Oops its a long one...

Its still windy here in El Tur, and so we have all been working hard on the water.  Progress for me is slow and frustrating right now, but i am lucky to be sailing with people who can help me both by encouragement but also through coaching, as they are all more advanced than me. 

We have got a couple of days off and we were hoping to hire some pickups and take some kit up the coast, seek out a new beach to sail off for the day and then maybe camp overnight in the desert somewhere, Surfari!  Plan sounds great but sadly we were informed its likely to be impossible due to tourism laws in Egypt :( 

We will probably stay around El Tur, windsurf if its windy and chill out if not.  El Tur is a large (large for Egypt) town about 1 hour north of Sharm El Sheik.  It has little to offer for tourists, its an Egyptian town which is slowly becoming more modern but compared to the UK its very different.  There are a few roads and buildings which look great, all new and well built, and then the main road like most others has building sites and rubble and rubbish all the way up it.  Sadly Egyptians don't have the same view on rubbish as the more western countries, bins are hard to find and the street is usually the bin for most people.  This is sad but also adds character to the place, as there are plenty of local goats and sheep (a.k.a. geep) and cats and birds who feed very well off this lack of cleanliness.  They parade around the town and regularly on our bikes we have to slow down and wait for the geep to cross the road.  Putting our rubbish into the bins by our flat results in about 8 cats jumping out in all directions, before they quickly return to see what goodies we have given them!  I really enjoy living here, its very different and although you haven't got your Tesco or Sainsbury's round the corner to pick up your choice of dinner from, we have take away pasta or felafels for 40p, cans of coke for 25p and a meal in the fish restaurant for £4.  As well as the entertainment of the local animals we have the kids who are out to play until the early hours of the morning, and say hello every time they see us, repeatedly asking the same question "whats your name" no matter how many times you have met them before.  There is little to do other than windsurf, i find the heat at the moment is very discouraging to go for a walk or be outside in general, but fortunately for us its windy most of the time, and if not we have a couple of good snorkeling sites to keep us amused, and about 300GB of movies for the evenings to keep us entertained.

This evening, the wind is dying so its time for a beer, maybe a shisha and off to town later to find some food to fuel us for tomorrows wind.