Dahab.

Dahab has continued to attract hippies over the centuries to it's famous Bedowin village of colourful tents and campfires and more recently wind worshippers for a more natural daily high. Escape the clinical captivity of most five star Red Sea resorts, jump in the back of a passing pick-up truck, tip the driver an Egyptian pound and enter the peaceful sixties time-warp, an attraction unobtainable elsewhere in windsurfing Egypt. Combining culture with the second highest wind statistics in the Red Sea, plus heaps of other things to do locally from diving on some of the worlds most colourful reefs, to camel riding, Dahab is definitely the flavour of the decade.

Dahab is the only Red Sea windsurfing venue we visited which can genuinely boast a large area of flat water and total safety. Downwind of the main sailing area is a long sandy arm reaching across the wind catching any stragglers blown off course. They can quickly walk back upwind and try again. Also, as if sent from heaven, you can get off on the beach on the other side for a rest, rather than trying another hellish carve gybe attempt.

Downwind of the 'safety arm' is a fantastic speed course 'Speedy' and beyond the outer reef is the appropriately named 'Kamakaze', for suicidal sailors. Speedy is worth the blast, so long as you can stay up wind, but we can't recommend Kamakaze; it's just too far out for safety.

For chop hopping, sail down wind of Speedy or in between Speedy and the beach. 

Literally the only drawback with Dahab is that because of it's naturally perfect conditions, it's become very popular. Hence hotels have been built right in the path of the wind, making it gusty for the first half of the bay. Even bearing that in mind though, for intermediate sailors it's the ultimate windsurfing holiday destination in the Red Sea, feeling very safe and sheltered.

Moon Beach and Confronting Your Fears.

Moon Beach is statistically the windiest Red Sea venue. Combine that with a bar, less than twelve metres from the waters edge (a world record of apres-windsurf-beer-convenience), the familiar chilled out charm and humour of Brit's abroad and the fantastic windsurfing conditions; from flat water to decent rolling swell and excellent chop hopping, Moon Beach deserves it's out-of-this-world reputation.

I'd heard previously that one launches into flat water for a good blast, then encounters chop and stronger winds and further out sails in swells. I'd assumed this was over some miles, however we soon discovered it all takes place within half a mile or so! So if you want, on every run, you can experience a complete variety of conditions, making Moon Beach a really exciting place to sail. The challenge of this is within everyone's grasp, as if you can't handle the chop, you'll simply turn around there and enjoy the flat water inside.

Ironically, the very dark-side of Moon Beach's star-struck character, is also it's brightness, depending on which way you burn the candle. A vital ingredient for everyone's holiday is relaxation and Moon Beach is guaranteed to give you a double helping, whether you like it or not. In the very rare event of no wind, there is fuck all else to do, unless you travel three hours to Cairo.

So windsurfing alternatives (if needed) are vastly restricted to fantasies with your partner on the remote beaches, reading books and star gazing. If you're anything like I am; unable to lie in the sun or sustain personal amusement for more than about twenty seconds (let alone amuse my partner) Moon Beach could be risky.

Which is where Lesley, ex-pat and co-founder Gybe Masters and Moon Beach, comes to the rescue, firmly believing 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger'. It was under her influence that I broke the barriers of my inner most fears.
 
Horse riding; Guy realises he was right the first time.

Claustrophobia; Forty metres under a pyramid through a tunnel narrower than a wave boom to a room full of Japanese tourists.

Necrophobia; (Not necrophilia) Going to the Mummy Room in the Cario Museum and seeing Rameses II looking very hungry and thirsty after 4000 years with out a drop.

Rotophobia; Wading through Cairo’s backstreets, overflowing with blood and sheeps skins, guts and hooves smelting in the Egyptian heat.

Most of these tasks were set in the most interesting city we'd ever visited and probably the safest city on the entire African continent. Our whirlwind tour took us under the Suez Canal (sorry, shorter and less eventful than the Dartford Tunnel), into Cairo where we met most of the fifty six million people who live there.

Cairo.

Honk, honk. Honking smells and sounds, flavoured with the orient. Favourite Fiat 128's in panda paint like dangerous spiders weaving webs around back streets, rally racing in poisoned tin cans, over taking ambulances on emergencies, skimming or hitting pedestrians who couldn't differentiate between life and death, or had subconsciously realised their insignificance as mere atoms amongst the mighty organism of fifty six million people amassed in one city. (Our taxi did actually run someone over outside a prison where an angry mob had gathered, fortunately she wasn't badly hurt and we carried on). Riveting front seat views, weighing up the drivers age, experience and alertness against those of another a poisonous black and white tin can coming from the opposite direction.

To this day, I don't know which side of the road Egyptians drive on. At night they turn off their lights until a jousting partner is close enough to surprise them with a blinding full beam spear, gambling with death rather than waste their bulb life, or was it to conserve energy for the horn chorus at every junction?

Les spoke good Arabic and rented us a Felucca (classic sailing boat) for a glide between the river banks of the Nile, escaping the heat and pace of the city to eat a real Italian pizza and a premium lager in the sun on board. Sweet sprays of the polluted river cooled us as we passed the Cairo Windsurfing Club (respect!) and my limbs fell asleep, swaying from my torso like the rigging on the roll of the waves.

We visited the Cairo Museum, unquestionably unchallenged as the most interesting museum on the planet featuring mummies, Tutencarmens buried treasure and proof that the immortality the Ancient Egyptians had so painstakingly prepared for and dreamed of, had paid off. As millions of people from all over the world still worship them, creating an empire infinitely broader than even they could have ever imagined.

The Pyramids.

We visited the Pyramids by horse. Les is a good horse rider, I was a virgin. For a horse rider it was probably the best way to see the Pyramids, trotting across the desert, watching them appear ten miles away like dark Tolberone dunes resting in the desert's haze. But for me, well, I can safely say that throughout history, no one has ever seen the Pyramids looking so distant. 

For all the stinging pain I inflicted whipping the horse's butt, nothing compared with the searing friction burns the horse inflicted on me. "Pretend there's a leaf between your knees" Les said to encourage my posture out of the 'having a crap' squat I was in. I was pretending there was a fu##ing mattress between my knees but it wasn't helping. When we got there even the world's greatest man made wonder couldn't distract me from mankind's greatest blunder, horse riding. After two hours of being totally out of tune with the horse, I had scarred the ugliest part of my body with what looked like a meteorite scorching through a forest. The moment we arrived at the Pyramids I peeled what was left of my sorry ass off my saddle and stumbled bow legged into the shade, where I stood Y shaped with a beer, cooling my burning bush whilst Shawna and Les galloped through the dunes for a sunset view of the Pyramids.

I soon plucked up the courage to walk, and climbed the highest dune I could find, bribing two 'Antiques Police' who flashed me their video club membership cards (or something equally unlikely), to stop annoying me. I was left alone with three enormous Pyramids in front and distant cries of horse and camel riders tearing up the landscape leaving sandy wakes in the low sun light around me.

The jazz confusion sounds of the city, including honks and an Arabic band on fire in the golden light, were rising on my right. Whilst the sun dropped like a see-saw to my left. I was the fulcrum bearing the history of Egypt on my scorched ass.

The Back Streets Of Cairo.

Each street is lined with hundreds of stories and buildings milleniums old. Les leading us into the Cairo maze, piercing deeper into it's heart and pushing back through time simultaneously. We were in Ancient Egypt, electric lightless Africa. It was during the time of a Religious Feast where every family had killed a sheep to eat, so the city was alive on the primordial energy of murder. Blood drenched hand prints stamped everywhere from people's backs, taxis, walls and windows, suggesting the five points of Islam. Surrounded by such realism was beautiful. The mood was Christmas.

The stomach turning stench of rotting flesh, the sight of people partying in blood drenched clothes on festering freshly cut sheep skins. A butcher working over time on queues of decapitated sheep heads, blowing like a trumpeter with his cheeks and veins bulging, mouth to mouth with the head of a dead sheep! It’s eye's bursting from it's skull before it's brains burst through the back of it’s neck, then it's eye lids shutting lively, as the butcher stopped blowing. The weight of the skull clonked on the wooden bench like a boulder. Bloodlessly pale cows heads sliced in two. The streets a dark mud of blood and dust. Red rivers weaving like arteries around the old town, keeping traditions alive and humans in the honest reality of nature. A stomach-churning, eye-opening, modern-human-humbling, honestly charming, priceless free-of-charge experience. Thousands of miles mentally and physically from the western supermarket 'reality'.

"It's been emotional."

Camel rides. (separate box)

Last time I'd been on a camel was sufficiently long enough ago to erase the painful memories and only recollect the pleasantries of a romantic plod through a desert on the Middle East's traditional mode of transport. I will never allow my memory to let me down in such away again.

Camels' saddles are two crude wooden sticks pointing skyward, poking through a flea infested cloth. The one behind is designed to push your pelvis sharply into the stick in front. The only way to avoid castration is by suspending your body weight through your arms, pushing into the front stick. This I found possible for about two minutes of our four hour camel trip. The remaining three hours and fifty eight minutes I spent sympathising with my fellow eunuchs, and cursing the women and the small Bedowin lads who'd set the saddles for their differently shaped anatomy.

El Tur (separate box)

We would have visited the increasingly popular El Tur, half way between Sharm El Sheik and Moon Beach, but time, lack of wind and the Gybe Masters beach bar prevented that trip. It's an amazing venue offering perfectly flat water or rolling ocean swell, depending on which side of the site you launch from. On the inside, the speed course leads you to a Mosque at the end of the beach, where half way round your carve gybe the sound of Prayers often throw you off course. The sea side is much the same as Moon Beach's rolling swells, therefore catering for both the blaster and the chop hopper equally well.  

"You must have been scratching your lamp!" said Ahmed like Aladdin, of our good luck in an unlucky situation. We'd arrived at the port after a four hour bus ride to find the ferry was cancelled, due to 'technical reasons,' (it was festival time). Late at night, nowhere to stay, Ahmed appeared like a Genie and generously put us up.

The next day we bid his fantastic and typically Egyptian hospitality farewell, only to return when the port police told us "the ferry is not here, it might be here tomorrow." Finally on our third attempt we bridged the African and Asian juxtaposition, leaving the Sinai Peninsula and Asia, crossing the Red Sea to Africa (whilst remaining in Egypt 'the mother of civilisation') following a rumour that somewhere on the southern shores we could find wave sailing.

It would make sense as the Red Sea winds regularly blow south along a coral reef coastline of more than a thousand miles, where the wind chop must become swell and break somewhere downwind as waves. Hopefully mixed with some side shore winds.

Our hunch was backed up by Ibi Schuman, the most experienced windsurfer and  flambouyant character in the Red Sea, who'd just set up his fifth Happy Surf Centre at the "only wave sailing location in Egypt" which he discovered having searched every nook and cranny of the entire coastline. "It's the only place for hundreds of miles with a break in the coral reef, so that you can sail from a sandy beach." Our hearts pumped eagerly with optimism, especially after wasting three days with ferry delays due to 'heavy swells' and 'festivals', but we had other responsibilities first, visiting Hurgahda and Safaga in order to create a concise guide to the Red Sea. The things we do for our readers.

Hurgarda.

Hurgarda is the biggest Red Sea tourist resort, with hotel complexes exploding from the desert. Unfortunately the decades of tourism have brought a savage capitalism and opportunistic cavort to some of the locals, disregarding their heritage and religions, unseen by us any where else in Egypt. We were ripped off left, right away and centre and we heard stories of thieving and fighting, completely opposite from the outstandingly friendly people we met elsewhere. Hurgarda ranks as the worst place we'd ever been. We have never left anywhere with such a bitter taste and as you know, never written about anywhere with such harsh opinion. Our feelings were largely due to it's enormous contrast to the rest of Egypt which had been so wonderful.

Anyway, it does still have it's good points, and for anyone who's been to Hurgarda but not elsewhere in Egypt, I'm sure it's been great, as comparing it to Britain in February, the contrasts swing to it's favour!

The windsurfing and kitesurfing is excellent, however winds are not as regular as Moon Beach or Dahab. Conditions vary from rough chop to flat water, depending on which centre you're sailing from and as usual in the Red Sea, the colours are outstanding and attractive.

The hotel complexes are enormous sanitariums, cocooning guests from any potential culture (as they are most of the world over), which is probably the attraction of Hurgarda for some. Also the town has restaurants, bars and nightclubs which you can't find elsewhere in Egypt's windsurfing resorts (other than Dahab), and if you're into that, the Chill is by far the coolest club there.

Safaga.

We left Hurgarda in a hurry, knowing we had to fly out of there on our return and headed half an hour south to Safaga, a windsurfing hotspot with the same wind statistics as Hurgarda, similar hotel complexes, but an attitude and vibe akin to the friendly, chilled out Egypt.

Offshore from Safaga and in easy reach on a windsurfer is Tobia Island. "Every time I come here I still feel the same energy as the first day I came here" said Yann of the incredible island escapism. It was in the waters around Tobia Island that some years ago a friend and I were lucky enough to snorkel into a few dolphins, who played with us for a mind blowing half an hour. So I also felt great about being back on an island smaller than a football pitch, surrounded by incredible coral reefs and fish jumping in turquoise water.

We stayed at the Menaville Hotel which was the event site for the 1993 Funboard world championships (when I last visited). It was here we experienced the best food in all of the hotels and also saw sexy belly dancing (made sexier by the fact women are generally unseen and certainly untouchable in most Arab countries), whirling dervishes and some turbulent Arabic live music.

The wind blow's side off shore in the mornings creating very flat water with gusty winds inshore, then by the afternoon the wind swings side shore and a small rolling chop develops for more excitement.

El Nabaa.

When we arrived with Ibi at his centre at El Nabaa, the beach looked like it had suffered heavy rain. Rivers and gullies tangled and linked the tents, the windsurf centre and the hotel to the sea. "Heavy rain?" I suggested, "No; heavy waves!" Apparently a four metre swell had wrapped into El Nabaa and with the high tide washed over the beach. The set up looked great with a small round reef (which they said was unsailable) and two small beach break bays. 

We were shown to our tent as the hotel was still being built. The idea is to keep the tents available as a cheaper and 'closer to nature' option for guests at Happy Surf. There were no mosquitoes but there was something in the air about sleeping semi-outdoors.

Due to the ferry delays earlier in the week, unfortunately we could only spend three days in El Nabaa. A week would have been perfect and two weeks, too long. Other than the diving which is now rated as the best in the Red Sea since elsewhere the diving masses have scared the fish away, there's not much else to do in El Nabaa. Rather like Moon Beach on the Sinai, you're in a hotel complex miles from anywhere. At least in El Nabaa there's a mild safari in the relatively green landscape inland, where although you wont see elephants or big cats, you'll see eagles, lizards and big bucks, without paying big bucks.

We were lucky as we had wind every day, we didn't need much else to keep us amused. The first day was howling and a fun sized ocean swell rolled by out to sea, creating brilliant jump ramps. Turtles watched us then dived to avoid us, into the dark blue depths. The swell was picking up all day and as the sun and wind dropped, the first waves were lifting on to the beach.

We awoke to a sea much the same as the day before, yet with all the wind removed. Perfect glassy swells rolled over the reefs and lined up, breaking softly in the bay. The conditions teased us as we now had swell without wind! By the afternoon a light breeze enabled us to get some wave riding in on the first breaking waves we'd ever seen in Red Sea. The onshore conditions would have been 'epic' by Egypt standards if the swell and wind had combined, as I'm sure they often do here. But these conditions limited us just to onshore wave riding. I searched the reefs for a safe wave, but all of them were sucking the coral reef dry, even at high tide. I tempted a few shoulders at the edge of the reef, but the consequences of getting it wrong would have been terrible, not just for the fin and the reef, but also for me scantly clad in board shorts.

By the evening a thick cloud cover started sparking lightening and growling thunder, another first for our experiences in Egypt. By sunset, raindrops fell, literally so few we could count them, but nevertheless, on that day it had rained and we went wave sailing in Egypt, two things most people will never experience in this fabulous country!   

Our final day saw slightly better winds, but less waves. As a wave sailing location, El Nabaa can not be compared with places like Ireland or the Canary Islands. More like the Norfolk coast, nuff said. But as a windsurfing location, it's fantastic, with challenging ocean swells out back and small waves breaking close to the beach. With no waves, the windward bay is good for learning in, but generally speaking El Nabaa's demanding conditions and sharp reef surroundings necessitate advanced sailors only. If you struggle with staying upwind, it's definitely not for you, yet if you want the roughest conditions Egypt has to offer, El Nabaa rules.

Waves in Egypt?

We discovered the reason why the Egyptian Red Sea coastline doesn't get great wave sailing is because the north winds don't blow constantly down the whole coast. They are strong in the windsurfing locations and some other places, but there's large gaps of coastline which remain windless. Therefore the wind chop comes and goes, instead of developing into wind swell over a long fetch. That said, further south in Saudi Arabia or Eriterea, I'm sure there's some wave spots yet to be discovered....
 
Egypt Summary.

Generalising, Egypt is a destination for a dedicated windsurfing holiday, where the wind could blow all day, every day, unlike it's Aegean counterparts which generally has windy afternoons only. Plus the Red Sea is an all year round destination, unlike the Aegean spots (ie Vassiliki and Alacati which open from mid April to mid October). Continuing to generalise, the Red Sea is always windier, however June, July and August are so hot there, that the Aegean venues (at the peak of their season) with their fantastic socials and lifestyle, become more appealling.
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Egypt is not the kind of place you'd go with a non windsurfer, unless you're prepared to do a number of day trips to the cultural excitement inland or they can handle hanging out on the beach all day, everyday. Flights are about five hours and package holidays come at a good price.

We've put together a comparison chart to help you chose your
Red Sea holiday.

The Taxi Driver.
He had six different hooters and no head lights. A risky trade-off. He played them non-stop, which I thought was funny. The more I laughed at him getting off on hooting, the more he hooted so the more Shawna scowled at me. After two ten minute journeys laughing with him, he dropped us off, shook hands with Shawna, then grabbed me, hugged me and kissed me on both cheeks. I scowled at her, laughing at me.

The Last Word.
One of the subtle beauties of Egypt, is the wonderful sound of prayers chanting five times a day from all of the many mosques and radios. They repeat the same prayer over and over, often played from loud speakers outside the mosques. The prayer at sun rise has one extra line though from the others; 'Prayer is better than sleeping'. You just have to love this place!