Hurghada - Soapstone Sculpting

Sculpting in the Sun

Finally, I got to the stage where I could resume a more-or-less normal life over here. Up until the beginning of January, it was pretty busy as other owners of apartments here came and went, so there were quite a few parties and social get-togethers.

Now, towards the end of January, the sea is starting to get colder, maybe about 22 degrees. It takes a bit of courage on my part to get in the water, but once I’m swimming it’s fine, although there is a slight cold undertone, even as I swim. It’s not enough to disturb, but it’s a sign that it’s winter.

Anyway, now that the water is getting cooler, I don’t mind so much if I take a few days off swimming to do something else. So, I ended up signing up for a sandstone sculpting course.

It took place in the courtyard of a café in Hurghada called Purrfect Cuppa. I’ve never been there, but I’d heard a lot about it, because it was set up by a friend of a friend (this is how things go in Hurghada) and many people I know have eaten there, taken a course, or worked there.

As you might guess, it has a lot of cats. They are street cats / abused cats that have been adopted and brought back to health by the owner. The cats have free run of the place and you can squirt them with water if you want them not to appear at your table.

It’s run by a British woman and, for me, the best part is that they sell the most wonderful cakes at a reasonable price. On the first day of my course, I was restrained and had just one piece of coffee cake, but on the second day I had chocolate fudge cake and carrot cake. And I never got round to tasting the rather wonderful looking lemon meringue pie and all the wonderful shortbread and other biscuits. It’s a delight to have some properly British cake.

But I guess I’m supposed to be talking about the course. There were only three of us in the end, but it made it nice and small and we all knew each other, so it was very relaxed. The course itself was run by a friend’s sister who was visiting. We had to choose our piece of soapstone, which came in either a creamy green colour or a grayish black. I made the mistake of being too ambitious, as I felt inspired to make my stone into a fish. The other two participants did abstract sculptures and in retrospect that would have been best for me to do, but I wasn’t feeling inspired by that on the day.

We had to lay our stones on a pillowcase of sand (which if you had cat pee in it, could smell!), then sketched, then chipped away to make holes, then smoothed them, and then polished. I'm sure you can make up you own jokes. It may be January, but it was still 26 degrees (particularly hot those days, which was a bit annoying as they were good swimming days!), so we all got pretty hot.

It was very relaxed; we started off with coffee, had lunch, and then another coffee in the afternoon. The Purrfect Cuppa often has art courses of some kind running so there was a whole class of people on the first day there learning how to paint a sunset.

We were stopped by many customers wanting also to take the course and asking all sorts of questions. Because I was doing a small piece, I was finished earlier, so I used a spare bit of stone, which I thought looked like a lion, to further practice. I’d like to go again and do something larger and more abstract, I think. My pieces were OK but probably need advanced skills to get them really to look like animals.

I’d love to give it another go. It made for a fun two days and potentially for a new hobby!

El Andalous - Trip to Sand City

Sinbad at Sand City, Hurghada

So, after Aida, the trip to Siwa, and the boat trips, it was time to pay a visit to Idette who was over here on vacation with her husband and his brother. When I say “over here”, I mean in Hurghada rather than in Sahl Hasheesh itself, although her hotel was not far from Sahl Hasheesh.

They were staying in the Titanic Palace; there are several “Titanic” hotels in Hurghada. I’m not sure what the point is of calling a hotel in the desert after a boat that sank after hitting an iceberg. Where’s the connection and what are they trying to say – that your luxury hotel is going to be a total failure? I have similar thoughts on the many occasions when I hear Hotel California playing in hotels – I think they’ve heard only the lyrics “such a lovely place” and not listened to the rest. It’s a great song; however, as a reflection on the hotel...

But I digress.

Idette, George and Thon had already done a few excursions by the time I met them, so in the end we decided to go to Sand City. I’ve written about this briefly in the blog before as I visited it when it first opened (see blog of 3rd November 2014). However, five years have passed since then, so it was interesting also for me to see what it was like now, all that time later.

It hadn’t actually changed that much. It still had all the sand statues of Egyptian and other historical / religious figures (eg, Cleopatra, Isis and Osiris, Shiva) and a section for children containing sand representations of cartoon figures (Lily Longstocking, Donald Duck, etc). We were lucky in that one of the sand artists was there, so we were able to ask him questions.

Since it was new when I first saw it, renovation work wasn’t yet necessary and nor were there new works in progress. This time, there were blocks of sand in places waiting to be sculpted as well as some of the sculptures being renovated by the sand artist. I was pretty impressed, actually, that they were taking care to repair and maintain it.

They now have a camel there for you to photograph and also a small, but decent café. We had a bit of a mix up with the bill for our drinks, but nothing serious. The funniest thing was that they said they were going to be introducing a sound and light show soon. They said exactly the same thing five years ago!

There weren’t many people there, which was good for us. I assume they must get more business if they’ve managed to keep on going for five years; that’s pretty good for Hurghada, so I’m pleased for them. I’m sure they get bus loads of tourists from the various tour companies, so that’s probably their bread and butter money.

Anyway, it was lovely to see Idette, George, and Thon. I was so happy that they enjoyed Egypt/Hurghada enough the previous occasion to come back again this year (now last year). And they’d even managed to do some snorkeling this time so were able to see for themselves the wonders of my main hobby over here.

Come on over and try it out!

El Andalous - Christmas and New Year

Christmas Decorations in Sahl Hasheesh

I can’t really keep up with time and somehow I wrote the last few blogs barely realizing that it was Christmas and New Year, so I’ll talk about that now before it gets too far in the past.

Most Christians over here are Coptic Christians who celebrate on 7th January; thus the festive greetings usually come as “Happy new year, merry Christmas!” rather than the other way round. I put my Christmas tree up early this year (first week of December) as most years I regret leaving it until the last moment. Once it’s up, I love the way it makes my flat feel so cosy. This year, I probably overdid it in the other direction. Although I was sad to see the decorations come down, a part of me was also a bit tired of it by the end. The decorations in El Andalous don’t come up until Dec 24th!

This year, I had my main Christmas meal on 24th December with Paul (another Brit), Nicole (from Belgium), and Jacquie (Swiss French lady) at Bus Stop. Bus Stop was offering a set meal for 500 LE (around 25 GBP) including a choice of roast beef, roast turkey or salmon. I had the tomato soup to start and then the roast turkey so that I could be seasonal. As you come to expect over here, it’s not really what you imagine by roast turkey. It was pleasant enough and seemed to be proper meat, but it wasn’t slices from a turkey that had been roasted; it was more like discrete balls of turkey. I’m guessing that they must be frozen or something. There’s not an awful lot of custom in Sahl Hasheesh, so it’s probably difficult to roast a turkey if you don’t know how many people are going to come or what they’ll want.

Jacquie took the roast beef, which also didn’t look how I imagine roast beef to be. And no Yorkshire Puds, either, of course. The beef was in slices but they were fairly thick, more like little steaks. We had wine with the meal instead of the mulled wine they were offering afterwards. Dessert was a Yule Log and was a standard chocolate Swiss Roll with no Christmas decorations on it whatsoever, but it was actually a pretty good cake. Anyway, that’s Christmas, Egyptian-style!

On Christmas Day I went with Safi to a Thai restaurant in Hurghada; it’s Safi’s favorite restaurant. We had our usual lovely meal there, although it wasn’t particularly festive. Next year, I will probably volunteer to cook a turkey myself, especially now that I’ve finally found my baking tray for the oven. I’ve been without it for the last three months because I couldn’t work out where the cleaners had decided to store it!

I chose to have a quiet New Year’s Eve at home in front of the television. I’d been to a party earlier that week at John and Amanda’s and even though I didn’t drink very much, I was tired the next day. Also, it had been a very full-on few months and my preference was just to have some quiet down-time. I had two invitations to go out, but declined. It was a good decision. I found a good film on TV, ate chicken and chocolate, and in my books that’s pretty ideal.

On the evening of 1st January, Janice and Chris held a party at their flat in El Andalous. I did pop along to that, imbibed some wine, ate some pigs in blankets and other delicacies, socialized a bit. I was still in a bit of an anti-social phase, so I stayed only a few hours and then took my leave. It was a great party though – they’d cooked tons of food and had everything you could possibly want.

So, that was my journey from 2019 into 2020. If you haven’t made any New Year’s resolutions yet, buy my book. You can get them for your dog, cat, or fish, too, if you like. In the meantime, thank you for reading my blog and wishing you a fabulous year ahead!

El Andalous - Boat Trips

On a Boat in Sahl Hasheesh

So, straight after Luxor, I went to Cairo to go to El Alamein/Marsa Matrouh/Siwa. And the day after I returned from the Siwa trip, I had to be up again early in the morning to go on a boat trip from Hurghada. It was exhausting!

It was the trip with the Lotus Ladies that I’ve done on many occasions before (only we go to different snorkeling sites each time), but it was the only one this year (2019) that I was able to attend. I’m not even sure that they ran this summer. For that reason, I didn’t want to miss it.

I’d persuaded Hilde to try it, so we got the taxi together into Hurghada. We went into the wrong place at first because I’d forgotten exactly where the diving centre was, but the man blocking our entry to where we wanted to go pointed us next door.

There was a good number of us and it was nice to catch up with people and see familiar faces. I was also pleased that there were a fair few Germans on this occasion, so Hilde could feel right at home.

Anyway, we went out and we did some good snorkeling; the sea is a lovely temperature in Oct/Nov. It’s always a bit difficult when you’re snorkeling to know when to go back to the boat as there’s no set time, so I try to keep an eye on the boat. However, to my horror, as I looked round to see where the boat was, it was sailing off in the distance!

I decided not to panic and swam up to another boat, thinking I could hitch a lift. After all, a dead tourist isn’t want the Egyptian authorities want! But, as I swam up to it, it too started to pull away. As I looked round, I realized that all the boats were setting off.

At this point, I thought it best to act with a little more urgency, so I started shouting out the name of our boat, which I could still see, and swimming towards it. It wasn’t easy to shout through my snorkeling mask, so I ripped it off and yelled. Another boat saw me and told me not to worry but carried on sailing away. I swam after it, but they told me to swim back (I guess it would be hard to find me in the middle of the sea!). I swam back and found that there were two others from my boat also there, at which point I relaxed.

Needless to say, we all got back on, although I lost a bit of my snorkel in the drama (probably as I threw off my snorkel to shout), so I had to borrow a snorkel for the rest of the day.

A week or so later, I did another boat trip, but this time it was just a small group of six of us, all owners in El Andalous, and we stayed within Sahl Hasheesh. We hired a small glass-bottomed boat for four hours and just went round locally to various reefs to snorkel and also just to laze about on the deck.

They laid on snacks for us, which included fruit, some of which we’d never seen before. Anyway, we all had a taste of one of them and it was an excruciating experience. It tasted nice on the first bite but then felt like you’d got a load of talcum powder in your mouth. It turned out that it was a Persimmon, which is tasty when ripe, but not so great when not ripe. We decided one of the other fruits was a type of date.

Anyway, despite everything, both days were great fun and I wish I could have done more!