Kite Life

Pauline and myself were staying for 3 weeks at hurgarda and staying at the sofitel hotel next door to colana watersports, on one of the few windless days we splashed out and hired a brand new Mitsubishi with a smart as you like driver who was told not to drive over 90 k/ph, we were charged a lot as we asked to be driven all over the place all day,, £28 felt like a lot of money but when he showed us the car we said ok, the main purpose was to visit the intercontinental hotel at the new find location- soma bay, 39 k south of the colana set up, 

The hotel is new and is set on the beach in a massive horse shoe bay (aprox 2 miles across),there is one other hotel on the opposite side of the bay, a quality operation; (Sheraton 5 star hotel) the bay is very shallow in places, coral free but a few muscle beds scattered around, with sand banks way out in the bay, a truly beautiful location, the hotel itself is so ornate, so opulent, so disgustingly posh, the guy who built it has far too much money, his yacht is in it’s own marina next to the hotel, it’s a complex that has had money thrown at it , gold leaf, marble, coy carp, rich furniture, 2 gold lifts in the massive fountain laden reception glide up to the floors in full view of the gob smacked guests, there is a swimming pool that starts at the edge of reception and you swim through well lit caverns with carved rock roofs out into the blinding sun and a gorgeous pool bar, under a massive rope bridge and into a larger ornate pool, it is unbelievable, winding our way through the spaced out sun beds to the soft sand beach we view the luxurious hotel rooms which all look out to sea, all have big patio’s, full length sliding windows and sun beds, we found a water ski / wake board, centre, then a dart catamaran centre, with new 16 ft darts (a top class racing cat) (I had one), then a dingy cte with canoes and laser dinghy’s, then round the bay to the windsurfing centre, further round is the kite surfing cte, we realised by then this was a Mark Warner run water sports beach, and when we asked for a full run down of the deal, it turns out that when you book with mark Warner then all the sports are free, apart from kitesurf tuition, and waterskiing, but then the bombshell. 

Due to kite surfing being a risky sort of sport, they run you out on a boat to a jetty in shallow water half a mile out and it’s there you blow up your kite and set off, shiit, not good, it put a right damper on things, but then what was that big building on the beach 300 yards away?? 

Bingo!! its an independent kitesurf /windsurf/kite buggy, activity centre, and it’s superb, German owned and run, www.surfmotion.com or peter@surfmotion.com the exact spot is called Abu soma-Egypt (the cte has been open for one year) 

Peter speaks perfect English and showed us round his superb set up, café, changing rooms, sun bed rest area, covered bubble pipe rest area, equipment wash off area, private gear storage area with full time 24 hr security guard with a side arm, showers, loos, storage rooms, rigging area with air line, north hire equipment, buggy things, massive windsurf range, and the sailing area, the wind is cross off , but the sailing area is 2 ft deep on average and massive, the wind being off shore leaves the surface flat, speed sailing and boosting heaven, the windsurf area is further out in the deeper water, so kiters get the best conditions, half way across the windsurf area is a sand bar, so if you get blown away you end up on this, windsurfers have to dismount to walk across it to deeper water, it’s a true kiters dream, heaven in the dessert, 

remember this, the Intercontinental hotel next door makes the movinpick at el gouna look like a dusty shoe box, and the Magawish look like a condemned rubbish tip, I have a full memory card with the images of this paradise, 

But this luxury comes at a cost! Food and drink are outrageous, by Egyptian prices, but still cheaper than an English city cte café, cappichino-£1.50. beer is £2.50 -500cl, 12% service and 2%city tax goes on every thing, the hotel itself is trying to build business, it has over 600 garden rooms and there were only 150 guests in house, so to us it looked like the hotel was empty, the Warner staff said you can book for late deals on the web and get silly deals outside kids holidays, 

you have to try this level of luxury once in your life, you could only afford it in Egypt, a 

It’s a 40 min drive from hurgarda airport, or 12 us dollars one way taxi, a bus to hurgarda town goes twice a day from the hotel but a taxi can be booked at any time for not much money, 

Think of a new Marriott hotel then gold plate it, this would be only good enough to be the beach restaurant, it’s that mind-blowing, 

Anyways back to reality, from there we went to hurgarda for late lunch, picked the best seafood restaurant ordered the dearest seafood grill £3.50, and premium Stella beer 6,4% £1.40, fresh orange juice 70 pence, 

Then we called in at the duty free for 2 bottles of gin and a litre of whisky, total cost £15, Inc city tax, 

A holiday can be made a lot cheaper by mixing what you buy from the hotel with what you can get from the town, your room mini bar is around 4x the cost of town price’s, beach price’s are around twice the price of town price’s 

apart from the taxi fares we spent around £14 a day, compare that to the £120 a day we were spending in south Africa ,we were only b+b there and half board here in Egypt, 

This entry was posted on Monday, January 15th, 2007 at 2:30 pm and is filed under Kite Surfing Egypt. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.