back to the red sea!

it's beach season, and since we had such a great time at the red sea a few weeks ago, we decided to go back for another weekend there.   so we went back to ras sudr to celebrate our 3-month wedding anniversary.

this time around, we went to matarma bay, a super cute little camp/resort.  the vibe there is so chill and relaxing, we really enjoyed ourselves.  the crowd was much closer to our age group, although it exposed me to a whole different culture of egyptian youth. tattoos and breast implants, oh my!  did i just say 'egyptian youth' like a 70 year old grandma??

it's so cool to be married to this guy!!

at this particular beach, the waters were shallow, and home to these terrible prickly sea bushes.  if we tried to cross the shallow parts to swim, our feet would get torn up by the pricks, it was terrible!  everyone was shrieking in the water, so we all stuck to the shore, and just sat in the 2' deep water (1' during low tide!)  but it was beautiful to look at, at least!  amazing, blue and turquoise water!

amazing, shallow, turquoise water

the drive over to the red sea is so much easier and nicer than the long and scary drive to the north coast. the only issue is that once you start to cross the red sea to get to sinai, there are lots of check points along the way.  sinai has a complicated history that i won't get into too much, but the long story short is, these checkpoints are looking for drugs and weapons, basically.  and the police/army will prohibit foreigners from driving through sinai, thanks to that other threat - kidnappings.  yes, i am serious.

we always get pulled over, thanks to the fact that bib drives with an expired license, and that i'm obviously a foreigner.  you think the shorts and tank tops give it away?  it's one thing when they ask for bib's ID, but when they ask to see my passport and our marriage license, i start to get anxious.  i hate hate hate when anyone so much as even holds my passport.  most of the time, these officers don't even know how to read english, so they're just staring at my picture pretending!

crazy things you see on the road!

so between the stopping, the bribe money spent to get through, and the tickets written for his expired license, it ends up being the same headache as driving to sahel.  no matter what though, 3 hours is worth the time and distance to go to any of egypt's amazing beaches!