Hurghada General Activities

General Activities

Of course, the main reason to visit Hurghada is for the beautiful Red Sea, which is excellent for diving or snorkeling. If you aren't licenced to dive, it is often possible to snorkel and see incredible coral reefs and hundreds of varieties of tropical fish just 10 meters from the beach. Again, either your hotel will have dive escorts on site, or they can arrange a scuba diving expedition with guides. In late March, the water is still quite cold (21 Celsius), so a wet suit is necessary, and even snorkeling in a bathing suit is too cold after about 10 minutes. It is also windy in late March; sustained 20 MPH are common. Make sure your Beach resort Hotel provides wind screens on the Beach. Hurghada offers many activities not to be found anywhere else on Earth. Quad-biking hundreds of miles into the Sahara desert for tea with a Bedoin tribe, then camel-riding across Biblical plains to see remote and ancient wonders; diving and snorkelling around a vibrant and colourful coral reef; boat trips to the unpopulated Big and Little Gifton islands; swimming in the warmest and saltiest sea in the world (the Red Sea is more saline than even the Dead Sea); good shopping; excellent and varied cuisine from across the world... if you WERE to choose to stay in your hotel complex for the duration of your break, you'd miss out on so much more than you bargained for. Maybe Majorca would be a better option for a hotel-based break?! Those new to Egypt will find Karkaday (a drink made from an infusion of hibiscus, served hot or cold and reputed to have many health benefits) and Chi (local version of tea, usually served in a glass) offered everywhere. Both are delicious, and will usually come replete with a smoke on a "sheesha" pipe, known in the West as a "Hookah". Sheesha's are used for smoking molasses tobacco in various flavours, with the smoke passing through water before inhalation through a long tube attached to the bowl. Although they may resemble a device used to smoke illicit substances in the west, (i.e, a bong), sheesha contains nothing illegal. Visits to Cairo and Luxor, and indeed multi-stop breaks, are popular from Hurghada, and Sharm-El-Sheikh and the Sinai peninsular (containing two of the oldest Christian temples in the world, St Catherine's and St Anthony's) is but a short hop away.