A couple days in Hurghada

It was after 2am when Ferda and I arrived at our pre-booked accommodation in Hurghada on flights from Antalya via İstanbul. Nothing really looks good after traveling all day (~11 hours) and arriving in the middle of the night, but Ferda and I really enjoyed our short stay with Adam at his Bob Marley Homestay. He made us yummy breakfasts every day — at about 11am the first day (we really managed to sleep in) and much earlier the following morning so we’d be well fed before our snorkeling excursion. We also ate dinner with Adam two nights.

No one has anything nice to say about Hurghada, but I’m glad we had a couple days there. It was cold and windy when we got off the plane and ended up being cold and windy our entire 11 days in Egypt. Blowing sand was a problem at times.

We walked around dusty Hurghada a bit, stopping at the Coptic Church near our hotel.

More picturesque was the Al Mina Mosque near the fish market, an area that Adam said was worth visiting.

Here’s Adam on the couch with me. Across is Rob from England. We enjoyed talking with both of them and also Emily, Alfonso, and Summer who joined the four of us for a fish dinner that Adam put together one night.

Egypt is not known for its cuisine so it was nice to have Adam cooking for us, but I was excited to try kushari again, the dish I most remembered from my first trip to Egypt 24 years ago.

Rice, pasta, lentils, garbonzo beans, caramelized onions, and tomato sauce — here’s Ferda trying kushari for the first time.

Our main objective in coming to Egypt was to snorkel at Makadi Bay (next post!), but I planned an extra day in Hurghada to see what’s underwater there. Adam recommended a dolphin tour. They take you to two spots and with a little luck you snorkel with dolphins at the first stop.

I was most excited to snorkel, but the dolphins sell the trip so we spent the whole morning motoring NNW of Hurghada trying to find them. It was windy, cold, wavy — apparently not good weather for finding dolphins — but we went snorkeling twice so I was happy.

The guides had wetsuits, but of the ~17 tourists I think we were the only ones with wetsuits. Most people were shivering by the time they got out of the water.

Ferda and I were quite cold snorkeling in Indonesia without wetsuits. One of our goals for this trip was to try our new wetsuits. Here’s Ferda.

I was one of the few people who was motivated enough to get back in the water for the second snorkel. The snorkeler in the water was even more motivated. He must have been freezing.

I guess you can see the same thing on the wall outside the vegetable market in Hurghada.

That market was our last stop in Hurghada, stocking up on groceries for our week in Makadi Bay.

I’ll end with a few Hurghada cityscapes.