Friday 12/7/2007- Monday 12/10/2007:
We arrived at the bus station in Sharm el Shiek and were greeted by locals clamoring to offer us “taxi” service as we got of the bus. Two men actually got into a full on fist fight after arguing which one would take us to the hotel. Scared, we slipped out the door and decided not to use either of them. After collecting our luggage, we got a local to bring us to our hotel. After a 10 minute taxi ride, we arrived at the Hilton Waterfalls Resort. The hotel staff loaded our bags onto golf carts and we checked in with reception. They informed us that we were upgraded to the executive suite, room 3000. Our huge suite was WAY beyond our expectations….view of the red sea, our own private wrap around deck and a stone’s throw from the resort’s beach. We could not believe we got such an incredible room and were just using the minimum Hilton Points to pay for it.
After dropping off our stuff we explored the resort. As it was almost midnight, we decided to check out the sheesha café. We laid in hammocks, looked at the stars and shared a mango flavored sheesha. It was incredibly peaceful, and we were happy that we decided to go on vacation from our vacation.
We woke up the next morning and got to see our awesome view of the sea in daylight. We headed up to the breakfast buffet and then laid out by the pool for a couple of hours. Dermot was excited to try snorkeling, so he rented some gear and headed to the floating dock to check out the resort’s reef. Katie stayed on the beach and took some pictures and then ventured out to the dock for a closer look. The reef was incredible. Dermot had never seen some many different types of fish before. We were both shocked at how easy it was to float, as well as how much water we needed to drink post – swimming, due to the high levels of salt in the water.
After snorkeling, we went back up to the hotel lobby to check out the various excursions offered. Unfortunately, most of them were not available while we were there, so we ended up settling on a sunset ATV ride through the desert. To make a long story short, it wasn’t worth it. We only had about 30 minutes of sunlight in which to enjoy the scenery. The majority of the ride was an uninspiring, dark, slow ride through the desert on an ATV. We returned back to the hotel and headed up to one of the restaurants for dinner. We opted not to have the all you can eat buffet. It seemed popular among the Russians who made up about 75% of the people staying at the resort. (Russian seemed to be the native language while we were there). After dinner we had another sheesha session in a hammock. Life is tough at the resort.
We woke up and headed up to the buffet for breakfast. After some relaxing under the Katie and Dermot than decided to go snorkeling together. Katie only lasted about 15 minutes. Apparently her experiences on the Great Barrier Reef in Austrailia have turned her into a snorkeling snob. After Dermot was done snorkeling, some Russians asked him to play volleyball. Dermot got Katie and they both played volleyball with what was quite possibly the hardest volleyball ever made. Both our arms still wince in pain thinking about the game….but it was fun learning a few Russian words and playing with a bunch of men in speedos. After volleyball, we ordered room service in and got a bunch of trip planning stuff done.
Today was our last day at the resort, so we ended up hitting the all you can eat breakfast, playing some ping pong and spending the remainder of our time on the beach by the red sea. We grabbed a taxi to the bus station, where we were an hour early…so for less then US $1, we enjoyed our last sheesha and played some cards. We had a few locals crowding around to watch us play…. as Dermot beat Katie in schitizekoff twice. Before we knew it, we caught our bus and were heading back to the Cairo airport.
Our ride only took about 5 hours to get back to Cairo, and we easily found a taxi to take us to the airport. We arrived a good 2.5 hours early for our red eye flight at 1:45am, so we indulged in the duty free (cheap Ritter chocolate!!!) and hung out amongst many Egyptians dressed in all white robes, because they were making their pilgrimage to Mecca.