 |
WELCOME TO SHARMSKI
LOUISE TREWAVAS
I'M NOT SURE I COULD HANDLE THE MISERABLY UN-DIVEABLE WINTER MONTHS without a Red Sea dive trip. It's cheaper, and certainly more cheerful than staying at home. But the Red Sea has changed.
A diver once told me about getting the bus to Sharm from Cairo - no airport in those days. It was dark when he arrived and, with no lights to be seen, he kipped on some fishing crates in Na'ama Bay until the sun came up and he could find somewhere to stay.
Fat chance of that now! You'll have been fleeced for a luggage trolley, leafleted about the latest rave and flogged a ridiculous pair of pointy gold slippers - even before you've left the arrivals lounge of the airport.
Divers may have made Sharm a destination, but now the rest of the world has rolled up to play, bringing buckets, spades and very loud aqua-aerobics with them. The bustling frenzy of central Sharm night-life makes Magaluf look positively tame.
Apparently divers now make up a measly 4% of Sharm tourists. The other 96% seems to be split 6% Italian families and 80% Russians (the remaining 10% reserved for Tony Blair's security entourage).
Russians? Oh yes. Sharmski and Hurghadski are completely over-run with Russian package tours. A Russian tourist is not difficult to spot. The women will be in full make-up, tottering on platform shoes and dressed in spandex, diamante or satin hotpants over lurid-coloured tights.
Quite a sight at the breakfast buffet. Perhaps the Russian words for "holiday" and "disco" are identical; the outfits certainly are.
Fair play to them - what is a holiday for if you can't ignore the usual boundaries of taste and laugh in the face of those who caution against wearing artificial fibres in the Egyptian heat?
Russian divers have brought their own style to the sport, based on the principle that "more is more". More brands, more depth, more video cameras - why take one gadget into the water when you can take six?
The Russian diver will be the one wearing enough VR3 computers to act as a weightbelt. Each one will be set for a different gas mix (just to cover all the bases) and each will be displaying the legendary warning "USE TABLES!" After all, why bend one computer when you can bend six?
The "Sputnik ascent" - where you keep diving until you're out of gas and then fin heartily for the surface, scattering Kowalskis, cameras, and the odd fake Rolex in your wake - is a Russian diving speciality. Strict rules are observed about drinking between dives: the bottle of vodka MUST be thoroughly chilled.
Fair play to them - what is a diving holiday for if you can't treat your computer as a lucky charm against the bends and laugh in the face of those who caution against defying the limits of human physiology?
I opt to escape to the chilled-out charms of Dahab, where divers are still 96% of the tourist population. The other 4% are confused aid workers who mis-spelled Darfur. After a blissed-out week of drop-dead gorgeous dives, I'm ready to face the stresses of life with renewed energy. I arrive back at Sharm airport feeling calm.
I am greeted by a scene from Dante's Inferno. There isn't one queue but several, just to get inside the building. People and bags are crammed like cattle in a truck. You queue for two hours, first to have your luggage scanned, then to check in, but the Egyptian behind the one desk reassures me that my flight is hideously delayed. That's all right then!
Imaginary departure information is displayed on the screens while I queue to get into the queue for departure gate security and join the queue to board. I'm fuming, but the Russians are enjoying a nostalgia trip to Soviet-style conditions. In an era of mass tourism, what Sharmski needs now is Egyptian perestroika.
|
