The Shwits Go to Egypt: Part 1

I know… its a shock. It’s been months since we’ve posted anything, but for good reason! We’ve been laying low and patiently waiting.

…for this

We went on our first vacation! To Marsa Shagra, Egypt to learn how dive to be exact. It’s beautiful right? It’s still kind of hard to believe we just spent a week there.

Marsa Shagra is a small village in the south of Egypt. It’s about four hours south of Luxor, and sits right on the coast of the Red Sea. We flew into Marsa Alam airport, and then it was about a 30 min car ride to the resort. Egypt is literally a desert. Hah, I know that sounds so ridiculous because of course its a desert, but it’s really made apparent when you’re driving on the only road through a sea of dirt and sand.

We stayed in the Marsa Shagra Village which is one of three owned by Red Sea Diving Safari. They aren’t your typical resort as they advertise themselves as “The Eco-diving Adventure”, and this ended up being exactly what we were looking for. For starters, most people stay in “tents”.

There are two types, regular and royal. We opted for the royal tent, and completely lucked out because ours was front row on the Red Sea! They did have electricity so we had 2 small lamps and a mini-fridge. Most importantly, the royal tent came with bean bag chairs.

The view through our tent door.

You could also opt to stay in a one room hut, or a two room chalet. The tents and huts used communal bathrooms around the property, but the chalets had their own. The communal bathrooms really weren’t an issue. Each one had 3 toilets and 3 showers, and were cleaned multiple times per day. The only downfall is having to pee in the middle of the night…

We spent a lot of our down time sitting on our “porch” reading and watching. The great part about this place was if you were at your tent then you really felt like you were away from it all. And at night (when the moon wasn’t too bright) you could just stare at the stars. I was pretty excited by this since we don’t see many stars in the city. In my opinion, it was beach camping at it’s finest.

If you compare the two pictures below, the one on the right is the view of our resort, and the one on the left is the neighboring. We walked down the beach and through it one day. Everything becomes artificially green, and the music is going, and people are drinking and dancing. None of this is a bad thing, it just wasn’t the experience we wanted.

If we wanted to have a little social interaction then we spent time either hanging out at the Cafeteria, or at the Bawadi Bedouin Lounge. The cafeteria made for some excellent people watching. This was situated right by the diving area so and was scattered with chairs, tables, and beanbags. It was great, because you could get a little sun, sip on your beer (or all inclusive coffee/Fanta/Sprite/Coke), and watch divers come and go.

The Bawadi Bedouin Lounge was on the property but not run by the resort itself. It was run by people from the local Bedouin tribe in the area. They had beer, coffee, hookas and you could have dinner there on request. Mostly we just stopped by for a beer on our way ‘home’ for the night after a day in the sun.

As I mentioned before, your basic drinks were all inclusive as were meals. Breakfast, lunch and dinner were included and served in the Restaurant which had an outdoor seating area overlooking the sea and the diving area. The panoramic picture in the beginning was our view from breakfast. I think one of my favorite parts of the whole trip was waking up with the sun, going to breakfast, and having coffee with that view!

The food was incredible! Breakfast was usually the same, but lunch and dinner were always changing. Each night supposedly had a nation theme, but we were never entirely sure what nation. Hah. The only one we were ever sure of was Egyptian night because they labeled the traditional Egyptian dishes as such. And the dessert table! Oh sweet glorious dessert table. So much cake! and little cookies! and one night these chocolate cookie dough type balls! We were living the desert dessert dream!

Note to self with all inclusive… you can, and I did, eat myself sick. Literally. Not sure if it was dehydration, food I wasn’t used to, or the diving, but we lost half a day about mid-week to stomach issues. You know you’ve found a keeper when he cleans up your puke in the middle of the desert. #truelove

Other than the one incident, the trip was absolutely fantastic! Shane’s boss recommended this place to us, and it certainly did not disappoint! Everyone should go to the Red Sea!