Sharm el-Sheikh – The City of Peace
With a population of 73,000 Sharm el-Sheikh is nestled on a promontory overlooking the Straits of Tiran on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula in the Gulf of Aqaba.
Its strategic importance led to its transformation from a fishing village into a major port and naval base for the Egyptian Navy. It was conquered by Israel during the Suez Crisis of 1956 and returned to Egypt in 1957. A United Nations peacekeeping force was stationed here until the 1967 Six-Day War when it was re-occupied by Israel, where it remained under Israeli control until the Sinai Peninsula was returned to Egypt in 1982 after the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty of 1979. Egypt’s then-president, Hosni Mubarak, designated Sharm el-Sheikh “The City of Peace” in 1982 and encouraged the development of the city. Egyptian businessmen and global investors contributed to the building of mega projects including mosques and churches and an environmental zoning law limits the height of the buildings to avoid obscuring the natural beauty of the surroundings.
Wednesday 17 May – we are only here for a short time, we docked at 6.00am and are departing at 2.00pm (more of this later!!) and the only tour on offer was on a Glass Bottom Boat. Given we had snorkelled yesterday and had actually physically been amongst the coral and fish, we decided not to bother with the boat tour. Geoff was extremely keen to find a Dive Shop and arrange a private scuba dive for himself. After all, we couldn’t be at this world-renowned diving resort on the Red Sea and him not be able to take advantage of it, so we decided to get an early shuttle out into the town to see what we could sort out. We disembarked at 8.00am only to find that the shuttle service didn’t start until 9.00am! However, luck was on our side in the form of Anne and Jim, two fellow Aucklanders we have met on the ship. They disembarked right behind us and Anne, who is extremely organised, had booked herself a private dive tour and invited us to join them. Voila! Geoff’s dream had been realised in an instant!
We left the dock in the morning haze and walked to the entrance gate and waited for the driver to arrive. It was interesting to note a number of suited and booted gentlemen waiting for the coaches-full of the Glass Bottom Tour passengers coming from the ship, each coach stopped and one of the gentleman got on – a security guard on each one…we could see their pistols under their jackets. Apparently the larger tours yesterday all had security on them as well. Tourism is such a huge industry in Egypt, the last thing the government want is any terrorism events to happen to dissuade the tourists from visiting and it requests the big tour operators to engage security officers to protect the visitors.
Our driver took us to Ras Umm Sid, located just south of Na’ama Bay in the Ras Mohamed National Park from where a number of dive companies operate. It is one of the top diving sites here. Geoff and Anne completed forms and were given the appropriate wetsuits, gloves, shoes, tank, regulators etc. “Zee”, and his French wife, Mimi, who were accompanying them on the dive, gave a quick lesson on the various scuba diving signals and showed them a map of where they would be diving, and off they went. Jim and I had relaxed on the beach whilst they had their dive and they were thrilled to bits with what they saw – stunning coral formations especially fan corals and an abundance of underwater life.
Anne persuaded the driver to give us a quick tour of the town on the return journey and given the boat was sailing at 2pm, we agreed to have 45 minutes so we would be back in plenty of time. To be fair, I didn’t like the town at all, it was extremely touristy, it caters to a lot of Europeans and also it seems, plenty of Russians, with a number of shops full of Russian Cyrillic script signs. It reminded me of a Disney town - sort of Arabic fake.
The Al Sahaba Mosque was very imposing, a new mosque only 6 years old, designed by Fouad Tawfik with Mamluk and Ottoman style elements. But again, it did remind me of something out of Walt Disney’s film “Aladdin”.
The Great Escape
Browsing around the shops we asked our driver to take us back to the ship just after 1pm. We arrived at the gate around 1.20pm and made our way down to the dock which was a fair walk from the port entrance. We could see the ship ahead of us and there seemed to be no people around, just a few officials?? I said to Geoff “I just saw one of the ropes being let go”, then Anne noticed there was no gangplank at the same time as Geoff noticed no open doors…and then we heard the horn!!! Yep, it had started to push out……without us!!!! F**k – we could not believe it.
I started running as fast as I could, and we were waving away and could hear the officials yelling at us in the distance. Fortunately, by the time I reached the stern, the ship’s thrusters were edging the ship back in to the dock, the door opened and the gangplank was being pulled back out again and I was getting the odd bit of applause from some of the guests on their balconies as I hurtled past, but no applause when I got to the Egyptian Customs Official at the bottom of the gangplank who yelled what I think were more than a few Arabic obscenities at me. Meanwhile, I turned around and couldn’t see Geoff, Anne or Jim (I couldn’t think where they had disappeared to, I knew they hadn’t climbed over the stern!!!!!). Turns out one of the officials jumped in a car and drove up to pick them up to get them back as quick as he could!!!!
Hanging our heads in shame, we sheepishly made our way up the gangplank, to be told that actually, departure time was at 1pm - when we were casually drifting around the shops!!! (We verified this when we looked at the newsletter in our cabin to see that yes, the departure had been brought forward an hour…ouch!). Geoff and I went to the World Restaurant for lunch about ten minutes later and sat at a table outside on the deck. Geoff bumped into one of the Officers and asked him where we should go to apologise!!! He seemed to think it was quite hilarious, but did tell us that although they had not actually name-shamed us over the loudspeaker, they were chasing the guests from rooms 5111 and 8015!!! When there was no answer, they decided to depart. This was essential as our next journey takes us through the Suez Canal where ships get a specific time to enter and if you are late not only do you lose your spot and have to wait another 24 hours, you incur a fine of US$ 40,000 and the delay would have meant that we (and the other 930 guests!) would have missed Haifa, the last stop on our tour! We asked what would have happened to us if we’d been just a few more minutes later and missed the departure and he said that Viking have an office in each port and someone from there had already been alerted to the fact that there were four of us missing and they would have to arrange for us to fly to Cairo and get us to Port Said and back to the ship. Imagine if that had happened, two days in just shorts and t-shirt and missing going through the Suez Canal which was one of the reasons Geoff had booked this particular cruise in the first place!!!! (and of course we would have faced the wrath of all the guests on the ship when we got back on in Port Said!
Next minute one of the waiters came out and said that the Captain was dining inside the restaurant. We felt that we must do the right thing and go in and apologise to him. Anne and Jim had joined us for lunch so the four of us went in to apologise profusely. Captain Knutsen smiled, accepted our apology and told us the only reason our bacon had been saved was Anne’s bright red Viking umbrella which she had purchased from the shop on board last week to protect her from the sun. He was looking for us through his binoculars and spotted it, and us, running towards the ship. That was the best US$ 28 that Anne has ever spent!!!! Perhaps we could have renamed the city Shame el-Sheikh after ourselves!
