Across the Sinai Desert......

Boy I needed a break this week, its been a long time since we all went away and as I have been drilling wells we have not been able to leave. All is quieter now, only getting ready for the new wells and finding new things to drill so I managed to get a few days off and as school has finished here we all took off for Taba on the Gulf of Aqaba across the Sinai desert (red route on the map) close to Jordan and Israel.

We drove about 1hr to Suez and then crossed under the Canal. Its quite wierd seeing these super-container ships float by above you!

Once past Suez we leave Africa and officially drive in Asia! Theres not much traffic on the road to Taba but as all traffic in Egypt it can be dangerous and the old rule of expect the unexpected always holds. On the way back we can across a petrol tanker that had recently come off its trainer and was gushing fuel onto the road surrounded by policeman (hopefully not smoking!). Other road threats were livestock and the overloaded local cars!

This was another oil tanker that didn't quite make it around the bend on the mountains into Taba

The desert road varies from beautiful to boring across the sinai, some areas are beautifully geologic with lovely sands, others are boringly flat with only the odd camel and police check point to break up the monotony.

Along the road theres not much, just a few military installations (including a Columbian one?!?!? - Ill have to find out about that!) and a few poor villages. We saw this rather sad conscript digging out this military post in the sands dunes - he must have upset someone!

Taba was fantastic, a set of nice hotels on the Gulf of Aqaba with a golf course - this is out-of-season of course so the place was quite and as we have good residents rates in Egypt we got a nice room on the Lagoon at the Hyatt. The area was very similar to Oman, with the black basement rocks against the blue of the sky and the sea.

Snorkelling was great, lots of coolourful reef fish, many of which we know from Sharm, lots of long knife fish and cornet fish, butterfly fish and puffers, T and J both saw sting rays and T and Mrs T both say a big box shaped jelly fish.

Weather was "scorchio" every day, but we spent the hottest part of the day in the water - the evenings are quieter at Taba than Sharm so we had pool and of course sitting out under the stars watching the world cup semi-finals - very nice...

Taba has a nice golf course so we spent a couple of mornings doing a family 9-hole, boys won both days. The course is pretty spectacular and very little used so we could take as long as we wanted!