El Gouna - Movenpick Hotel (May 2005)
20 December 2006 dans Kite Surfing Egypt
Just returned from El Gouna and thought I would share a few thoughts with you.
Have been to Colona at Hurghada twice and although the wind wasn’t all I had hoped the guys at Colona are excellent and very friendly, the beach is spot on and it has been a great couple of kiting trips. This year having the girly in tow meant somewhere not quite so kite orientated and so chose El Gouna and the Movenpick. The Movenpick… wow, what a great place to stay. The staff were helpful beyond expectations – just couldn’t do enough for us. The room was lovely, with a great view. In fact my only real criticism of the accommodation was the price of food and drink - £5 GBP for a burger! I wouldn’t pay that here, let alone in a country where that’s probably equivalent to a week’s wages! Easily avoided though, we just went into town every evening and bought rolls which we filled with meat and cheese taken from the breakfast bar every morning and made lunch from that!
Unfortunately my impression of the kiting isn’t quite so positive. Although generally the kiting was great, the wind blew just about all week and I kited 5 out of 7 days, I found the staff at the kite centre really poor. My “briefing” consisted of about 60 seconds during which I was told not to kite over the string of buoys marking the swimming area, not to kite at low tide because there is a reef 100m or so off the beach and the water gets too shallow and not to jump over the coral. No questions about my ability, which surprised me a little. But all fairly self explanatory stuff really and obvious to anyone with any common sense.
Imagine my surprise and shock as I watched a member of the team at the kite centre blatantly popping over the line of buoys into the swim area, carving around people swimming (my girlfriend at one point), jumping and landing (most of the time) in the swim area and generally where he felt the need. On several occasions while people were having lessons in the shallow area the same lad was carving around the learners and passing them just feet away. I remember what it’s like to be handling a kite for the first time, the last thing you want is some hotshot buzzing passed you all the time. Watching from the beach while a lesson was taking place the tutors were so inattentive it bordered on negligence allowing beginners to body drag into the swimming area where people are prone to be snorkling and unaware of what’s going on above the water. I oleft with the impression that this was a really poor teaching centre.
Generally I found the staff really unapproachable, totally unenthused by their job and got the impression that they would be much happier if everyone went away and left them to sleep in the shade of their hut. Speaking of which, it is all they seemed interested in doing, rather than watching out for anyone who might need rescuing. I witnessed a guy trying to body drag back to his board for more than 20 minutes and was perhaps as long as half an hour with absolutely not response from the centre or rescue boat. Once the guy did get to his board it took him ages to get back up wind to be able to land his kite and was clearly exhausted by the ordeal.
Luckily for me I didn’t need to use the staff or the centre much and so was not affected, however if I had gone to learn to kitesurf I would be rather annoyed.
One thing that did affect me however was the tide. When discussing with you where to go and we talked about el gouna there was never any mention of the fact that you could only kite 2-3hours each side of high tide. I found this really irritating as it meant planning day around when the tide was, and as high tide was late afternoon for most of the week it meant only a few hours in the afternoon rather than the whole day kiting that I had hoped I would get. Of course if you get the tides right then you can do 6 hours kiting a day, but get it wrong and you could be potentially looking at no kiting on some days.
So in summary, a great location for a holiday, not so good as a kite location. I was lucky and the tides were fairly kind to me but your staff really should make people aware of the tidal situation before they book the movenpick. I would go there again but take the shuttle bus down to Mangroovy rather than have to deal with the unhelpful, unfriendly, unenthusiastic and unattentive crew at the Movenpick Kite centre. And certainly if a beginner asked me I would point them firmly to Colona instead.