01 Jan - 10 Mar 2007 El Gouna

Northern Red Sea
Strait of Gubal
El Gouna Resort
Berth C8
SY "Kamu II" with her stern to the pier and with two permanent bow moorings.
US$ 252.- per month; plus US$ 70.- per month for 24/7 wireless internet access.

Click below for an interactive satellite view of our marina berth:










Re-living regularly the week’s events, telling yarns, exchanging jokes, exaggerating truths, solving the world problems during the yotties’ Sunday lunches and Wednesday night pub quizzes at Anna’s & Per’s excellent restaurant “Maritim”.



Pigging out on nutritious Egyptian staples, such as fuul (fava-bean soup), ta’amiyya (mashed fava beans and spices fried in a patty that elsewhere is known as falafel) sandwich, torshi (bright pink pickled vegetables), and kushari (a heavy mix of noodles, rice, black lentils, fried onions and hot tomato sauce) at the cheap Foool-House restaurant in El Gouna.

Enjoying tremendously the week-long vacation of our 5-month-young grandson Raoni Samuel and his accompanying parents Ulrike & Chris, their parting visit before their move from Freiburg/Germany to Toronto/Canada.



Participating in a Coptic Church service (Egyptian Christians - Copts - split from the Orthodox church of the Byzantine Empire and embrace the belief that Christ is totally absorbed by his divinity and that it is blasphemous to consider him human) in the new church in El Gouna.

DM Konni: Walking together with Jim from SY “Kelaerin” the tightrope between nitrogen narcosis and hyperoxia in the Orca Dive Club and thus becoming a PADI-certified Nitrox diver.



Matt: Beating to windward with my brand-new 12-sqm Naish Boxer kite in the Kiteboarding Club +4920142635528 at Buddha Beach, a few clicks north of El Gouna’s Abu Tig Marina, and relentlessly working on my kite-boarding techniques, even with a fractured big toe; thanks for your great company, Grit and Tom.



Matt: Crewing for skipper Ralf on SY “Bella Signora” (!) between Abu Tig Marina and Endeavour Harbour on Tawila Island with the 12 young and beautiful candidates for the 2007 Miss Germany competition and a TV team as passengers on a promotional tour.



Being issued with 6-month visa extensions (EGP 61.- or US$ 10.- per person) and multiple-entry permits (EGP 91.- or US$ 15.- per person) for the two of us from the local police station at Hurghada, no fuss and on the spot.

Enduring chaotic, noisy, polluted and totally unpredictable Cairo for a week, home to more than 16 million Egyptians, Arabs, Africans and sundry others, the “Mother of the World”, starting off with a tour of (i) the superb Egyptian Museum +20225796948 with (a) Tutankhamen’s solid-gold death mask, (b) the architectural colossus of the incestuous pharaoh Akhenaton aka the “heretic king” and (c) the larger-than-life-size statue of pharaoh Chefren, thereafter visiting (ii) the Sphinx and the Pyramids of Giza (the 146 m high Great Pyramid of Cheops and the Pyramid of Chefren, the sole survivors of the Seven Wonders of the World and the planet’s oldest tourist attraction), Dahshur and Saqqara, getting lost in both (iii) the Coptic and the Islamic Cairo, shopping in (iv) the great bazaar Khan al-Khalili and in the glitzy shops around Midan Talaat Harb in Downtown, the busy commercial heart of Cairo, and drinking local beer at (v) CafĂ© Riche, where Mr. Nasser had planned his revolution in the early fifties.
"Cairo revealed the meaning of the bazaar: narrow streets encrusted with filth, stinking even on this winter's day; tiny shops full of shoddy goods; crowds; the din, already barely supportable, made worse by the steady blaring of motor-car horns; medieval buildings partly collapsed, others rising on old rubble, with here and there sections of tiles, turquoise and royal blue, hinting at a past of order and beauty..."


Gliding along the river Nile on a felucca and realising that sailing was an early Bronze Age invention on the Nile, where boats could drift downstream to the delta and then sail back up-stream with the prevailing northerly wind.



Touring the local brewery at El Gouna and knocking back a few cold Luxor beers in a toast to our friend and brew master Ekkehard who had brought his lifelong experience of beer to producing the perfect brew (our favourite: his chewy wheat beer) in Egypt.


Click below for a summary of this year's travels

Visit the Konni & Matt Online Albums and order high-res photos
Konni & Matt Travel Photos 


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