Ain Sukhna – 2 Feb 07

Friends of Wesley and Brian’s have a holiday home down at Ain Sukhna. They are catholic and Coptic and were down there for the weekend. We went down on Saturday to visit them, check out the beach. The plan had been to go for a swim, lay around on the beach… unfortunately it was raining, windy, freezing cold and there was a sand storm.

We couldn’t have picked a worse day for a trip to the beach!

It took about 1 ½ hours to drive down there. Luckily we took Brian’s work car rather than Wesley Land Rover so we got to travel in comfort. The Land Rover is great for desert, but a bit cramped in the back seat for a longer journey.

The whole way there is absolutely nothing to see but sand for miles. I guess it’s no different to driving across the Nullarbor…or up the Hume to Sydney for that matter. Unfortunately the radio cuts out about 20 mins out of the city so we had nothing to entertain us but mile upon mile of sand. Wesley read his book in the back (so jealous that I can’t read in the car!) and Brain drove.

We got down there just before lunch, cracked first beers just after 11am (had to remind myself that it was lunchtime in the world somewhere!). About 25 minutes after we arrived, Nevine got up and Rafik said to her ‘make us some breakfast’. We all said ‘whoo, no, we’re fine’ but she went off and cooked up this massive feast of food – little samousa type things, eggs, sausages, piles of food. We’d had a big breakfast already, but we all managed to squeeze some in.

We were sitting on their veranda, drinking beer and eating but it was freezing. Nevine was classic Egyptian – piling our plates with food, telling us to keep eating. The food was very yummy, but once we’d stuffed in as much as we possibly could we finally convinced her to let us help pack away the left overs. Once we had everything cleared away we went down to the beach to look around – I nearly got blown off the pier it was so windy! I’m sure it would have been lovely on a nicer day.

We staggered back to the house and bundled up inside. Dishes were piled up to the roof – I think they’d used every piece of crockery and cutlery in the house. Brian said he was about to offer to wash up til he saw how much there was and Nevine said ‘no I’ll call the boy’.

So she rings up this cabana boy on his mobile and he comes round and does all the dishes – it was the weirdest experience – we’re sitting round on the couches drinking and paying some crazy board game they had and this little guy in blue overalls is doing all the washing up – got to get me a washing up boy!

We played this crazy board game for a while longer – playing half in Arabic half in English – we kept saying holst (which means done or finished) and some other word that meant ‘enough!’. We were then talking about the Suez Canal – there place is only about an hours drive from the canal. So while Nevine prepared yet another pile of food, Rafik took Brian, Wesley and I to the Suez Canal for a look. We weren’t allowed to take photos, but it was cool to stand on the Egyptian side and be able to see Asia. The boarders between the continents Africa and Asia run through the Suez Canal, so a couple of hundred meters from where we were standing was Asia – pretty cool.

We watched a couple of boats go through – massive big natural gas tankers, then it was too cold so we headed back. Nevine cooked us up another mountain of food – but this time there were vine leaves – soooo yummy.

Nevine and the kids were going to stay one more night and Rafik was going to come back with us, but then she changed her mind and asked if we’d mind waiting while they packed up the house so we could drive back together. Its not safe to drive the desert roads by yourself at night if you can help it. Just in case you break down, that sort of thing. So just after 7:30pm we finally hit the road home. We made it back to Maadi by about 9:30pm and then I cabbed back to Mohandiseen… I was a very tired bunny by the time I got home. It was a huge weekend, we hadn’t expected to stay so long at Ain Sukhna, but it was a lovely day – I imagine it would be even better when the weather warms up.