I wish I had the discipline to update my blog more often, but life in Egypt is starting to feel normal, and with normal life comes busy-ness and less time to write!
We had our first major adventure (I call it an adventure, because it entailed us driving ourselves) when we went to Moon Beach for the weekend about two weeks ago.
Moon Beach is a seriously cool place – and is famous for it’s kite surfing. Apparently it’s because the wind blows constantly in one direction, and there are masssive lagoons so the water is as flat as a pancake – great kite surfing conditions by all accounts. If anyone is interested in a cheap outdoorsy holiday, I can highly recommend it (check out www.moonbeachretreat.com for more details). You can sail, winsurf, do yoga, kite surf, paddle – all in a sea that is clear blue and laps onto the beach. (Still very strange to get used to the desert joining the sea – absolutely no greenery to be seen!)
What is really interesting about Moon Beach is that it is only a 2.5 hour drive out of Cairo, and expats that live in Cairo spend almost every weekend there. There is a little bar on the beach which is like expatville! They all keep their sail boats and canoes on the beach, and they know all the other expats working there, as well as the dogs! Kids seem to think it’s their second home, and they run around independantly and in complete safety! I met more expats living in Cairo at the Moon Beach bar than I ever have in Cairo!
But the most exciting part of our weekend was the driving! We got Amr to drive us out of Cairo, and to stop on the Sinai road. Cairo is really confusing, and the traffic is hair-raising, so we thpought we’d spare ourselves that trauma on the way out. (He just pulled up on the side of the highway, and jumped out to catch a taxi home!)
Once on the Sinai road it was fairly easy going in terms of direction – straight! The other cars on the road drive so badly, that I shrieked all the way there! When it got dark (big mistake) it looked as though there were cars in our lane coming towards us. There were also a lack of lines on the roads, and some roads were one way (there would be another road parallel to the one we were on, except it would be on the other side of the sand dune, so we wouldn’t see it) , and some were two ways – we were never entirely comfortable about whether we were driving on the right road, never mind the right side of the road!
The way home got more interesting when we decided to try to navigate our way home through Cairo. We got so hopelessly lost that we ended up having to stop a taxi and explain that we wanted him to drive us home, but that we would just follow him (not such an easy task to explain that to someone who doesn’t speak a word of English!)
But we did it, and for the most part we were smiling 
We are heading back to Moon Beach this weekend to continue with kite surfing school. Let’s hope the drive is not quite as traumatic (or maybe I will be more numb to the oncoming traffic!)
