EGYPT - THE END!

The alarm rings at 5am and I’m away quickly and heading south along the coast road to Hamata Mangroves, some 54kms away. A dirt road takes me from the awful highway to the mangroves and I make several stops to scan and in no time at all pick up a few distant Crab-Plovers (what a great Western Palearctic tick), and I also note several flocks of White-cheeked Terns flying past, along with a few Great Crested Terns, and a couple Sooty Gulls. All good Western Palearctic species but my favourite sighting of the morning is of a Sooty Falcon pursuing a shorebird across the mudflats. 

Hamata Mangroves

There’s also many Western Reef Herons dotted around, flocks of migrating Garganey heading south, Slender-billed Gulls, Caspian Terns, an Osprey and Common Kingfisher as well. Further down the coast I come across a mixed roosting group of White-eyed and Sooty Gulls, which allow me to get quite close and take some decent photos. The same spot produces another Crab-Plover but this one is much closer here.

Mainly White-eyed but there's Sooty Gull as well.

Crab-Plover

So buoyed by these great sightings I decide to begin the long drive south to Shalateen – the only reliable site in the entire WP for Lappet-faced Vulture. However, the local police had something to say about this and another bullshit & bollocks reason was given at the first checkpoint to halt my journey. So I had to turn back, leaving me feeling very frustrated. So I return to the mangroves, finding more Crab-Plovers than before and wade across a channel to try and get closer to them but no matter how much I think I hide amongst the mangroves, the birds know I’m there and I just can’t get any closer. So then I try driving a back road near Wadi El Gemal where some lappets had been seen back in April but the road is very old and in ruin and after about 10kms I chicken out and head back to the hotel for lunch. And that was pretty much my birding done and dusted in Egypt. I spend the evening feeling frustrated at the poor wifi, and our initial impressions of what a good resort this is have started to fade…. Being an all-inclusive resort means the food is very reminiscent of what I had for school meals all those years ago! Being the only Brits at an Italian-run resort does make us stand out, not least due to the weird and wonderful dress sense of the other 1,000+ guests, most of whom must have bought their clothes at an 80’s charity shop!!! There are weird rules about getting towels to use around the pool, I have another run-in with a room attendant who insists that he needs to know who is staying in my room when I don’t allow him to enter, and finally the electric cart fails to arrive to collect our luggage for check-out and we have to haul everything back to the car, which is parked quite some distance away. The journey back to Luxor is uneventful and I drop the rental car off and we head into the airport to face the security checks etc. it wasn’t too bad but I was told to put my binoculars in hold luggage – and that was it. Oh, the plane left very late and boarding was a chaotic scrum – hardly surprising really!

Upon arrival in Cairo we’d booked an airport hotel via booking.com, which stated was 1km away. Turns out this was a lie and the hotel was beside the pyramids, some 40 minutes away and was basically 2 rooms on the 5^thfloor of a more or less abandoned building. Driving through back streets full of rubbish, donkeys, and a few men fighting at 11pm at night was a little unsettling. The alleged shuttle bus service was an old, beaten up saloon car and we had to have our suitcases on our laps and by the time we eventually got to the right place and into our rooms, we were all ready to cry! I asked for towels as we were in desperate need of a shower and was given a small hand towel and then forced to pay for a return taxi to the airport at 6.30am the following morning. And in the morning we had to pay more money as the hotel (and I use that term extremely loosely) guy had lied last night about the price and instead of a ‘big’ car we had the same saloon car as last night. And yes, suitcases on our laps again! Oh and there wasn’t a restaurant for breakfast as their advert suggested on booking.com. WTAF! Safe to say we were all relieved when the plane left Cairo (not on time I hasten to add) and we finally got home feeling like a shadow of our former selves! 

Footnote – 10 days later I am still poorly with an, as yet, undiagnosed virus and staring down the barrel of a month away in Oman looming on the horizon....