types of "bodywork" from medium exotic rarer fish, and somehow an electric stingray sailed. And those fish that were rare in other hotels lived here at once in large families.

For example, huge and toothy barracudas loomed constantly. Whistle fish (I used to think that they were needle fish) swam here of the most enormous sizes. Fish of about Misha's size, but fatter, also constantly sailed.

Somehow, far from civilization, I noticed an unusual and large fish. Mishka and I hurried to her, but the fish was not going to swim away from us. When the distance to the fish became a couple of meters, one could clearly see its color in bright blue lightning along the body. The tail consisted of many folded needles. The size of the fish is up to a meter. Her large spherical eye first turned to me, then switched to Misha. With this fish, the jokes are clearly bad, you need to turn on the back. Rybishcha also decided not to get close. That fish pointedly bit off and swallowed a piece of coral. And once, another fish opened its mouth so that Misha demanded to return to the shore. The sea in early November is open until 17:00.

Toward this time, infinitely beautiful and poisonous lionfish begin to catch up, right by families and two species. But the most interesting is the underwater pier. People calmly go along it waist-deep, and sometimes chest-deep, go to the very end. I, fortunately, decided to immediately swim under water. This pier has proven to be a favorite haunt of dozens of large tang fish.

One of the fish attacked the woman, cutting the coral on her leg. Some fish bit Misha's leg until it bled. Fortunately, not much. I called the underwater pier the corridor of death and we did not move along it anymore. I went into the water immediately from the surface pontoon to the depth. Reading the description of the inhabitants of the underwater world, we can conclude that this is all very dangerous. But! Fortunately, all dangerous fish that are found near the reef are classified as passive-dangerous.

That is, species that the former themselves almost never attack. For example, lionfish, despite their strong toxicity, are very slow and simply cannot catch up with you. Not all sea snakes, when attacked, are able to bite through human skin due to the small size of the mouth, etc. So that predators can be enjoyed for hours. Especially the giants that swim closer to the reef and lurk behind the corals, waiting for their fish prey. More often, a crunch is heard under water - parrot fish gnaw on reefs. But caution will never be superfluous. Especially with corals.

In the early days, I hurt my toes very badly, from below they looked like in a horror movie. In shallow water there were a couple of unsuccessful collisions with the knees, but everything worked out for Misha. When I hooked my foot on the coral, one of my first thoughts was “That's how I need it. ” The coral will now need a long time to recover from a human touch.

In the future, the pain in the fingers reminded me to always be on the alert, and later the pain in the worn knees joined) No, of course you can swim along the main reef and not swim anywhere, but it’s also interesting to look everywhere. In addition, very interesting fish live in coral burrows, some neon fish are only worth something. Oh Egypt! This year there is definitely no need to take an excursion to the Ras Mohamed coral reserve, it is definitely better here.

It was not boring on the shore by the sea either, there lived crabs and some small jumping sea animals! By the way, so that the mask does not fog up under water, I sprinkled it with a solution of water and shampoo. I took a spray bottle specially from home.

If one of the key indicators when choosing a hotel is a reef with fish, then you can safely take Dream Vacation, you will simply forget about all the shortcomings that you will find in the Arab four.

Polyakova's concerts

At around 5:00 pm, the mosquito-baiting procedure took place, three men started terrible smoking generators and enveloped the hotel grounds in acrid smoke. Kuma commented that it was like a Polyakova concert. Every evening we tried to avoid the concert, we had to get out of the sea at about 16:55. I have never heard that Polyakova, but now I am afraid of her concerts like fire. Somehow this Polyakova with a generator walked right behind us, while the other two approached the crossing from other streets of the hotel. Brrr, Horror! But people also pay money to get to her concert)

A very strange moment in my life

Egypt had a convention of 51 presidents this year, and in honor of this, there was increased security and the first half of the trip to the desert was not available. Sometimes a military helicopter flew by with a machine gun, and suspicious people in tuxedos appeared at breakfasts, one walking around with a gun. In general, everything was as secure as possible! We didn't even worry about the theft in the room this time. But for the neighbor, whose alarm clock vibrated behind the wall at half past five, we didn’t worry much. He didn't hear him point-blank for two nights in a row. I decided to go in the afternoon and ask him to turn it off. I walked over and rang the doorbell. A janitor ran up to me, explaining something in Arabic and showing that my room was next door, I explained to the guy that I needed a neighbor. In response, the guy showed me a firing pistol with his fingers and murmured something in Arabic. I was no longer sure that I needed to see a neighbor. But the janitor took the initiative and said, "He's sleeping. " I answered “Well, ok, next time” and began to turn on the back. The janitor defiantly rang the neighbor's door four times and repeated "He's sleeping. " In principle, the image of a firing pistol seemed to me a rather impressive argument a minute ago not to call. But the guy did not stop, took out his master card and opened the neighbor's door. He beckoned me with his hand, saying, come on in, take a look. I took a couple of very unsteady steps and saw a bare leg sticking out on the bed. The cleaner said to me, “You see, he is sleeping! ” I silently returned to the room, I wanted to look at the wall and try to scroll through what had just happened. Let's see, the clock was around 17:00, someone is sleeping in the next room, but judging by the lack of reaction to the loud calls of the janitor and the image of the shooting gun, ignoring the alarm clock early in the morning... he sleeps there forever? Or is it temporary? Dasha asked me excitedly: “Well, how did you go? ”. I retold this whole strange story. We knew one thing, no matter who slept there and how, we didn’t need to go to the next room anymore. By the way, for all the time we never saw anyone leaving or entering from there.

An Egyptian trip is always a long-awaited one for us. We remember about Egypt in almost every our trip with the phrase “Nothing, we will rest in Egypt”. And in harsh Norway, we warmed ourselves with this thought at night. What makes the Egyptian trip unique is the absence of route planning, documents, entrance tickets, hotel chain reservations, searching on the Internet that there is nothing to see, this is what Dasha and I call a real vacation. Almost every day passes strictly according to the same pleasant schedule, and this is wonderful. I would not say that this schedule is physically easier than other trips, but there is no need to follow the route and money. The head is definitely resting. This year my schedule was:

Schedule for the day

08:00 – 09:00 Breakfast (floating time here, start from 06:50)

09:00 – 10:30 Swimming among the fishes, non-stop

10:30 – 12:00 Extreme slides by the pool, cocktail session and second breakfast

12:00 – 12:45 Swimming with fish for me and slide pool for others

13:00 – 14:00 Lunch

14:00 – 15:20 Quiet time

15:30 – 16:55 Swimming with fish

17:00 – 17:05 Polyakova's concert

17:05 – 18:20 Quiet time

18:30 – 19:30 Dinner

19:30 – 21:30 Outing to the city

21:30 – 22:00 Show at the hotel

22:00 – 22:30 Internet

22:30 – 23:30 Packing up

Since swimming with fish took place at a depth, more than two hours of pure swimming came out a day, and even slides, by the end of the day we were in complete rubbish every time. Misha spent a total of up to an hour and a half in the water a day, not counting the slides and the pool, from which he practically did not climb out.

At one of the pools there was a full-fledged adult extreme slide. Misha and I found her on the second day and never returned to the first. On the hill, if desired, it was possible to develop crazy speed. After a couple of days, bruises began to appear on the body. At 11:00 the chef came out and prepared delicious donuts. So, in addition to the slides, there was also a second breakfast by the pool.

The water in the pool was much colder than the sea, but you get used to it. Misha was not cold at all, and before dinner I once again ran to bask in the sea. The water in the sea was warm, and there were days when there was not even discomfort in the water from the first second. And a cool breeze sometimes rose above the water. Dasha was preparing a towel for herself on the surface pontoon. The presence of a water park on site is a whole attraction. And having an unlimited bar is just ambrosia. On the slides, we also developed a schedule, first two cocktails, then slides, then a second breakfast in the form of donuts with jam and a third cocktail.

For lunch, we always had a difficult choice between two excellent restaurants. Grill restaurant and our classic. But every day the number of people in the grill grew, and we moved to ours, where there was always a lot of space. It happened that they ate at two at once, in the classic there were canceled desserts. This hotel has an excellent confectioner who puts not only all his love, but also magic into desserts. I did not know that in Egypt there can be such delicious and varied cakes and pastries. Cheesecakes and lemon cakes are my favorite. Dasha liked the extra chocolate cake, mother-in-law ate cream cakes. Misha, on the other hand, crushed jelly into pieces, which he called trampolines. I understood that there was a serious blow to the diet, but it was worth it, now in Kyiv I am intensively dropping the gained 3 kilograms back. Although, it would seem, an hour on the hills to run up the stairs, more than two hours of swimming every day and hiking, but the cakes win. And every morning it was very, very joyful to walk around our green territory, does anyone really want to go to the beach by car instead of such a walk.

One of the pleasant features of the hotel is a round-the-clock park with birds. Many parrots and various birds live in the aviaries, the man who looks after the pets gives handfuls of seeds so that they can feed the birds. I'm just starting to love Egypt even more while writing the story. This is wonderful, it's a pity there are no tours purely for the weekend, Dasha and I would be regular customers of such trips. We had even more pleasant evenings. On the territory of the hotel there were as many as four themed restaurants where you could dine once per trip. As a result, we had such themed dinners - grilled, fish, Mexican and Italian.

The most memorable, so to speak, with immersion was Mexican. Every time the waiter took out a hot dish, he loudly shouted something in Spanish) The only negative of these themed gatherings were mosquitoes, as they were covered on the street. There were no mosquitoes in the classic restaurant, apparently they liked the themed cuisine more. But, on the other hand, if there were no mosquitoes in these four restaurants, then the rest would be the most ideal in the world. And then what's next, the ideal is found, the end of the search in different countries of the world?

Men's entertainment in the desert

The fact that Misha and I have been waiting and dreaming for half a year already is to drive together on a quad bike. This year we signed up for ATVs twice, once just me and Misha, and the second time with the whole crowd with a night show. Misha sat in front, I was in control at the back. Misha asked to start the ATV, but was even more delighted when I let him drive.

In our column, everyone rode quite confidently, and our curator accelerated to a fairly fast speed. I thought Misha would help with the steering a bit, but Misha was most interested in the throttle lever. In the end, all I had to do was control the brakes. Misha quickly went into a rage and was not afraid to develop speed without the backbone of the woman who was riding in front of us.

The woman said that she felt with her back that the child was driving an ATV. We drove somewhere far away, shouted an echo, Misha drank some tea and drove back. But the way back turned out to be non-trivial, for some reason our curator, picking up speed, turned into the forest. For some reason, a forest is located in the middle of the desert. It seemed to me that the guy simply forgot that he was leading a column of tourists. Moreover, the tour began at sunset and it was already completely dark. Misha headed for the forest, and we rushed under the sagging arches of trees, puddles, holes and dust. Every time at stops, I took control so that no one would see that Misha was driving. When we arrived at the finish line, the guide came up to us, looked sideways, asked if everything was fine with us and quoted my words “Get the gas here! Oh, don't gas! " Apparently he heard and realized that almost the entire road was taxied by a child. Misha is overjoyed. A day later, we went to quad bikes + shows. Such ATVs are held at night. There were no more people in our group, so the column consisted only of us. I asked our guide to drive at full speed, since everyone here is experienced. The one-way road was quite fast and obviously faster than the day before yesterday, but Misha and I were hungry for speed and asked to return even faster.

The guy was glad to try, on the way back we began to develop such a speed that at some points I took control out of harm's way. From the excursion to the transfer, everyone loaded up dusty and happy, it was gorgeous and really extreme. Especially me, as I was very attentive to the change in the road keeping my hands firmly on the brake. The show itself in the desert is not much worse than the ones that we had animation in the hotel. But as a variety in the daily schedule - just right.

The hotel shows were short, but quite funny. Dasha and I, as always, were regular participants when called to the stage. As a result, a whole glass of water was poured out of my ear, and a fat python was hung on Dasha. A nice highlight was the schedule of shows in five and four, after our show you could always go to another show in a five-star hotel.

Day after day, and our trip began to come to an end, in Kyiv, frost will begin from day to day, and here it will be up to 30 degrees. It was the first time in Egypt, when it was so good and relaxed that I did not want to leave at all. It seems that they just walked around and got into the taste. I would definitely have to spend another week here. And I didn’t want to leave either, since we usually have Egypt once every few years, and with all our desire, we won’t be able to get there next year, since absolutely all vacation days are already scheduled for trips, and we also need to somehow push Japan in.

The mother-in-law says that whoever has not visited Egypt at least once in their life has lived in vain. It sounds, of course, pretentious, and it's no secret that there are tourists who do not like Egypt, but maybe you were at the wrong time in the wrong hotel, please give Egypt a second chance to make you fall in love with it! One of my friends, who has not yet discovered the world of travel, told me: “I’m still better at picking up an iPhone, ” although at the moment there is already enough for a trip to Egypt. It seems to me that there is no such iPhone that will bring more joy than getting into a good hotel with a good reef in Egypt for at least a day. If I didn’t have the opportunity to fly, but I had an iPhone, I would not hesitate to sell it in favor of the trip. Alina, I ask you to fly once, and you won't stop)

Our Misha has already got a taste for traveling, and at dinner he has already rolled out to me a list of countries in which we must definitely fly with him. Moreover, well done, he started from Australia, and even captured Chad. Moreover, for the last couple of years, Misha has been intensively studying the routes and history of Kiev tram routes, and now he has begun to switch to air travel between countries. Well, since I am mentally ready for many kilometers of trips, we include it in a number of next trips. To be continued)

And yes, Egypt is wonderful!

Travel Information

Date of travel: 03.11. 2018 – 11.11. 2018

Hotel: Dreams Vacation. Recommended

Duration: 8 nights (Sharm El Sheikh)

Tour agency in Kyiv: Tasty Travel (Themselves sent)

Operator: AnexTour (normal)

Tour type: Full package - insurance, flight, transfers, hotel, all inclusive

Excursions: Quad bikes

Purchasing a tour: 3 weeks in advance

Package tour for two adults 24400 UAH

Taxi to Soho and back - $11

Taxi to Nama Bay and back - 5$

Quad bike tour - 10$ (single)

Excursion ATV - 15$ (double with a child)

Show in the desert - $15 per person

Translated automatically from Russian. View original