Living Easy in Egypt

I’m lounging in the hammock and I’m getting nervous for the first time.

I’ve been in the Sinai Desert for two days now and the stories I’ve heard are not matching up with the people I’m meeting. Still, the warnings from inside Israel are beginning to get the better of my sense of calm.

The peninsula that rests on the Eastern lobe of Egypt juts into the Red Sea, creating one of the most biologically interesting and geopolitically important places in the world. Warships patrol, tankers cruise by, and the Suez Canal continues to usher  8% of world trade through its watery avenue.

The area is also home to hundreds of campsites, hotels, casinos and beaches. Snorkeling and scuba diving attract people from around the world, as does the listless atmosphere along the sunny beaches. “Chill” is something of an understatement when it comes to describing the vibe here.

Days here easily turn into weeks, and it’s not hard to see yourself spending months at a time lounging around a Bedouin camp by the sea – getting sun drunk during the day and meeting fellow travelers and Egyptian vacationers under the light of nothing but the moon. For the fist time in months I am truly cut off from the rest of the world. No phone, no Internet, no electricity at all.

The camp I’m staying at is a series of bamboo and palm huts along a rocky beach. At night I sleep under the stars in my hut’s three-sided courtyard until the sun crests over the Saudi Arabian mountains to the east. Every morning I wake and bring my mattress back into the shaded room and pass out again to the sound of waves sluggishly lapping against the shore twenty feet away. Days pass by in a soporific calm – lost to the hypnotic swaying of the shaded hammocks or else the ecological playground of the bay’s Technicolor Coral reef. The water is always the perfect temperature, the breeze tickles your skin all day and the stars at night are beyond count.

 

This is Ras-shaitan. The end of the world. My new favorite place.

45 minutes south of the Israeli border, the camps at Ras-shaitan are considered secret spots even by local standards. Americans are rarely seen here, and for good reason. The camp makes no appearance in any guidebooks and has an unbelievably small Internet footprint. A google search turns up one or two travel forum postings from five years ago. Other than that, people find Ras-shaitan by word of mouth.

But it’s hard to find a place like Ras-Shaitan when everyone is telling you how incredibly dangerous and stupid it is to travel in Egypt now.

It’s my personal policy that when traveling, saying “yes” is always better than replying in the negative. When two friends in a week mentioned the beaches at Ras-shaitan, I knew it was a risk I had to take.

I say risk because the relationship between Israel and Egypt has, for the past month, been rocky at best. Firefights at the border, increased violence in Gaza and the burning of the Israeli embassy in Cairo have upended the political relationship that served as the cornerstone for a large percentage of Middle Eastern foreign relations.

When you tell people of your travel plans, it’s generally nice to hear words of encouragement, something to ease your nerves. It’s generally not nice to hear people tell you in dire voices:

“Don’t go anywhere at night.”  “Stay off the road.”  “Do people know that you’re going there?”  “Don’t go more than an hour from the border…just in case” “Definitely don’t mention that you’re Jewish.”

It’s hard to find a balance between everything I heard on the outside and my experience here within Egypt. My three friends and myself are the only non-Egyptians at the camp, and the locals are some of the friendliest, funniest, most generous people I’ve ever met, anywhere.  After two and a half weeks of brusque Israeli “manners” these beachgoers had me at “Hello, would you like to share some tea with me.”

 

They come here to escape the madness that is Cairo, they tell me one by one, in near perfect English. It’s important to note that these people are not your average Egyptians. They represent a small, upper class portion that attend international schools, etch out a very comfortable living and can afford to leave the 10 million-person zoo for a week’s vacation.

Despite the calm sense of beach camaraderie and laughter that pervades the camp, when I ask locals about life in Egypt now, every face goes dark. This is a dangerous time to be an Egyptian. . Police warn you not to stop on the road. If someone waves at you like a hitchhiker, it’s considered better policy to run them over, gas pedal pressed to the floor, than stop and chat with them. Travel at night is considered stupid and in the cities people stay to their rooms rather than risk walking in the streets.

They tell me this freely, without hesitation, without fear. “Life must go on,” seems to be the prevailing attitude. “Before the revolution I would come to Ras-Shaitan for vacation, to clear my mind. Now I need that more than ever, so I come here despite the danger on the roads,” one man told me.

The attitude is eerily similar to the Israeli style of living. Constant threat of violence only seems to make people more calm, more even keeled in the act living their everyday life.

People on both sides of the border warn about the danger in this land. Both live in a world of uncertainty where acceptance is the only way to make it through the day. This Egyptian experience only further tangles my opinion of this region and its politics. These are the same types of people on both sides. What’s wrong with us that we can’t make sense of it all?

And maybe that’s why now, for the fist time in over 48 hours of hammock lounging, I feel angst for the first time. I’ve never felt fear as an everyday part of my life. For the past three weeks I’ve been traveling in one of the most high-tension areas of the world. Yet my day to day right now consists of a sunny hammock, salty skin, cheap beer and a good book. For now, life is still nice.