When I got there, this is the first thing I saw:
As I learnt later, these buses were brought to El Gouna all the way from Pakistan. This is the kind of ride you want to keep a low profile on a secret mission. I bet the CIA has 10 just like those.
Tempting as it was, I decided to take a tuk-tuk instead.
For those of your who don't know what a tuk-tuk is. Below you can see a picture of one (random picture from the internet).
Alex's apartment turned up to be a really nice 2 bedroom apartment with its own swimming pool and hold tight... its own lagoon, yes, they opened up the area to the sea in order to create artificial lagoons, in case the swimming pools weren't enough.
You may think the above photo has been taken from some random catalogue off the internet. Nope... This is the swimming pool on the back of Alex's apartment and Alex's apartment is the one right in front. Second floor.
In case you are wondering, the lagoon is right behind the photographer.
I must admit it was hard going back to the UK.
I thought I would have plenty of time to be by the beach, do some swimming etc... but no. As it turned out the Diving course was quite demanding and it was like a full time job so for the next 5 days I spent all the time on the diving course from morning to evening. The first two days were just the theory and the swimming pool exercises the next three days were a bit more fun... We got to do some proper diving in the sea.
After shopping around and checking prices and offers I decided to go with Orca divers (a German company) by the Marina.
Below is the Marina:
Initially I was the only person enrolled on the course but in the afternoon another guy joined in which was great since we got on really well with each other and made the course a lot more fun.
His name was Holger (sorry about the spelling if it's wrong). He is German but the Diving course in German was fully booked already and only had spots available on the English course where I was the only student, so that's how he ended up in my class.
The three mosketeers. Right to left:
Wael (the instructor), funny guy and Holger.
I can't remember the name of the guy in the middle with the green t-shirt as he only came once or twice with us but he was a really funny guy and we had a good laughs with him.
Left to right:
Karen (Holger's girlfriend) and the reason why he took up scuba diving.
Holger
Funny guy
Wael
It wasn't all work... we had some great times, and between trips there was also time to enjoy the sun.
We even got to go out at night and try a few local amenities
I concluded that wasn't for me. :-)
Unfortunately, keeping myself alive underwater was hard enough so I do not have any underwater pictures, which is a shame since Egypt is a fantastic place and I promised myself I would be going back there one day. There are lots of wrecks as well, World War II wrecks even...
After the diving course it was time to do some tourism again and due to a set of circumstances I ended up joining a German excursion to Luxor, yeah... I was as surprised as you are! I do not speak a word of German but once there I realised that with a little bit of ingenuity you don't really need to. :-)
But that's a story for another entry. :-)
This is what El Gouna looks like from the sea:
One of the things I liked the most is that there is no haggling for a taxi fare, or at the shops. All items are priced. There are some local shops where you can go and haggle with the seller but not on the main shops... so you know they are not ripping you off more than anybody else. :-)
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