Sharm has charm and sun – and camels for all shapes

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

As pursuits for generously proportioned Irishmen with something bordering on a phobia about the sun go, riding a bony camel in 45 degree heat across the Sinai desert probably takes some beating.

But when in Rome and all that – or in this case Egypt – and thankfully in the absence of the local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, I found myself astride this unfortunate beast like a larger version of Laurence of Arabia about to conquer the Gulf of Aqaba.

There must be dozens of reasons why Egypt would be the wrong holiday destination for me – I’m not mad about heat and I never sunbathe for a start – but most of all, why would you holiday in one of the world’s hotspots, both climatically and politically?

And yet I enjoyed it more than words can say; we felt supremely safe from the moment we arrived – to the point that you never even thought about it – and we’re finally reached an age where we have enough cop-on to realise that only mad dogs and sun worshipping English men go out in the midday sun.

Egypt makes headlines for many reasons just now – and some of them are the wrong ones – but the coastal resort of Sharm El Sheikh is, in every sense, an oasis.

The country itself is vast but 90 million Egyptians live on just six per cent of the land; there are three million Bedouins and 27 tribes in a country steeped in culture and history – although it must be said that Sharm would not be top of your list for history…this is a sun holiday destination.

Clinging to the south east coast of the Sinai peninsula, a land mass that is otherwise a desert, it was developed entirely to cater for the tourist, and particularly those with an interest in diving – or at least in snorkelling to experience the multitude of multi-coloured fish that live in the coral beds which provide this region’s biggest attraction.

If you love guaranteed sunshine and you’re at your best in temperatures of around 40 degrees, this is the place for you.

But even if, like me, you don’t, then rest assured that Sharm could only be more air conditioned if they erected giant wind machines on the streets – and even in the absence of those cold windmills, the evenings still are balmingly comfortable with all of the shops, pubs and nightclubs you could ever need doing a roaring trade into the small hours of the morning.

We stayed at the Ghazala Gardens Hotel – a resort with enough to keep you fully occupied even if you never exited its grand front doors.

The food was varied with seven restaurants on site offering European dishes or specialist eateries with Italian pizza or Mexican fajitas, a variety of fish dishes and all of the fresh, crisp salad your little heart could desire.

The rooms were spacious, luxurious and fully air-conditioned; the staff were ultra-friendly and yet reserved – and with the all inclusive package that most tourists opted for, you could eat and drink as much as you wanted without worrying about the incurring cost.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.