10 days: 1 day each side lost to traveling,

4 hours flight Munich -> Hughada

3-4 hours drive Marsa Alam (flights direct booked out to M.A),

6 open water dives over 5 days.

Our journey started by train to the Munich airport. As one would expect, trains were delayed, poor connections involved running, and there was a fear that we either wouldn’t make it to the airport due to snow/ice on the train tracks, or the plane wouldn’t take off. In the end we waited about 40 mins on the runway for the runway heating mechanism to ‘thaw out’ and the fire engine like truck to spray defrosting material on the wings to that they worked. There was no movie on the plane, but the view of Egypt was great.. .such a different world…. sand, sand, sand, and more sand… with the red sea on the side.

Coming back was a similar story of problems. A sand storm was due to hit the night before we left. This sand storm then resulted in a thunder storm witch brought about 1 hour of rain that Egypt hadn’t seen in 2 years… a truly remarkably and lucky opportunity for a tourist. Little did we know that Egypt doesn’t at all cater for rain. They irony was that they had walls to keep the sea out, but this also kept the rain water in, as they had no drainage system! The worst was that the road couldn’t be seen nor travelled on due to the low (<40cm) flood across the roads at some points. The first hold up we saw at least 100 trucks lined up for a kilometer back to front and no sign of movement. We were stuck here for 30 mins with a feeling that we will not only miss our flight but have to pay ~200 euro for a one way flight and ~100 euro for a night accommodation because of these problems. Eventually we moved and went through flood after flood to make the airport in good timing.

The resort (Oasis) was nice (4 star). We had breakfast and dinner provided, lunch worked out to 8 euro a day inc. drinks. Nice balcony setup and views of the ocean, contrasted by views of the mountains and desert behind us. The staff were especially friendly; we learnt some Arabic and thoroughly enjoyed their sense of humour. I even got to shoot a few goals of soccer with them.