Hurghada – excellent!

Hawaii Riviera Aqua Park Resort

My intention here isn’t just to post a bunch of holiday snaps – rather it’s to show what visitors to resorts like this one can expect to find when they get there. I get the impression that after the terrorist incidents that have occurred in recent years – I read last week end that Thomas Cook has only just resumed tours to Tunisia after the atrocity there when a terrorist murdered more than 30 British tourists on their hotel’s private beach a couple of years or so ago – many western Europeans are still averse to travelling to ‘Arabic’ destinations like Hurghada because of the security threat.

Now I don’t claim to be up on what anti-terrorist measures have been taken in, say Spain, where I understand many UK tourists are choosing to travel to as an alternative, but I’d bet that given my experience in Hurghada, they could just as easily be subject to a terrorist attack there as in one of these Red Sea resorts.

What seems to me to be clear though, is that visitors from eastern Europe are far less concerned because although I came a cross a few other British, Dutch and German guests in the hotel, by far the majority of the clientele were from eastern Europe and the bulk of those from Russia.

One of the things that impressed me was that there was at least one security guard, and often during the day two, stationed at the hotel entrance, together with an airport-style metal detector that everyone entering the building had to walk through. While sitting in the foyer you could hear it constantly beeping but that was because most of the people passing through it in both directions were either hotel guests who, with their plastic wrist bands that we all had showing we were entitled to the hotel’s all-inclusive services, were allowed to pass freely, or were tour guides or excursion operators, for example, who were already well-known to the guards.

Not a perfect system admittedly, but one that shows that they have made a real effort to address the concerns of their foreign visitors.

All of the hotels in this part of the world are on a coastal strip many kilometres long both to the north and the south of Hurghada. My hotel, The Hawaii Riviera, is some 15 kilometres to the north of the town and 20 kilometres from the airport, so although it is on a busy main road, you aren’t disturbed by noise and hustle and bustle. It didn’t matter to me as I was really only there for the sun, but it does mean though, that any visitors who do want to see more of the local area need to either hire a car for transport or go on one or more of the many excursions being offered in the hotel by various operators.

To me the above images are extremely redolent of Spain in the 1960s when the surge in construction and development of its tourist facilities was taking place. It seems to be the same here in Egypt, with the hotels that are open and in use by tourists being surrounded by an enormous building site with other new ones springing up all around surrounded by wooden scaffolding. But somehow it didn’t seem to be noticeable, probably because being ‘all inclusive’ it wasn’t necessary to leave the hotel in search of the ‘basic’ food, drink and entertainment services that you might otherwise require.

It appears that just about all of the hotels in the surrounding area called themselves ‘resorts’ and all seemed to offer similar facilities to the one I was in. I also noticed that all of the ones in the area immediately surrounding mine had ‘Hawaii’ in their names and were presumably therefore all owned and operated by the same group. When I was outside mine taking a few pictures I noticed this sign on the other side of the road which presumably shows the two gentlemen who are either the owners or the joint chief executives of what appears to be a pretty successful enterprise.

Now I’m going to let the images speak for themselves. The resort is primarily aimed at couples and families and although there were a few other singletons like me there during my stay, I think that this was only because they want to get as many paying customers into the hotel as possible at this time of the year and that single occupants of what are quite large and airy rooms would not be accepted as the season hots up (together with the room prices).

The large, airy foyer area was occasionally a bit cool at this time of the year but must become a haven when things begin to heat up later on. It was kept scrupulously clean, as were all of the public areas of the hotel as far as I could see, by attentive staff who were on duty non-stop from early morning until late into the evening when, after almost all of the guests had gone off to bed, yet more thorough cleaning and polishing got underway.

There was a free bar in the far corner of the following shot serving alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks all day from 10.00 am and always a table of colourful cold non-alcoholic ‘cocktails’ for the children and the not-so-small who needed one at any time. Around the foyer’s periphery there were the usual small shop concessions offering general nick-knacks, watches from $10 apiece, cheap jewellery, snacks, sun-tan oil and so on, so what was not to like?

This shot taken looking back towards the main entrance shows the security guard station next to the door and the metal detector.

And this shot taken in the opposite direction shows the attractive outdoor covered area at the rear of the foyer where guests could smoke and relax with coffees or their drinks.

Down below that was an attractive ‘cafe’ area facing the hotel’s main pool which, due to the time of year, was not open for use while I was there but which must be an attractive daytime and evening venue later in the year.

This is a shot looking back towards the cafe from the pool.

Then on to the pool itself, one of several in the gardens of the resort.

The gardens themselves or lush and green and kept that way by constant heavy watering.

Here’s another pool aimed at the younger children with plenty of sun-loungers around it from which their parents can keep an eye on them

Then something that I don’t approve of that’s also evidently aimed at the children, in the form of an animal enclosure. This shot shows from the left a cage containing two or three small Capuchin monkeys, one of which was regularly released by the ‘handler’ and passed from hand-to-hand by sundry guests, often ending up being thrown onto the ground, a fully-grown pelican, a fully grown male peacock and a small white flamingo. The birds were on bare earth in cages no more than 1½ metres square and it was heart-breaking to see them in such an environment.

Here’s a shot of the pelican who would fix you with a knowing eye and then grab at the wire mesh of its cage with it’s enormous bill if you stopped as you walked by its enclosure as if to say, ‘Help me, I can’t break this down myself, please do something.’ It surely needed to be soaring in the wide blue sky and plunging into the waters of the Red Sea scooping up fish as it cut through the water.

The peacock and flamingo were no better placed and the latter spent most of its time either with its head submerged in a dish of filthy water as it would do naturally if it was in a shallow river or lake, or standing on one leg with its head under its wing. And further over to one side there was also an enclosure containing two what appeared to me to be Muntjac deer. One spent its whole time lying on the ground with a glazed expression while the other seemed to be more active and alert, but in my view, neither had any place in such an environment.

And then there was the beach stretching down to the water of the Red Sea. Towels are provided free by the hotel and at this time of year there were plenty of sunbeds to choose from, although I doubt that that would be the case later in the season. As for other areas of the hotel and the resort, it was kept scrupulously clean and tidy by the staff who took it upon themselves to turn all of the beds so they faced the sea.

The trouble was that if you wanted to face the sun, you had to turn them around through 180 degrees and quite often, if you returned after lunch to the same bed that you’d occupied in the morning, you’d find that it had been sneekily turned back again while you’d be gone 🙂

I didn’t bother to take any pictures of the dining room, which I found to be very pleasant with a wide range of food laid out in buffet style. I always found something to my taste, although I was taking just a main course with salad, and as usual, soft drinks, red and white wine and beer were freely available as an accompaniment to the meal. And not only that, despite there being so many visitors from eastern Europe, the friendly staff all beamed at you and wanted to speak English!

Before finishing, I must mention something that happened involving one of the two lifts that I used to go to and from my room on the fifth floor (there were several others in the hotel). One was constantly giving problems with doors that occasionally wouldn’t work properly or sometimes refused to work at all no matter how many times you pressed the buttons. Things finally came to a head when in the course of bringing two more senior gentlemen guests down to the ground floor, it stopped about a metre above the floor level and refused to budge.

A member of staff hot-footed it to deal with the emergency and the doors were prised open revealing the lower parts of the passengers’ legs and then their faces as they bent down to decide what to do. In the event, they both decided to, somewhat creakily, ease themselves out of the open doors and down the last metre onto the floor, despite being told not to do so as there was a real danger that if they had toppled backwards, they would have fallen through the gap into the lift shaft.

It also occurred to me, although not to others who were still happily pressing the buttons to activate the lift next door, that if the lift in question had suddenly sprung into life while the two gentlemen were clambering out, they could have ended up being cut in two! Luckily no such thing happened and they were able to plod off to the foyer bar, for a welcome (free) brandy I would think.

So what were my overall thoughts of the hotel and resort? It wasn’t the kind of place that I would usually have gone to because with its extensive water facilities, that I didn’t make any use of on this occasion, it was aimed at a younger family market. However, I just went for the sun and a rest and in that respect it met my needs exactly.

Would I go back again? Yes, I would, but I think at the same time of year, not in high season. In fact, I did a quick internet search the other evening and found that by booking the Turkish Airlines flight and hotel directly myself, I could go again in March from Friday to Friday for 50€ less than I’d paid through Thomas Cook, so I’ll bear that in mind for next year perhaps, when it would be nice to go with a companion.

But now I’ve got my annual ULM insurance to think about, so the money will be better used for that, and a return to flying to look forward to, something which my ‘sunshine break’ has ideally prepared me for 😉