An Unexpected Respite: An Extended Weekend in Ain Sokhna
Before coming to
Egypt I made a choice to keep myself ignorant of the country had to offer. I
hoped that my willful ignorance would make my adventure more…adventurous. Had I
done the proper due diligence, I would have known that Egypt has world class
coastlines, on the Mediterranean and Red Seas, and a reef that supports some of
the best scuba diving in the world. But I didn’t, and much to my surprise, I
spend a lovely extended weekend in paradise.
In order to
conduct a follow up session regarding international student orientation, The
American University in Cairo sponsored an all-inclusive trip for the
international students to spend a weekend at a four-star hotel in Ain Sokhna.[1]
This generous offer was a poorly disguised bribe. Without the promise of a
weekend at the beach, no one would voluntarily participate in this ‘important’
follow up session.
To this end, the
AUC created a strict itinerary for our time at the Red Sea, trying to insure no
one could shirk the obligatory session. We would arrive in the early afternoon
on Friday, eat lunch, and spend the afternoon at the beach. In the evening, and
in order to get a ticket to dinner, the mandatory follow up meeting. The next
morning the AUC would take us on an expedition to one of the oldest monastic
orders in the world, and return us to Cairo by Saturday night. Needless to say
the event organizers wanted to transform a relaxing weekend at the beach into a
perpetual bus ride by packing too much fun into two days.
Concurrent with
the trip was a student protest that had shut down the AUC Campus, causing classes
to be canceled. Unfortunately, the administration alerted students about class
cancelations around 10:00 AM. Being a student of the Arabic Language Institute,
my classes began at 8:30 AM, so I had to show up to school every morning to
find out for myself if I was locked out of my class. Knowing that there was a
distinct possibility of being locked out of school, a couple of buddies and I
decided it would be a good idea to extend our trip to Ain Sokhna by a day.
Thursday morning,
I packed my backpack with the bare essentials for school. I packed the folders,
flash cards, text book and pens, necessary for a day in class, and filled any
remaining space with underwear, T-shirts, bathing suit, flip-flops, toiletries,
and a couple of bro-tanks for the beach. My intention was to go to class and
learn, my hope was to go to the beach and relax.
As expected, the
gates to the AUC were chained shut, and entrances barricaded by the BMWs of the
student protestors. A large crowd of
students, teachers, administrators, and on lookers amassed in front of the main
gate as buses continued to deposit their loads. After snapping a couple
pictures of the mess, and not wanting to get lost in the crowed, I wound up at
a coffee shop a couple miles down the road where I was going to meet my buddies
and head to the beach.
In a moment of
supreme wisdom and drunk on the promise of adventure, I allowed my nineteen-year-old
friend to take responsibility for planning the trip. As a result we had
absolutely no plan. But we piled into the small taxi of a cab driver willing to
make the hour and a half journey to the Suez, filled any available space with
backpacks and overnight bags, and headed across the desert anyway.
For the most part
I was at ease with the situation. Ain Sokhna is located only about an hour and
a half east of Cairo, however, to get there we would have to cross the endless,
and at times lawless, Sahara. As I gazed across the vast wasteland I began to
wonder, ‘how far I could walk through that land right now with the amount of water
that we have in this car.’ My musings became less theoretical when I suddenly
realized that we had not stopped for gas before leaving, and the taxi’s broken
gas gage made it impossible to know how much was left in the tank.
The freeway was
littered with burnt out and wrecked cars. They were strewn across the
shoulders, and looked as if they had been in their final resting position for
no more than a week. At one point we came a cross truck and trailer that had
tipped over and smashed into a concrete support structure. The driver, bloody
and battered, sat on the cab of his truck in the shade of the road sign he had
hit. Looking back I noticed another man, still in the cab of the truck, just as
bloody, he looked like he was sleeping, I am sure he wasn’t.
Except for the occasional
military checkpoint, there was very little human presence along the highway, especially
in the form of gas station and emergency assistance. I must admit that the combination
of potentially of running out of gas, the carnage of twisted steal, and the
crushing emptiness was a bit unsettling. There is nothing like staring out of
the window, watching the world fly by, on a long car ride to get the
imagination going.
When the desert finally
ended it was not gradual. The impressive mountain range that rims the Read Sea fell
sharply into the crystal clear water. Similar to Highway 1 in California, this
part of the freeway into Ain Sokhna traced this dramatic coastline. Except on
this stretch of highway were are no lanes, or center divider, and cars and
truck and buses passed each other around blind turns, and it was closer to the
water, and a thousand times sketchier.
My previous
knowledge of seaside vacation areas led me to believe that Ain Sokhna would be
a sleepy village on the water filled with wind chimey tourist traps, and overpriced
restaurants. Nope. Ain Sokhna is actually a major port for ships passing
through the Suez Canal. Down the coast from the port is a string of luxury
hotels, some offensively large, but most in a state of perpetual construction.
It was not until
we arrived in Ain Sokhna that I realized the extent of our lack of planning.
Since, to my surprise, we did not have a hotel reservation, we ask the driver
to stop at countless hotels so we could inquire about availability for the
night. Everything was either, under construction, booked, or asking an
astronomically high price. Even the biggest hotel I have ever seen in my life
seemed to be completely booked for the night, though I supremely doubt that
that could have been the case. As we became more desperate we began to ‘joke’
about sneaking in and spending the night in one of the construction sight. We
eventually found the hotel that the AUC trip had booked, and, for a reasonable
rate, we checked in a day early.
The rest of the
trip was a relaxing blur of swimming in perfectly refreshing water, eating
delicious meals, and hanging out with good friends. The mandatory follow up
season turned out to be as useless as it was boring, and, aside from the oil
tanker explosion that eventually kept us in paradise a day longer, it was the
only unpleasant part.
Pro Tip:
1. Teenagers are
not as responsible as I thought. Never rely on one to have a solid plan and you
will never be disappointed.
2. Since there is real
town in Ain Sokhna the hotels are islands for accommodations, food, and water.
When staying in them, you are completely at their mercy, and their prices let
you know that they know it. I don’t have any advice for dealing with this
predicament. It sucks. But in the grand scheme of things, its not actually that
much money especially compared to a similar experiences in other parts of the
world.
[1]
Ain Sokhna, one of the many beach communities designed to draw tourists and
wealthy vacationers that dot Egypt’s Red Sea coastline.
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