Egypt: Day 4 - The Coloured Canyon

It's 6 am. Bitterly cold, we pull into Nuweiba port and take a cab to the City Beach Hotel, and after waking up the owner, Hamada, arrange for a hut on the beach. LE 20 per night - damn cheap. Nuweiba is famous for the Coloured Canyon, and we disturb Hamada again, and ask him how to get to this place. Ever the resourceful, Hamada says that he just 'happens to know' someone who has a jeep that he can rent out to us along with a driver and a guide. The price - 250 Pounds. Gasp! But we feel that we've come here all the way for this, and might as well do it. A good attitude, and one that will lighten our pockets considerably in the near future.

The Coloured Canyon

At 8.30 am, a battered jeep pulls into the Hotel courtyard with an equally battered old driver, Salaam, coaxing it along. Driver and the guide are a baap/beta double act - the latter's name is Firik [I think]. The coloured canyon is supposed to be about 120 km away, and the initial part of the journey is over a nice tar road for about 20-25 minutes. Then a dirt road - actually, that's unfair, it's more of a beaten track in the gravel. We think this should be about 10 minutes or so, but it turns out to be more than an hour of literally bouncing around in the quite dilapidated vehicle. Finally we pull up to the 'lip' of the canyon. Oh yes, we notice a section of our path bordered with barbed wire fences with signs saying "Danger - Mines", and showing 2 pictures. One of a normal man, and the second of a man with a wooden leg. Very quaint. Turns out that the entire Sinai peninsula was mined by the Israelis when they attacked Egypt and took this area over.

So we climb into the canyon and walk along the path an ancient river must have taken. The thought occurs to me, that a few millennia from now, people like us will descend into the Nile or the Ganges, and marvel at the beautiful rock formations that must exist even now. And we walk on. Walking, walking, crawling, climbing, walking along the canyon. We have a couple of adventurous moments when we have to squeeze ourselves under a large rock that's wedged itself along the way. I silently congratulate myself on my lack of girth. Along the way, there are very interesting rock formations in rich reds, yellows, greens and black. After more walking, we finally reach the end and climb back up to the top of the canyon, where the jeep along with Salaam await. We sit down for a few minutes under a shaded area with a strategically placed soft drink stall in front. But we resist the urge. Salaam asks again and again, "Canyon goooood????" and we reply, "Yessss!!!".

With a roar of dust and diesel [apologies to Dire Straits here), we drive back to CBH. Reach Nuweiba city at 2 and ask Salaam to drop us near a restaurant, named 'Dr. Sheesh Kabab's', and have a decent lunch of rice, babaghanoug, tahina, french fries and sauteed vegetables. I walk down to a nearby stall and buy a copy of the Egyptian Gazette. Quite a newspaper. More on that later. Post-lunch, we return to the Hotel where a now quite awake Hamada asks, "Canyon gooood???". And we reply, "Yessss!!!".

Our digs at CBH consists of a tiny hut right on the beachfront with two concrete platforms over which they spread a thin mattress and a sheet. We get into the hut and change into shorts. Time to hit the beach. The water is lovely and cool and unbelievably clear. It makes for a beautiful picture - deep blue sea, flanked by red-brown mountains. We walk along the water for an hour and return to the hut and sleep. At 4.00 pm. Wake up again at 10.30 with a strong sense of deja-vu. @#$@#$@%!!! We missed dinner again. Oh well. Sleep on...