Tales from Alexandria

The Sharm Experience - The Hotel

Fortunately, due to my father's funding of the trip we were able to lavish ourselves in the Swiss owned Movenpick hotel.  And lavish ourselves we did, man is it a beautiful establishment.  It's located in Namaa Bay, the center of Sharm, along the hotel walk where there's a line of half-a-dozen hotels along the beach.  Movenpick is the best though (and most expensive), which unfortunately means the guests there weren't the most visually pleasing.  Cute college girls don't go to these high-end resorts, instead it's the older folk that can usually also afford a lot of food as well.  Really doesn't make for a good combination, especially when they go topless... yikes!

That's why I spent most of my time in the water, walking along other beaches, staring into the sun, or playing BEEEEEEACH VOLLEEEEEY!!

Enter Niklas.  The Master of Ceremonies for our daily matches, everyday at 3PM Niklas corralled the unwilling guests into playing some volleyball in the sand.  From the description of the average Movenpick guest above you can surmise that this must have been quite the daunting task, unfortunately for our friend my brother and I were staying at his establishment.  We were instantly taken with playing as that's what people are supposed to do on beaches.  Once the other guests saw us playing and having a great time more and more people started to join.  Even random passer-bys that weren't staying at the hotel would come over and play.  Eventually we got a regular volleyball crew going everyday that consisted of:

• Niklas
• Me
• My Brother
• Alexandra - a russian beauty
• Olga - another russian beauty
• Raman - a 16 year old professional russian soccer player
• Some swiss guy
• Some italian guy
• and some other arab guys
  

It was quite the International match I'll tell you what.  Our little games were a microcosm of the ethnic diversity present among the visitors to Sharm.  There are a lot of Russians, a lot of Italians, some English folk, a smattering from other assorted European countries and some arabs from the neighbouring republics.

I want to go back to Niklas as he's a really cool guy who we spent quite a bit of time with over our trip.  So here's some stalker info!

Name: Niklas
Age: 19
Occupation: Animator
Background: German father, Swiss mother, born and raised in Verona, Italy
Quote: Beeeeeeeeeach Volleeeeeey!

Now what the heck is an Animator?  Cause obviously this guy doesn't work for Pixar or Disney.  I've never heard of Animators or Animation in this kind of context before, but it turns out that people are paid to "animate" which pretty much means act crazy and try to make people have a good time.

The Sharm Experience - The Beach

Sand. Imported.

That's what the beaches are in Sharm.  You won't see miles upon miles of white diamonds massaging your feet with every step.  The geography of the Sinai region is mountains and rocky desert.  Sharm is no different.  To make the environment more comfortable for visitors the hotels have imported tons and tons of sand to cover the hard rock.  They definitely didn't bring enough.  If you dig your hands into the sand just a few inches you'll find the rock underneath, so sand castles and other large sand creations really are out of the question.  And once you get into the water then there's absolutely no sand at all, that's why aqua socks are definitely an absolute necessity.

But really, you don't go to Sharm to run along the beaches.  You go to look at the topless European women sunbathing.  Ok, you don't go for that either.  You go to sunbath yourself, and to swim in the surreal water and immerse yourself in another world of natural beauty.  And oh how beautiful it is.  When my brother and I first arrived the first thing we did after throwing our bags into the room was run right to the beach and dive into the sea.  At this point we carried only one set of snorkeling gear, all my previous experiences with snorkeling had been nothing less than frustrating so I didn't bother.  After 5 seconds my brother raises his head out of the water frantically pointing and waving "Check that out!".  My abilities to see underwater suck, so I had to borrow the snorkeling kit from him, dunked my head underneath and witnessed this huge and immensely impressive napolean fish as shown in the picture above.  One thing that this and no other picture can capture is the absolutely unreal colours of the fish that shimmer and morph as the creature glides back and forth along the sea.  I turned my head and saw two other fish just as colourful and amazing "Check THOSE out!!" I frantically yelled.  We performed the swap, and 10 seconds later he was pointing something new out to me.

Now obviously this was going to happen over and over again and this just wasn't an acceptable situation.  So I bit the bullet and decided to get ourselves a second set.  Thank God we did!  Over the course of the week we spent dozens of hours in that water marvelling at all the natural spectacles laid before us.  And this was all within 30 feet of the shore of the beach of our hotel.  Just that far and you see a completely different world bathed in blue.

The Sharm Experience - Snorkeling with the Jelly

When I went out that first day I didn't really know what to expect.  But very quickly I let my sense of wonder take over and just tried to appreciate every moment.  Until my hand bumped into something.  There's no way it was a fish since they were insanely uncatchable/untouchable, every time I'd reach out to touch one they'd swim away in an instant.  So what the heck was it, I look over and see a large floating membrane lolling along beside me. 

Oh God.. the pain, here it comes! I can feel it! 

Panic mode set in pretty quickly and I must have looked quite the fool thrashing around in the water. 

But then there is no pain! what? 
Did it not inject me with its fiery poison? 
Calm down.

Alright alright, I look closely and notice that the jelly membrane doesn't have any tendrils.  It's just a transluscent mushroom head. And if there WERE poisonous jellyfish here wouldn't there be a lot more news about it? 

I look over and see a dozen other swimmers in the water and none of them seem concerned I would've been warned So these things have to be harmless.  Great!  Really because there are quite a few of them just floating along, either in a pack of 6 or just randomly by themselves.  I conquered my fear and just started playing around with them, batting them around and such.  They feel really cool!  Like silicone implants.

To be honest I'm just really happy it wasn't one of these things!

Another reason that I'm scared to death of jellyfish. I don't like to "bash" the animal kingdom, but this creature is very strange. Anybody see the move Solaris? I didn't think so..