Holy Moses!!!!!!
The North Coast is sick. Running around on soft, white sand alongside the bright blue Mediterranean is pretty awesome. The water is pretty warm too... it's not like the Pacific in Northern California at all. In more ways than one too... there were no girls on the beach. But, hey I'm in Egypt... you almost get used to these kinds of things... almost.
I check out two beaches, one in Marina and one in Ghazela. The Marina beach easily topped the Ghazela beach as the water at Ghazela beach is filled with rocks whereas Marina is pure sand. The only other north coast beach I've been to has been in Marsa Matrouh and that was pretty rocky too.
Anyways, the north coast draws a certain crowd. It's made up of two hotels and thousands of summer beach houses that are owned by mostly wealthy Egyptians. The guy next door to the house at which I stayed had a Audi TT and a Porshe Cayenne parked next in his drive way. We drove up in a convertible Mini Cooper, and our friends met us in a Focus station wagon. These kind of cars are absolutely absurd (it's all about relativity), when it comes to normal day life. You are extremely lucky if your taxi has a seat belt.
It's a green revolution on the coast. Everyone has grass in front of their house, and the beach shack was circumscribed by 10 meters of grass on all sides. That's grass right next to the sand. It's the good kind too. Where's all this green grass growing from? Green money. The summer houses are all located within a kilometer of the sea. All you can find past the first kilometer from the sea is desert. These people created a huge strip of beach homes across the coast in the middle of the freakin' desert!!! It's the green revolution... the same color seems to work for so many revolutions. (You have to at least admit that the rhetoric is slightly humorous)
I chilled with 4 guys (one who I had known from nine months ago, and three who I just met). Unlike most Egyptians, these guys like to drink, but they don't do it very often. They bought a bottle of tequila from a friend who got it at a duty free shop, meaning it's foreign and therefore good. The alcohol in Egypt sucks... you don't want to drink any hard liquor here and the beer and wine are terrible... this is coming from a 21-year-old mind you. Anyways, they wanted to take shots of gold tequila with lemons and salt... Well, you don't do that, but whatever. Every shot, they made crazy faces, but they still wanted more.
After about 6 shots in about an hour, we were good to go out. Now only four of us had drank. The other guy didn't want to drink. And, we get in the car. I am offered the front seat "since I'm the tallest." *People always find a way to make an excuse for you to enter the doorway first or sit in the front seat or whatnot in Egypt. The guy that comes to sit in the driver seat is the smallest of the bunch who had just had six shots. So, I said to him, what are you doing? And, he said I am driving. So, of course I said, are you crazy or what. Now, all my Egyptian friends knew that Americans don't drive drunk (or at least the smart ones don't and all Americans know you shouldn't), so they tried to explain to me that it's ok in Egypt. After a 5 minute discussion, where I spoke in a joking manner, but at the same time wouldn't budge on my position. The drunk kid gave up his seat to the completely sober kid. Needless to say, I am alive to write this post.
That's a taste of Egypt's North Coast.
