Above: Scenery en route.
Driving down to Sharm el Sheikh
We returned to the hotel to collect our stuff and get ready for our drive south. While we were destined for Sharm el Sheikh, we found a taxi to Dahab where we would change to a bus for Sharm.
As we approached Dahab, we asked if the driver would continue to Sharm. Our original price to Dahab was EGP230 (USD37) and the driver upped the price to EGP400 (USD65), which was quite reasonable as a proportion of the distance/time. It would only cost us about USD3pp more than transferring on to a bus and save us a lot of hassle.
Scenery en route was very beautiful desert landscape. There was a mix of red, beige and white hues with some extremely rock portions.
The total driving time to Sharm was less than 3h. As we reached the northern part of Sharm near the airport, we had to look for the Concorde El Salam beach resort. It was a little difficult and I had to keep telling the oldies not to point to anything of interest that they saw, as with language issues with our driver, we might end up going in that direction rather than towards the hotel (not that where we knew where the hotel was).
From the car, I could see the airport tarmac. There were a couple of Ilyushin 86 Russian jets, a couple of Alitalia jets and a Swiss Belair jet too.
At the resort
It all ended well and we found our stunning resort. I wanted to finish up the adventure with the oldies in comfort and had found this resort for USD80 + 25% taxes per night including buffet breakfast. This is where the adventure finishes and the holiday begins! Yes, we do have time in Cairo afterwards but it wasn’t new to Kim and I.
After check-in, we needed a shuttle to get to our room which was near the sea. Then Kim opted to upgrade to a very nice seaview room for USD10 pppn.
We took lunch poolside. The club sandwiches were huge. We also shared a Caesar salad which came with lots of chicken but no anchovies. The prices were very reasonable too.
We explored this marvellous resort afterwards. At the floating plastic jetty we saw fish of a variety of colours, eg. green/purple, yellow/black, fin-shaped tails and shoals of small ones too. The sight made me vow to take up scuba diving. [Edit: I did four years later and have had more than a hundred dives about ten years after that.]
We continued exploring the part of the hotel near the reception. It was a rather long walk, crossing the main road, past a supermarket, an equestrian centre and worker’s quarters.
After having such a late lunch, we skipped dinner tonight. Having done Egypt the hard way twelve years ago, it feels like a completely different country being in a nice resort like this. We were completely insulated from the real Egypt. There’s a time and place for every type of travel.